Samsung HT-BD8200 review

Everything was as it was supposed to be in Casino Royale. We're always on the lookout to see how a player handles the high-grain black and white scene at the start of the movie. Also, it's always telling when the transition to colour animation occurs. Happily, the HT-BD8200 coped well with every kind of video we gave it. But the video quality is only half of the story.  

Sound quality
Samsung has fitted the HT-BD8200 with 'bio kelp' speaker cones. It claims that kelp is an ideal material for speakers, as it's capable of producing a wonderfully rich and clear sound. We have to say that we agree with that assessment. These speakers do a wonderful job with dialogue, and stereo effects have a decent stage width too.

All of the TV and film material we provided sounded terrific. The dialogue in movies was crystal clear. For us, that's the most important part of a speaker system like this. Any cheap speakers can give you louder, bassier sound, but obtaining clarity is the AV holy grail.

The HT-BD8200 also has a virtual-surround-sound processing mode, but it's not going to fool you into thinking that you're watching a 5.1- or 7.1-channel movie with all of the required speakers. It would be good if Samsung also offered a set of wireless surround speakers to complement this system. For us, the rear effects channel makes a huge difference to immersiveness, and it can't easily be spoofed with virtual systems.

Wireless subwoofer
We like the idea of a wireless subwoofer. The bass channel is the most natural one to go wire-free, because it requires the least bandwidth. We must urge caution, though, when it comes to the placement of a subwoofer. There's something of a myth that bass isn't directional, and that you can pretty much put a subwoofer wherever you want. It's true that bass can travel through most things, and that gives subwoofers the ability to be heard wherever you place them in the room. But during our testing we discovered that, if we tucked the subwoofer behind a piece of furniture, its sound became disconnected from the main audio.

We'd suggest that the ideal place for a subwoofer is somewhere where you can see it. In a 5.1-channel system, it would be advisable to put it at the front of the system, along with the stereo and centre speakers. With the HT-BD8200, you could place the subwoofer directly beneath the TV and speaker bar if you've opted for the wall-mounting approach. If not, keep it as close as you can either to yourself or the speaker bar, and make sure you have line of sight with it. That will mean you'll get the best and clearest bass.

Aside from placement, we didn't notice any significant quality loss as a result of the wireless compression on the subwoofer channel. Bass was punchy. If anything, it was rather over-zealous at times. We'd stay away from the digital-signal-processing modes, as they seem to increase the amount of bass to unrealistic levels.

Conclusion
The Samsung HT-BD8200 is a very likeable piece of equipment. If it were slightly cheaper it would be ideal, especially for entry-level users who are unsure of the benefits of Blu-ray even though they often have HD televisions crying out for some 1080p content. It's a shame that the HT-BD8200 doesn't have more inputs to amplify and decode audio from other equipment, but there are probably just enough inputs to keep the target user happy.

Edited by Charles Kloet