I think it’s safe to say we’re past the point where contrast ratio measurements mean anything to any of us. Take Samsung’s 8500 series of LED-backlit LCD HDTVs which have a claimed 7,000,000:1 contrast ratio - that’s more contrast than the OLED sets we’re promised are still coming!

The 8500-series is available in either 46in or 55in (measuring just 1.6in thick) with, it should surely go without saying, 1,920 x 1,080 pixel panels. Despite having claimed with the 8000-series (see: the UE46B8000 that edge-lighting was as good as direct lighting the latter method is employed this time around - with local dimming employed to hit that impressive contrast ratio claim.

Staying on the image front, Samsung as adorned the 8500-series’ panels with a 2ms response time and 200Hz processing powered by Samsung’s Auto Motion Plus technology, with a number of tweaks available for users to adjust judder and motion blur should they so desire.

Four HDMI ports, a Component input and an optical audio input are featured catering for a decent number of external sources. Both wired and wireless network connectivity is present in the 8500-series, and the TVs are DLNA compliant, though two USB ports are also present if network-playback of media is unviable. Yahoo! widgets can use the network connections to enable access to services such as Flikr, weather reports, news feeds and - sigh - Twitter.

No UK pricing as yet, but the 8500-series should launch in August and given the previous range’s cost, Ј2,000-odd and up doesn’t seem like an unsafe guess this generation.