It seems you have problems which might account for the black screen. Possibly some driver is not loading, or an updated one is causing the problem. I have Nvidia graphics cards and there was a WDDM type update that caused my system to Bluescreen.
How did you return to Windows 8, by doing a clean install or recovering an earlier image?
If you try it again, I would turn off any devices you have in the bios you do not need, like possibly a Bluetooth device. But you seem to be correct that there appear to be quite a few folks having black screen problems.