Samsung's F8000 LED gets microdimming at last

LAS VEGAS--Samsung will debut its flagship F8000 in 2013 and it promises to offer the company's best picture quality yet, with a full LED backlight with "thousands" of separate dimmable zones.

The F8000 will be available in four different sizes -- 46-inch, 55-inch, 60-inch, 65-inch, and 75-inch -- as soon as this March, with pricing to be announced.

The company claims the microdimming system eliminates blooming effects and its Precision Black algorithm can control black levels in discrete zones without affecting light areas of the picture.

Following on from last year's ES8000, the TV includes improved voice and gesture control in conjunction with a built-in 2-megapixel camera.

Dim images can be an issue with active 3D televisions, so the TV incorporates Local CTR (Crosstalk Reduction) which Samsung touts as being able to increase 3D brightness by 30 percent.

The TV incorporates a quad-core processor, which should assist with the speed of the Smart TV interface as well as provide muscle for picture-processing features such as Motion Judder Cancellation Pro, Digital Noise Reduction, and Web Picture Quality Enhancer.

One of this year's trends is content recommendation engines. The Samsung F8000 includes the S-Recommendation feature, which provides browsable thumbnail previews along the bottom of the screen, and Smart Hub now includes a program guide as well.