Compiled by Claire Reilly

Last week, Samsung showed off its new TV and AV line-up for the Australian market. Here are Digital Retailer’s favourite picks from the show.

The hero of Samsung’s 2013 AV line-up is the new 85-inch Ultra High Definition TV, which offers four times the resolution of a traditional Full HD TV and features a “gallery” display stand.

“Taking UHD and OLED out of the picture, this is our flagship product of the year: the F8000.” Samsung Australia’s director of AV, Brad Wright, on the “absolutely stunning” design of the brand’s new premium LED TV range.

Brad Wright talks Digital Retailer through Samsung’s new Smart Hub user interface, which features new levels of interactivity, and a special “Natural Language” feature developed specifically to recognise Australian voice commands. Here Wright shows off the “On TV” screen, which aggregates content from different channels and suggests shows based on past viewing habits.

The new Samsung remote features a touchpad for swiping between screens or writing in the number for a desired channel.

For those that bought a premium LED TV from Samsung’s 2012 range, the brand has released an evolution kit that will update last year’s hardware with this year’s feature set.

In a demonstration for Digital Retailer, the Evolution Kit clicked into the back of a 2012 model TV [highlighted in blue] and completed a full update in under 2 minutes.

While not a major focus for Samsung, the brand will be releasing a new Plasma panel. This display compares the picture quality on the new panel (top left) with a conventional plasma panel (lower left) and a conventional LED panel (lower right).

This 7.1-channel HT-F9750W Blu-ray Home Theater System will feature in interactive displays at in selected JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman, The Good Guys and Bing Lee stores. According to Wright, demonstration is key with audio products: “It’s really important that people hear it, otherwise why would they consider spending the additional money to get that sound quality?”

A close-up of the one of the HT-F9750W tower speakers, which has been designed to complement Samsung’s 2013 TV designs.

While there was no word on whether these speakers would make it to Australia, Samsung also showed off this Premium Hi-Fi Audio Component System at the Regional Forum, complete with colour-changing speakers.