Samsung HT-BD8200 Soundbar
Product Description
Blu-Ray Home Theater… More >>
Features:
- Integrated Blu-ray
- 300W Output power
- HDMI out with CEC + 1080p
- iPod video, audio + iphone support; Bluetooth
Price At Amazon.com: $599.00
Average User Rating: 3.5
No of Reviews: 12
Click Below To Buy at Amazon.com
Samsung HT-BD8200 Soundbar
Brewin
17 Dec, 2009
Like others, I had been anxiously awaiting the release of this systems for quite some time as it seemed to be the ultimate all-in-one soundbar/bluray package for someone who didn’t want to deal with all of the wires of a true surround sound system, but who wanted better sound than the TV output. I did my research and read a few negative reviews, but also some really strong positive reviews as well and so I decided to pull the trigger and order one online since I couldn’t find one at a brick and mortar store.
The system arrived and it wasn’t functioning properly right out of the box – the subwoofer wouldn’t sync with the main unit. The Samsung tech support, as others have noted, is absolutely worthless. I dropped the unit off to the Samsung authorized service center and they couldn’t fix it and so they sent it into Samsung for an ‘exchange’. 1 month later and several calls to Samsung and I still don’t have my system back. Given the above, I am not the least surprised about some of the other issues that have been noted by others and I cannot recommend this product. I should note that the sound (absent the subwoofer) was good but was missing that extra punch that only the subwoofer could deliver. Hopefully I can come back and update my review once the my system comes back in
.
A word of caution – If you opt order one of these online (or anything Samsung product for that matter), make sure that there is a liberal return policy. Otherwise, you’ll get stuck dealing with Samsung customer care which is a very painful process.
User Rating: 1 / 5
Gramm Roberts
17 Dec, 2009
The HT-BD8200 delivers on every level. I know it’s not a 5.1 system, but the sound quality, e-features, and space soultion more than make up for the lack of stadium rattling noise alot of the 5.1 systems put out. I received mine and from the time i received it from the UPS delivery truck to the time it was set up and fully functioning, only 30 minutes had elapsed. I ordered mine from ABT Electronics, and it came with everything you will need to access everything that this unit advertises. To my surprise it even came with the USB Wireless dongle that many sites say is something you have to buy seperately to access the e-content such as Pandora, Netflix, Blockbuster, and Youtube. The only thing extra i would recommend picking up is a optical audio cable instead of the standard audio calbe that comes with the unit. It only runs $10-$15 for an 8 ft. cable, it is well worth it for the sound quality. I would highly recommend this unit to anyone who is in the market for a quality sound sytem that delivers everything and more that is advertised.
User Rating: 5 / 5
J. Webb
17 Dec, 2009
I had initially rated this unit very highly. For the first 8 weeks I had it it worked without a hitch. And then…
The unit froze up while playing a movie. I restarted it and it will not eject the disc that is in the unit. It shows open. Nothing happens. It then shows loading. Nothing happens. Unplugged. Retried. Same results.
Called Samsung for support and as I did not purchase the unit from their list of retailers (I did buy it from a reputable online retailer), they told me they couldn’t help me. Thanks Samsung, I vow I will never buy one of your products ever again.
While I initially loved this unit, I cannot in good conscience reccomend it. Buyer beware!
User Rating: 1 / 5
J. Sundquist
17 Dec, 2009
When my 10 year old projection TV finally died recently, it was finally a good enough reason to buy a flat panel TV. I ended up buying the Samsung UN55B6000 55″ LED. Of course once I got it home it confirmed to me what I knew would be the case, the sound on flat panels isn’t great. It’s just hard to make speakers small enough for a flat panel that are big enough to be good.
So after all of my hunting, I found the HT-BD8200. I thought it would be perfect. I could get rid of the stack of stereo and AV components and replace them with this. In theory it can replace the Radio tuner, CD player, DVD player, Blu Ray player and receiver.
I received it, hooked it up and started admiring it (I discovered rather rudely that Samsung does not put an HDMI cable in the $800 box so had to go buy one). The wireless subwoofer is awesome and I was able to hide it out of view behind the couch. The unit itself looks like it was made for my TV. It’s the same glossy black glass look with the red touch of color.
I had visions of wall mounting my TV with the HT-BD8200 wall mounted right under it (it comes with a wall mount kit).
The controls on the unit are super cool touch controls. No buttons, just symbols on the top of the disc drive area that light up. Just touch the glass over the control and a small beep lets you know it’s activated.
It comes with a wifi adapter so that you can stream netflix, pandora, blockbuster etc. to it over your wifi network at home.
I could babble on forever about the cool things it does which is why it breaks my heart to have to list the bad things and ultimately why I had to return it.
Once I got over the thrill of having a new toy, I started to notice buggy behavior that makes me think Samsung rushed this out or cobbled it together without enough QA testing.
