Samsung LN40B650

Formats (10.5)

The Samsung LN40B650 is a full 1080p HDTV, meaning it can support the highest quality of HD content, as well as supporting upscaling for lower resolution content and, of course, natively displayd 1080i content. It also supports 3:2 pulldown and native 24fps, although as we mentioned in our Motion section we recommend turning off the 120Hz refresh rate when watching 24fps content. Finally it supports an expanded color gamut using the xvYCC standard, although such content isn't widely available yet.

Photo Playback (6.0)

There are multiple ways to get photos onto the Samsung LN40B650's display. The first way is to connect a USB device with photos to one of the two USB ports on the right. The second is to get the photos from your network using the LAN port. In either case your interface will look the same, you are first presented with the option to choose between Photos, Music and Video content. Choosing photos will allow you to browe through folders for the USB device or your network. Select one with photos in it and you get a strip of thumbnails on the screen. The only photo type the LN40B650 supports is JPEG.

Photos appear in a strip of thumbnails.

You can move between photos using left/right on the directional pad. Pressing the center button will enlarge the photo to full screen. There are also a couple of additional options, for example you can zoom and roate photos, as well as play background music, although not all of these are available when accessing photos via the LAN. Finally you can set up a slideshow, with options for speed, transitions and music. Overall the interface is relatively easy to use, but we did find it a bit slow to respond.

Music & Video Playback (3.0)

As with photo playback music and video playback can be done from a USB device or over the network using the LAN connection. In both cases you start at the same Media Play screen and can choose the type of media you want to access from here. Music playback gives you a strip of thumbnails for Mp3 songs, which are the only type supported. Album art is supported if the album art is embedded into the file. Playing a song brings up full screen conrols, although for some reason the album art dissapears, even if you were able to see it in the thumbnail view. You can set the repeat mode, but not shuffle.

The top level menu let's you choose from different media types.

Video playback supports a variety of formats, including AVI, MKV, ASF, MP4, 3GPP, PS, TS containers. Once again you are given a thumbnail strip view where ou can select your video. Entering playback mode will start playing the video full screen. There is support for starting playback from the last point started if watching video from a USB device, but unfortunately this doesn't work over the network.

Streaming Playback (3.0)

Given the internet connectivity on the Samsung LN40B650 you might be hoping to access a wide variety of internet video sources with the television. Unfortunately the only streaming video source currently available is Yahoo Video, which is accessible via the widgets engine. There is not yet any support for Netflix, Youtube, Hulu or any other online video service, which is a bit of a dissapointment.

Yahoo widgets appear at the bottom of the display.

That said there is support for some services aside from video. There's a Flickr widget for viewing photos from the web as well as a Pandora widget for listening to streaming music. We can only hope that Samsung becomes more aggressive with their online strategy, at this point the internet connectivity features are a nice extra but not a reason to purchase the HDTV.

Other Media (0.0)

The Samsung LN40B650 does not have a built-in DVR, Blu-ray or DVD player.