 |
The Samsung PN50A760's menu system offers a plethor of options, especially picture controls. The interface is straightforward enough, but if you want to look something up in the manual prepare to be intimidated.
|
 |
Ease of Use (7.0)
The Samsung PN50A760's menu system is a typical tabbed interface with the tab headers lined up on the left and lists of menu options appearing to the right. You navigate the menu system using the directional pad and you can also rotate the pad to move up and down lists, although we didn't find that this added much value.
The menu system is consistent, you basically have two types of menu options, those you can adjust directly or those that take you to a sub-menu. We did appreciate that all the sub-menus looked similar, something that other television menu systems haven't done a great job with. Perhaps our biggest annoyance with the menu system is that when you first launch it you see the Picture options listed on the right, but the focus of the navigation is on the tabs on the left. We found ourselves consistently trying to navigate the picture options right after launching the menu, which would invariably lead us to a different top level menu.
In addition to the standard menu system the Samsung PN50A760 also has a Tools menu that can be accessed with a dedicated button on the remote. This gives you access to a subset of features that Samsung has decided most users will want to access. What it doesn't offer is the ability to add or remove options, something we've seen on other televisions.
Picture Controls (8.0)
The Samsung PN50A760 offers a plethora of picture controls for those who like to tinker with their picture options. At the top level you see Mode, Cell Light, Contrast, Brightness, Sharpness, Color and Tint controls. Below those are two sub menus, Detailed Settings and Picture Options as well as the Picture Reset Option.
Detailed Settings gives you access to Black Adjust, Dynamic Contrast, Gamma, Color Space, White Balance, Flesh Tone, Edge Enhancement and xvYCC settings. Of particular note here are the ability to adjust the Gamma manually and very detailed white balance controls.
Picture Options let's you adjust Color Tone, Size, Digital NR, DNIe, HDMI Black Leve, Advanced Film Mode, Blue Only Mode and Screen Burn Protection. Once again there are some interesting advanced options here. Overall the Samsung PN50A760 has some of the most complete picture controls we've seen on any television.
Audio Controls (7.0)
Audio controls are not quite as extensive as picture controls, but are still better than the average television. At the top level you have Mode, Equalizer, surround sound, language, Multi-Track Sound, Auto Volume, Select Speaker, Sound Select and reset. We're paticularly happy to see a full equalizer.
Other Controls (6.0)
In addition to the Picture and Audio controls the Samsung PN50A760 has four additional top level menus. First up is Channel, where you can control the antenna, program channels and fine tune a signal.
Next up is Setup where you find the typical potpouri of options like Language, Time, V-Chip and Picture in Picture. Input let's you change your source and edit the names.
Finally the Application menu is where you go to access media content controls like Samsung's Wiselink, InfoLink and Anynet+ features.
Manual (5.0)
The Samsung PN50A760's manual bundles both english and spanish versions into a tome-like package that will likely take you several days to get through. Of course the other possibility is that you'll take one look at this monster, stick it in a drawer and forget about it. The manual lacks an index, although it does have a fairly complete table of contents. It's all black and white here and we would have preferred to see larger text, bigger screen shots and better headers on the pages so you can flip through it more easily. It does provide almost all the information you might want, however, although it may be a good idea to download the PDF version so you can search it more easily.
|
