Samsung HT-BD8200 sound bar includes Blu-ray, Netflix, Pandora

Samsung's 2009 home-theater-in-a-speaker boasts Blu-ray upgrade.

John Falcone Senior Editorial Director, Shopping

John P. Falcone is the senior director of commerce content at CNET, where he coordinates coverage of the site's buying recommendations alongside the CNET Advice team (where he previously headed the consumer electronics reviews section). He's been a CNET editor since 2003.

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Self-taught tinkerer, informal IT and gadget consultant to friends and family (with several self-built gaming PCs under his belt)

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John Falcone

March 31, 2009 11:13 a.m. PT

2 min read

The Samsung HT-X810T--which debuted at 2008's Consumer Electronics Show--wasn't the first sound bar home theater system with a built-in DVD player (that'd be the Philips HTS8100). When CNET eventually reviewed it, we praised the inclusion of the wireless subwoofer, but included this knock: "the [built-in] DVD player's nice, but a Blu-ray player would have been even better." Well, it seems Samsung took that criticism to heart. The 2009 version, known as the HT-BD8200, does indeed get the upgrade to a Blu-ray player. Like the other models in the Sammy's '09 line-up, it's state of the art--both BD-Live compliant and with the capability to stream Netflix movies and the Pandora online music service. Other niceties include an iPod dock and the capability to stream audio from A2DP-compatible Bluetooth audio devices, such as music phones. Like the 2008 model, the subwoofer is wireless.

The HT-BD8200 is also Wi-Fi-ready, meaning you'll need to invest in a Samsung USB dongle to use wireless (rather than Ethernet) networking for access to those BD-Live, Netflix, and Pandora features. The unit also boasts maxed-out Blu-ray lossless audio decoding (Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio). We just hope that the faux surround sound feature is improved from last year's model, which--like most of these single-speaker virtual surround systems--was passable, but nothing to write home about.

If the sound bar style is too radical for you, Samsung's also has the HT-BD7200 and HT-BD1250 on deck as well, both of which offer the same basic feature set in more traditional 2.1 and 5.1-channel designs, respectively. Look for the Samsung HT-BD8200 to hit stores in July for $800.