My Quasi-review Of The Samsung Un46b7100 Led Lcd Hdtv 7 Series...

[rayzoredge 2]

Now that's a mouthful.

 

 

I figured I'd give a review of this HDTV from a consumer level just because I don't think that most professional reviews actually cover everything you need to know about something before you actually go out and buy it... hence the upcoming gripes I have for something that received 4.5 stars on CNet. (That link leads you to the review for the UN46B7000, but both the 7000 and the 7100 are the same in terms of hardware. The only differences are that the 7100 has a gray ToC - Samsung's Touch of Color - and that it is exclusive to Best Buy.)

 

But first, an excerpt from my HD thread:

 

The HDTV box was very long and unwieldy at 50 lbs, but even being the scrawnier type that I am, I managed to bring it into the house without too much trouble. (The HTIB was a piece of cake: light and manageable.) I dug into the HDTV box first, carefully sliding the HDTV out and laying it flat on the floor. I took the stand out next and started to assemble it, which was easy: two parts, four screws. The tricky part was to pick up and hold the LCD, set it onto the stand, and then screwing it to the stand, and trying to pick up a very wide 50 lb object wasn't exactly very graceful, but doable. I finally picked up the whole thing and set it on our entertainment center, then started to work on reducing the existing clutter of wires I already had and taking away the ghetto 2.1 sound system and other stuff.

 

I worked on the HTIB next, unpackaging everything and placing the speakers and the main unit where I wanted it on the entertainment center. Since it would have been hell to tear up the carpet to route my rear surround speaker wires underneath, I'm going to opt for the optional SWA-4000 accessory, which is basically the fancy model name for a wireless receiver unit for the rear speakers. I guess it's not too shabby for $80, but we'll see when it comes in. Right now, I only have the front and center speakers hooked up, along with the subwoofer.

 

Surrounded by styrofoam, plastic, and twisty-ties, I hooked up the component cables from my Xbox 360 to the HDTV, hooked up an optical cable from the 360 to the BT-1250 main unit, and fired everything up.

 

First thing I did was adjust the Xbox 360 settings for HDTV component input and at a 16:9 aspect ratio. The user interface, as dated as it is, became awesome again. The high-definition was clearly noticeable, and I couldn't wait to test something out.

 

For my Xbox 360, I formatted a 500GB hard drive and stored my movies on it to act as a digital library that I could access with my Xbox 360. It works really well, and I recommend that if you are looking to doing this to do it, because the convenience is great and the access to your movies is very easy and painless. (The only painful part is converting movies that don't work to formats that the 360 will accept, but that's another story.)

 

The reason why I brought up the hard drive is that most of my movies are 700-900MB files compressed with xvid or DivX, which, of course, is lossy, resulting in pretty decent but obviously lower quality video. What happens when you take a 700ish by 500ish video and blow it up to fit a 1920x1080 screen?

 

Expecting this, I didn't really care too much and fired up... Pixar's Up. And boy, was I in for a rude awakening.

 

Up looked great. I'm not sure how to explain it, but the Samsung HDTV's 120Hz MotionPlus dejudder processing made a HUGE difference in reducing blur and smoothing out the video in such a way that I could have sworn that I was watching a slightly-hampered quality version of it straight from Blu-Ray disc. It was crazy. I mean, it was obvious that it was a compressed video, but if you sat back on the couch and watched the movie, you most likely wouldn't even notice the characteristic "blocks" of compressed video. It was literally that good. (For reference, my digital copy of Up is 701MB, MPEG-4 DivX 5 720x400 @ 880Kbps, MP3 2 channels @ 128KBps.)

 

I let Up play in the background for a while during my half-arsed clean-up. After the boxes and the packaging was put away in the basement (because I never throw anything away because I'm a pack rat), I sat down on the couch and fired up Black Hawk Down. Now THAT was surreal. Seeing the soldiers move and the action exploding on-screen was like watching the actors acting out scene by scene right in front of me, again thanks to the 120Hz MotionPlus dejudder processing. It was almost "too real," which took away the "film look" that I was accustomed to seeing, so I set the HDTV to a custom mode where I reduced the amount of dejudder processing to retain a good bit of the "film look" but also reap in some benefits of the 120Hz drive. Keep in mind that Black Hawn Down was another compressed video, but with the amount of face-paced action, I didn't even notice any compression artifacts. (This video was slightly worse though: a 1.05GB video file, MPEG-4 XviD Advanced Simple @ L5 608x248 @ 856Kbps, MP3 2 channels @ 126Kbps.)

 

My final thoughts? I'm glad I jumped into HD so far. I know it's only been a day and I haven't even sat through a whole movie yet, but I am clearly impressed. The sound system has to wait for a better review, since I have to get the wireless receiver and have the time and opportunity to watch a movie within the experience. One of these days, it'll be nice to be able to sit down and watch a good war movie like Saving Private Ryan at full volume. Until then, it's back to the daily grind for me.