- “MODE NOT SUPPORTED”
Since I connected the unit to my TV with HDMI, it activated the Samsung “Anynet” feature which basically let’s the TV and soundbar talk to each other and activate Samsung specific features. For example, when you put a disc in the soundbar, it’ll automatically change the TV to the correct input and start playing the disc so that you don’t have to go through the “source” menu on the TV. What I found was that from time to time I’d put a disc in the soundbar, it’d change the source on the TV but then the TV would just display “Mode Not Supported”.
Nothing in the manual said anything about this error and a google search came up with a million unrelated postings about the error on various Samsung products. I was able to get around it by switching the HDMI cable to another port on the TV. When the error would come up again, I’d switch it back to the original port and it would work again. Pretty crappy for an $800 product.
- “Misbehaving Night Light”
Like my TV, the soundbar has a small accent light at the bottom of the center of the unit. You can set it to be on while the unit is on, off, or all the time. I set to to be on when the unit is on. When I went to bed I turned the unit off and the light went off. The next day when I came home from work the light was on and the unit was off. I checked the setting in the menus and it was still set to be off when the unit was off… but it was on. Annoying
- “Ghost in the machine”
The soundbar started to turn itself on by itself. The first time it happened I thought maybe I had left it on without realizing it. So I made it a point to verify it was off when I went out the next day and sure enough it was back on when I came back that night. I had to start leaving it set to an unused input before turning it off to make sure it wouldn’t come on blasting the radio mid day or mid night.
- “Low Volume on TV”
The volume when watching movies or listening to CD’s can reasonably loud. Don’t get me wrong, you cannot ever go deaf listening to this unit on max volume because it just doensn’t go that loud but watching TV, the max volume seems to be roughly one third lower than on movies. I found myself watching tv on maximum volume all the time. If it was loud outside or someone was making noise in another room, max wasn’t loud enough.
I thought maybe the HDMI audio was the issue so I went and bought an Optical Cable (buy the AmazonBasics one, good price and decent quality). I hooked up the Optical cable to my TV and the result was exactly the same. I then hooked the optical cable directly to my cable box. Exactly the same. Nothing could make the soundbar louder while watching TV. The TV speakers themselves were often similar in volume or louder than the soundbar. The difference was that the soundbar had richer sound. Still not acceptable when the main reason I’m buying it is because I need more volume.
- “Anynet” annoyance
As this list grew and my patience thinned, I finally hit the last straw. I wanted to play a music CD while putting around the house. The TV and soundbar were off. I turned the soundbar on and dropped in a CD. The soundbar automatically activated the anynet feature, turned on the TV and switched to the HDMI input for the soundbar as if I was going to watch a movie. Apparently Samsung didn’t bother programming the soundbar not to switch if it’s an audio CD. “no big deal, turn off the TV” you say? I did… and Anynet promptly shut the soundbar off with the TV. ARRRRGH!
Could I just disable anynet? Sure! But losing a big chunk of functionality when I bought two Samsung products that are supposed to work together is unreasonable to me, especially when they are as expensive as these are.
So I resigned myself to thinking this was a defective unit and I’d give it another try. I boxed it up and sent it back to Amazon. I was ready to reorder a new one, but they weren’t in stock. I decided this was a good thing as if mine was defective, hopefully I’d get a newer one from a newer batch.
I waited a couple of weeks and Amazon finally got them back in stock. I ordered another and it arrived. I connected it and found that only ONE of the issues above had gone away. The new unit didn’t turn itself on by itself. All of the other issues were still there.
I finally had to give up and admit that this product is just not what I hoped for and the quality was not worth $800. I sent it back and am now looking for an alternative.
User Rating: 2 / 5
Cogs
17 Dec, 2009
This unit looks great, connects easily to a Samsung LED TV, and has very good sound, but unfortunately also has numerous flaws:
1. The fan produces an audible low-frequency hum which reverberates through the shelf that holds it. Perhaps a foam damping pad would solve the problem.
2. The controls are supposed to be fully integrated with a Samsung TV, but prepare to spend a lot of time and concentration fiddling with the remotes and navigating the menus (separate ones for the TV and speaker/Blu-Ray unit) to get the system to do what you want. The system responds slowly and erratically to the remotes.
3. It spends a lot of time trying to read a disk, even when the slot is empty, and while it does, the system is unresponsive.
4. The ipod dock is pretty much useless. Among the problems:
-Navigating a long song list is an interminable process– you have to scroll slowly and alphabetically down the list.
-There is a half-second dropout at the beginning of the first track: the first song you play will be missing its first note.
-With my iphone, there was a constant clicking sound superimposed on the music.
-With another ipod, the unit froze trying to read in the song list.
-The shuffle function is disabled, so prepare to listen to your songs in alphabetical order.
The sense I get is that the ipod function was thrown in at the last minute without a lot of testing.
Bottom line: It’s not a terrible choice to accompany a Samsung TV, but it could have been a lot better designed.
User Rating: 2 / 5