After returning my Sony Bravia to another retailer, I purchased
the Samsung LE40C650 from Amazon. It was the best price.
The TV looks pretty much like any other LCD. Setup
was automatic. Perhaps I'm a bit dim, but it took me time to realize that The
Freeview HD channels were 50,51,& 52.
I read various reviews, some were talking about
image quality, blacks, whites, gamma. Well, I don't understand that. But,
compared to my Sony, I find the picture
brighter, & better. Mind you, that could be because I didn't change any
settings on the Sony.
As you turn the TV on, a little tune is played.
Note, there is no on/off button. It seems, you can only turn it to standby,
using the remote. The user instructions tell you not to leave it in standby for
long periods, but in my room it is difficult to get to the mains plug. The
remote has a button, to light up the buttons. As someone else mentioned, there
is no RCA output for an external audio system, only optical. I am getting an
adapter, to try to use the headphone socket for my DVD player.
One of the reasons for buying this was its support
for playing Movies direct from a usb drive. I have lots of avi movies with
different codecs, & so far they can play all of them. It will also play
mkvs. I had been thinking of buying a new Media player to play mkvs. My one
wish, would be to see DVD covers/fanart on the TV using the usb.
I had been thinking of buying a 3view box, or
Icecrypt T2200, which have a Freeview HD tuner & an internal hard disk,
which would play mkv's, but this TV has both.
The automatic network setup, didn't seem to work,
I had to put the ip address, gateway & DNS server in manually. Run a cmd
prompt ipconfig /all from you pc, to get the settings. I am using a CAT cable
direct to the TV, but I will be using home plugs in the future. Apparently,
there is an option for a Wireless adapter from Samsung, but I would expect
problems playing HD movies wirelessly.
The internet, option, only allows certain things,
Facebook, Lovefilm, Youtube, etc. I am hoping to be able to access BBC iplayer
in the future with updates.
I found an update, from the 18th May. Its easy
enough, download the update to a usb stick, extract it to the stick, then plug
it into the TV.
Samsung provide some software to share media over
the network from you pc, but, it seemed slow to update the database.
I had been using Wild Media Server to stream from
pc to TV, but, the license can only be used with the Sony I got rid of. It does
provide support for Samsung & I recommend it. It plays media files, &
can stream YouTube,
BBC iplayer & internet TV.
Now I am trying Serviio, which is free. This
doesn't stream podcasts etc, but it has settings for Samsung TV's. The one
thing I like, it can show dvd covers/fanart on the TV.
Overall, I am delighted with this TV.
Since I purchased this TV, BBC iplayer is now
available.
I have found an issue with playing vob files.
After copying vob files from a DVD, the first one usually plays, but not the
next, "codec not supported" It seems this is a common problem.
Also, when a DVD vob did play, it would not play
in the full screen. This is corrected by going to Mode 2. This you can get via
the Tools button when playing a Video.