With all that being said, keep in mind that what I have to say is from a biased point of view, since this is my first HDTV and just about every visual aspect of it will wow me, regardless of what videophiles have to say. Then again, videophiles from CNet gave this thing 4.5 stars and it passed every grueling test thrown at it, so I'm sure that it's still good. I know that spending 30 minutes staring and glancing back and forth at plasmas and LCD HDTVs at Best Buy doesn't make me an expert, but I as Joe Snuffy who relies on his eyes to see the difference can tell you that this particular HDTV kicks butt with visual quality, even in comparison with plasma HDTVs (which are touted to have the best visual quality currently, before and now). Hence, I'm loving the visual quality of this HDTV.

 

Note that this HDTV does not have a glossy screen that will reflect everything under the sun ambient light. The design is very nice with a clean, glossed bezel and falls nicely into the room's decor. (Then again, black goes with everything.) The ToC Gray isn't even noticeable... I actually have yet to notice without scrutiny the Touch of Color, so if you don't like the Samsung Red that the B7000 offers, get this model. The stand is very sturdy and I'm not as afraid as I was of this thing tipping over to crush the kids running around. It IS easy to shake/wobble with something as simple as plugging in a USB stick or an HDMI cable, but it's no big deal.

 

I'm going to get into the gripes now that I've established that this HDTV is awesome.

 

* Do NOT get this TV if you are aiming for DLNA. DLNA stands for Digital Living Network Alliance and is a technology that enables you to stream media from DLNA-enabled devices as well as PCs that are connected to the same network. Although the idea was enticing and it was a deciding factor for me to bump up to the better model, it's not as great in reality and practice. In order for this to work, you have to connect your TV via Ethernet to your existing network, then install software onto your PC that basically allows the Samsung to used shared folders to access your media. It's not as convenient and awesome as one would hope, but just note that this isn't a ground-breaking deal. The interface is quite fugly and primitive too.

 

* The Internet features, like the gadgets from Yahoo, are great in theory, but I don't see this getting any real practical use other than maybe checking the weather and reminding you of eBay auctions nearing their end. "Typing" on the on-screen keyboard is frustrating since the remote doesn't respond to your every press of the directional buttons, and switching between widgets is way too slow. I'd rather whip out my laptop and do it with a real keyboard and mouse... and funny enough, it would probably be faster too, with boot-up time and all.

 

* Playing items off of a USB hard drive or stick using the USB ports on the TV is also rather hokey and primitive. Maybe I'm spoiled with my Xbox 360, but I hate the fact that you can't play a slideshow while playing music, and everything is accessed in a folder hierarchy fashion. There are no visualizations when playing music, and codec support is limited... but future software upgrades will fix that, hopefully.

 

* Speaking of software updates, Samsung decided that it would be a good idea to dim your screen, pop up with a notification, and completely interrupt what you were doing, Vista-UAC-style, to prompt you with a new software update. Since this was rather annoying, plus after reading horror stories with HDTVs being bricked by bad firmware, I asked a Samsung rep if there was a way to turn this off. There isn't. Basically, you're stuck with being notified every couple of hours or so (I don't know the interval, but it's on occasion) or stuck with trusting Samsung not to kill your HDTV... unless you like the idea of a multi-thousand-dollar paperweight in your living room. I've upgraded now after checking to make sure that the current update wouldn't brick my HDTV, but it's an annoying feature to deal with.

 

* Also, during my HD adventures and getting my sound system to work, I found out that this HDTV as well as many others DOES NOT support HDMI 5.1 audio and does NOT pass this through to the optical TOSLINK audio output port. (It only supports HDMI 2.1 audio.) I found this out from a rep after trying to figure out why I was only allowed 2-channel audio (shown under sound properties for my HDMI Audio) regardless of my settings with AC3Filter and whatnot. (If you want true surround sound from your laptop or desktop computer to your surround sound system, make sure that you have a sound card or external USB sound processor that has digital audio output (coaxial or optical TOSLINK) and connect that directly with your surround sound receiver.)

 

* The CEC feature, which allows you to control multiple devices such as a Blu-Ray player as long as it is connected to the HDTV via HDMI AND if it supports CEC itself, is a great idea but sometimes frustrating. I'm guessing that the remote still relies on infrared and line of sight to turn on your HDTV, and if you have CEC enabled, I find myself turning on the HDTV with the remote by hitting TV > Power, then trying to turn on the surround sound receiver with the same remote by hitting BD Receiver > Power, only to turn on the receiver and turning off the HDTV at the same time. Sometimes it works great, but I have to exaggerate where I point the remote; otherwise, I run into the same problem of inadvertently turning off the TV by trying to turn on the receiver. Not sure if universal remote controls have this same problem, but this can definitely get annoying.

