This is probably the ultimate TV right now. Arguably better than Sony’s XBR8 which also featured LED backlighting with local dimming. Remember, not all LED backlights are created equal, and the XBR8 and Samsung’s 8500 have the local dimming feature for the blackest blacks on LCD. The full review is at AVGuide.

Too bad this set didn’t come in 50″ or 52″. 55″ is a bit too big for my living room.

When buying a new television, be careful about picking TV’s with LED backlighting – not all of them are what they appear. LED backlighting is one of the newest technologies used to improve picture quality and power efficiencies in flat screens. They’re used in LCD TV’s to produce the light that shines through the screen. Until the last year or so, all LCD’s were backlit using cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL), which are similar to flourescent lights.

Samsung was one of the first television manufacturers to offer LED’s to replace CCFL’s as the main backlighting source. The main advantage was a much brighter and smoother backlighting – no more “bands” or “waves” of brightness when the LCD is showing a dark picture. Moreover, the first LED backlit televisions had “local dimming” or the ability to turn off portions of the backlight to produce very dark blacks – always a weakness with LCD’s compared to plasma TV’s.

Originally, Samsung’s  950 and Sony’s XBR8 models both included LED backlighting with local dimming. However, things changed this year – Samsung introduced new televisions that had LED backlighting, but introduced in a cheaper, less featured package.

These are called “edge lit” LED backlit televisions and make up their 7000 and 8000 series televisions. The LED backlighting has moved from behind the TV to the edges. This has two detrimental effects on picture quality – the backlighting is not as uniform throughout the screen, and the backlight is incapable of local dimming. However, this type of backlight does produce VERY thin televisions, and are cheaper that full LED-backlit TV’s.

Be aware of this change, and make sure you know what you are getting. Samsung is rumored to launch a 9000 series television which features a full local-dimming LED backlight.

I’m a big fan of LED-backlit displays. Not only they produce crisp, even-lit displays on both laptop displays and desktop monitors, but they take less power so they make laptop batteries last longer. Rob Galbraith compares four different laptop displays to determine how the LED-backlit screens have evolved over time.