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Samsung Series 8 TV

Devonian
Grafter
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Registered: ‎01-05-2011

Samsung Series 8 TV

I purchased the 55" just before christmas, and it's my first smart tv.
I can honestly say that no body in the house hold watches live tv any more.
It's all catch up services, which at streamed at 1080p making the picture amazing.
But since having the tv, my broadband usage has gone through the roof.
1 day last week the tv used 30gb  Shocked
As these tv's get more popular I can imagine more and more people moving over to unlimited broadband.
It makes me wonder if ISP'S can keep up with the bandwidth demand?

Does anybody know of any decent apps on the tv?
All I have is the catch up apps and Netflix so far!
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AndyH
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Registered: ‎27-10-2012

Re: Samsung Series 8 TV

It's scary how much bandwidth you can use. I'm finding more and more that I use streaming services than watching what's on the normal TV channels. I use Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Instant far too much!
In the US, youtube and Netflix streaming now account for 50% of all downstream traffic.
picbits
Rising Star
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Re: Samsung Series 8 TV

We've got the 60" Samsung Plasma and a beast of a bit of kit it is as well  - I only really use the catchup stuff that came on it and the media player as my server has a DLNA server running on it.
Devonian
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Re: Samsung Series 8 TV

It's my first Samsung tv, and it blows the Sony away.
And at 55inch it weighs 16kg.. my 4 year old Sony weighed nearly 40.  Shocked
I do like the fact you can buy the upgrade kit to so it stays upto date with the new technology for the next 4 years.  That's an amazing thing I think.
I have started to find that youtube have some pretty good full length films on to, and a lot are even in 3d!
rongtw
Seasoned Hero
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Re: Samsung Series 8 TV

i got my first samsung smart TV last year  Wink must admit i am well impressed , will never  buy any other  Cool
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Devonian
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Registered: ‎01-05-2011

Re: Samsung Series 8 TV

My favourite app at the moment, is Skype.
The tv having a built in webcam is brilliant.. so video calling family/friends on 55inch goodness is mind blowing!
I have mine wired, I keep meaning to try it wireless and see how it performs.
easymoney999
Newbie
Posts: 4
Registered: ‎12-02-2014

Re: Samsung Series 8 TV

Quote from: Devonian
It's my first Samsung tv, and it blows the Sony away.
And at 55inch it weighs 16kg.. my 4 year old Sony weighed nearly 40.  Shocked
I do like the fact you can buy the upgrade kit to so it stays upto date with the new technology for the next 4 years.  That's an amazing thing I think.
I have started to find that youtube have some pretty good full length films on to, and a lot are even in 3d!


I love Samsung TV's, already own 1 and just about to buy my second, Can you just explain a bit what you mean by the Upgrade Kit ? it's not something I've heard about.
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avatastic
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Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Samsung Series 8 TV

I found my 'Smart' TV was sending viewing habits to an IP address somewhere in Turkey. I put a stop to that but it also seems to have blocked its ability to auto-update.
iPlayer and YouTube work fine still however so it's not great loss.
F9 member since 4 Sep 1999
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DLM manages your line the same way DRM manages your rights.
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TORPC
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Re: Samsung Series 8 TV

Those in turkey claims it for viewing habits, what other information are they gathering to gobble up & spit out for Turkish Lira, that they may not be telling us about ?Huh
picbits
Rising Star
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Re: Samsung Series 8 TV

@avatastic - if yours was an LG then they released a firmware to stop it reporting back (after a bit of a public outcry !)
Devonian
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Re: Samsung Series 8 TV

@easymoney999 The series 8 Samsung (and series 7 I think) have an upgrade kit, called Evolution. 
Basically it keeps your TV up to date with the new technology that becomes available, and finely tunes the software, meaning you have a completely upto date TV for the next 4 years.
Obviously you only need to buy it when the new technology is there, for example I got my series 8 just before Christmas, and it is fully up to date, so it doesn't need the current Evolution Kit that is available.
And due to the software updates which are quite regular, I doubt I will need to buy an Evo kit until at least next summer.
http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/tv-audio-video/television/tv-accessories/SEK-1000/XC?subsubtype=e...
I have to admit I really do love this tv though, I can't recommend it enough.. the 3D upscaling is superb.
The wireless is flawless, although mine is wired, I tried it wireless for a few days.
It has FreeviewHD and FreesatHD which is brilliant, and with USB stick, it is a PVR to.
The screen sharing with my phone blows my mind away!  Cheesy Cheesy
@avatastic really?  What brand TV is it?  Considering you can use banking Apps on the TV, that's quite worrying.


avatastic
Grafter
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Registered: ‎30-07-2007

Re: Samsung Series 8 TV

@Dom It's a JVC.
At some point I'll do something to intercept the requests it's sending to the turkish IP address, allow them through if they're for updates and log and give a fake reply (based on the real replies it should receive) for viewing habits spying.
The reason I put a hard block on the IP block was it was feeding back on what live broadcasts were being watched.
F9 member since 4 Sep 1999
F9 ADSL customer since 27 Aug 2004
DLM manages your line the same way DRM manages your rights.
Look at all the pretty graphs! (now with uptime logging!)
WTF
Grafter
Posts: 673
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Registered: ‎14-09-2012

Re: Samsung Series 8 TV

Quote from: Devonian
@easymoney999 The series 8 Samsung (and series 7 I think) have an upgrade kit, called Evolution

We got a series 7 just before xmas and I can confirm that has an upgrade kit capability, too - though I have no idea what it upgrades.  Presumably the software can be updated on-line and I guess there's a limit to what an add-on can do to upgrade hardware.  Guess I'll have to wait and see  Undecided
The TV's pretty great as it, though.  Not that we're challenging it too much: I accidentally hit some button the other day that made the image go all weird and we realised we still haven't tried out 3D yet Roll_eyes
The streaming services are OK though they keep dropping, particularly when playing HD content.  I think the issue is that the TV is at the outer edge of the WiFi range (in fact, I just posted a request for recommendations for a new router  ::))
Devonian
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Re: Samsung Series 8 TV

Well I only just figured out that the tv up scales 2D to 3D if you want to, like the old set top boxes did with non HD.
The 3D is superb, I watched White house down on 3D Bluray last night.. it was amazing.
Do you have the smart 3d glasses with your tv? 
It just blows my mind how they work!  A 2 minute charge tops up the battery enough for 4 hours use... 2 minutes!  Shocked
I haven't used the wifi on mine, it's hard wired as the router is sat under the TV, but the connection has been flawless.
I'll tell you what though, as it has freeview and freesat together, the difference in picture quality between the 2 is miles a part.
WTF
Grafter
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Registered: ‎14-09-2012

Re: Samsung Series 8 TV

Quote from: Devonian
Do you have the smart 3d glasses with your tv? 
It just blows my mind how they work!  A 2 minute charge tops up the battery enough for 4 hours use... 2 minutes!  Shocked

I'm not sure if the glasses that came with the set are rechargeable - I certainly didn't see anything to re-charge them with - maybe that's something you get with the 8 series.  Or maybe I'm an eejit - not at all unlikely Wink