 

* This LED HDTV is one of a good handful that doesn't feature local LED dimming, which was actually one of the factors why I bought an LED LCD HDTV. This feature allows for the deepest blacks in the picture as the technology intelligently detects blacks and turns off the LED there to give you the deepest black, but unfortunately this feature isn't present on this particular HDTV.

 

In conclusion, I don't regret snagging this HDTV yet. It's treated me quite well despite the annoyances and I'll recommend it to anyone who can afford the higher price tag for LED technology. The only reason that I can fathom as to why you would opt to pay more for an LED LCD HDTV instead of going for one with a traditional CCFL bulb is that the LED variants run cooler and use less energy... but if you're trying to save money on the electric bill, take into account how much more you'll be spending versus the amount of money you'll be saving and see if you actually save any money with this purchase.

[Ash-Bash 0]

Thanks for doing this review I know I did request it . The Samsung looks great in your home media setup. Just seeing the picture of it wants something of me to make me get it. But its all down the hardcore review . Your review seems very detailed on it and has very much persuaded me to buy it.Please let me know how it is on the Xbox 360 as I will also be using mine for gaming.Thank-You.

[rayzoredge 2]

Forgot to mention gaming...

 

It's funny that I've had this HDTV for a while now and only briefly played a bit of Burnout Revenge and Bioshock just to see how it looked, but from what I've seen, I'm pretty satisfied with how it plays. Most of my time with gaming on this beast was dedicated to beating Modern Warfare 2, and I'll tell you... it looks damn good when I'm busy playing the role of an obedient soldier, clinging to Price's every whim.

 

People online on reviews tend to complain about what seems to be stupid little things like how fast movement causes blur and shearing and whatnot, but I didn't notice anything detrimental on this HDTV while I was playing Bioshock, Burnout, or even Modern Warfare. I have the Xbox 360 hooked up with component cable, since I have an older Premium Pro variant, but I'm starting to wonder if I actually have the upper hand as far as gaming goes since I found out that an HDMI 1.3a cable from my laptop to the Samsung doesn't yield 5.1 audio passthrough to the optical digital output... Someone else will have to figure if the HDMI cable from the 360 or even a PS3 will yield 5.1 audio output. (That would suck if it doesn't, since you kind of need the HDMI to provide both video and audio from the source to the HDTV... unless there's such thing as a A/V splitter for HDMI, which defeats the purpose of keeping both components to one cable.) Figure this out or at least a viable solution before you go out and make your purchase.

 

Anyway, everything looked pretty good on the Samsung with no real problems that I could actually point out with the Xbox 360. Keep in mind that the 360 and PS3 most likely puts out 720p instead of the 1080p that most people would swoon over the idea of, since there's only so much you can stream from the hardware before you hit choppy frame rates when in conjunction with the graphic eye candy we've come to love from our gaming consoles. However, I don't think any normal consumer will see the difference between 720p and 1080p anyway when sitting at a normal viewing distance (i.e. couch to TV, 5-8 ft.).

 

PC gaming is great. Just general computing on the Samsung is great. Text is clear and crisp and readable, unlike the days of yore when you connected your computer to the 'ol CRT. Playing Modern Warfare did not result in anything bad visually, or at least nothing that I could actually see. It was like playing on my laptop, but with a 1920 x 1080 resolution on a 46" screen. Web browsing has never been cooler.

 

Something of note with connecting my laptop via HDMI, though, is that the information pop-up that comes up when I connect the PC says that I'm connected at 1920 x 1080 @ 60Hz. I don't know if this means that I'm at a 60Hz mode, or if the graphics card can't output more than 60Hz, or the output is 60Hz. I also don't know that, in any of those cases, if the 120Hz MotionPlus affects what's onscreen. I don't think this matters, however, since I've read conflicting arguments for and against 120Hz for PC output. One side says that the technology introduces artifacts and whatnot since the way MotionPlus works is that it intelligently inserts a median frame between frames to generate the smoothness that causes the "soap opera" look with movies, making it look like the actors are on stage for your own personal performance, but with the linear way that PC video output is, the technology doesn't know what to put into the median frame, generating the artifacts and such. The other side suggests that it does help with fast movement onscreen and that it's a sizeable difference. I don't know who to believe yet, but since I don't even know if the 120Hz is even kicking in, I'm good to go with the default.

 

I'll post some pictures and will try to capture how good PC input looks on the screen later.

[rayzoredge 2]

I just wanted to point out also that this HDTV supports a number of file formats and audio and video codecs when playing off of an external USB hard drive connected to one of the two USB ports on it. However, watch out for movie files that have more than one audio track... I'm suspecting that it doesn't play nicely with the HDTV, since my copy of "Holes" doesn't play at all, resulting in frame-by-frame freezing and stoppage. (That particular file has a 2-channel audio track as well as a default 5.1 audio track.) That's what I suspect, anyway.

 

Also, playing movies that have a 5.1 audio track in this way DOES result in 5.1 sound when the digital output is connected to a surround sound receiver. Strange why this works and not the HDMI...