Samsung UN46B6000

Formats (10.5)

The Samsung UN46B6000 is a full 1080p television, which means it can natively support the highest quality of HD content, which is usually only found from Blu-ray discs. It can also handle all of the other standard formats. For content that is supposed to be viewed at 24 frames per second, it supports this natively if you have a DVD or Blu-ray disc, or it can perform the 3:2 pulldown process for broadcast content. Finally the UN46B6000 supports the xvYCC expanded color gamut, although you'll need content that comes with that specific color gamut and this is not widely available yet.

Photo Playback (6.0)

The Samsung UN46B6000's can play photos either off a USB device or over the network. Photo playback looks the same in either case. You are given a strip of photo thumbnails that can be sorted in various ways. You can enlarge the selected photo by pressin the center select button of your remote's directional pad. This takes it full screen where you can zoom and rotate the photo. There's also a photo slideshow option, with support for background music if it's also stored on the USB device or available on your network. The biggest problem we saw with the photo interface is that it was a bit slow to respond.

The photo player shows you a strip of thumbnails.

Music & Video Playback (3.0)

Music and video playback are both supported from either an attached USB device or over your network. The interface is very similar to that we saw from photo playback, with a strip of either music or video files that you can move between and with multiple sorting options. Music playback is limited to Mp3 files, but video playback supports a wide variety of options including AVI, MKV, ASF, MP4, 3GPP, PS, TS. That last refers to ripped DVD files, which is a nice feature you don't often see. Once again we noticed a bit of a slowdown, and we were also dissapointed that there's no support for AAC or WMA music files or WMV and MOV video files.

Album art appears in the navigation strip, but not when a song is playing full screen.

Streaming Playback (3.0)

The Samsung UN46B6000's internet connectivity options offer the potential for a whole new world of online content. Unfortunately as of now it's pretty limited. Samsung offers a variety of online widgets, giving you access to services like Twitter, USA Sports, weather amongst others. From a media standpoint, however, all you get is support for Flickr and Yahoo's video site. It's dissapointing that we don't have access to services like Hulu, Youtube and Netflix, which is where the real promise of a web connected television lies. To be fair, however, this is more the fault of content companies rather than Samsung.

Other Media (0.0)

The Samsung UN46B6000 does have additional media options like a built-in DVR, DVD or Blu-ray player.