Samsung PN51E530A3 Plasma HDTV Review

Menu Interface

The main menu for the PN51E530A3 is the same menu you'll find on all of Samsung's "dumb" 2012 TVs this year. It's a traditional and simple layout that'll be the back of your hand if you've used any HDTV from the last few years. It features Samsung's trademark azure blue color, and is mostly opaque to allow for real-time viewing of changes to content in the background. The usual offenders--Picture, Sound, Settings, Input--are all present.

For this TV's purported use, it's probably the perfect menu, but it's about as exciting as diet tofu.

Media Menu

Samsung's media menu can be accessed via the main menu, or by pressing the "P.MEDIA" key on the remote control. It's a simple sub-menu for the separate categories of Pictures, Music, and Movies, and users can then view USB-stored files of that nature. There's no viewing of wirelessly shared files, so whatever you want to scope out will need to be stored on a USB memory device first. Like the main menu, the USB menu is severely simple.