Televisions have advanced a long way from the sets we had as children. Cathode Ray Tubes are a thing of the past. Today almost all televisions produced are either plasma or LCD screens. Some also have LEDs that provide the backlighting. Today, sets feature a lot of capabilities that were nonexistent just a few short years ago. The Samsung LE40B651 represents the first generation of network compatible televisions.
The Samsung LE40B651 is a flat screen LCD television set. It comes with state of the art technology for producing the sharpest,
clearest pictures and has a surprisingly good sound quality considering the aim of its “invisible” speakers. It comes with all of the standard input jacks one has come to expect with the new television models, plus a few extras that provide extra features.
Samsung's LE40B651 Series 6 LCD TV is gorgeous. The bezel around the screen has a distinctive crystal effect with a red tint.
As we'd expect, the LE40B651's mid-range nature is reflected in some of its picture processing, too - particularly the presence of a 100Hz engine and frame interpolation system for improving motion reproduction. It's extremely flexible with its set-up, too.
The best thing of all about the LE40B651 though, is that provided you're careful with its settings, it can produce truly outstanding picture quality. Colours, for instance, are extraordinarily rich and bright yet also very natural, especially with HD.
It produces black levels, too, that are in a different league to those of most LCD TVs; deep, rich and credible. Also, HD pictures are superbly sharp and crisp, and this crispness remains mostly intact when things get moving.
The Samsung LE40B651 includes 1080 pixel horizontal resolution, making it a top of the line HD television set. It comes with some content stored in its memory, including some games. It interfaces and functions with all types of DVD players, including Blu Ray and PS3.
As for colour, Samsung's Colour Management System is quite strangely implemented, but nevertheless very welcome and very useful. The user is given the options of “Auto” colour space, a “Native” colour space (“Native” here means “Native to the LCD panel”, which on its own produces oversaturated and off-hue primaries), and a “Custom” mode.
Interestingly, this CMS operates with RGB principles in mind, rather than the Hue, Saturation (and if we're lucky, Luminance) that we see on most systems. Unlocking Custom allows the user to raise or lower the amount of Red, Green and Blue mix that goes into each Primary and Secondary colour, which is less direct than the H/S/L system that would be ideal. By using this menu, I was able to bring Delta Errors to practically imperceptible levels and make colours look mostly natural, but it was very difficult to obtain results with correct Hue and Saturation as well as correct Luminance. In the end, I settled for whatever gave the lowest errors (which usually involved compromising Luminance).
In the end, I was satisfied with these calibrated results. The Greyscale tracking was excellent at 30 IRE and beyond, and Colour was also great. Greyscale, in particular, was a gigantic improvement on all of the out of the box presets.
Onboard programming includes the internet widgets mentioned above as well as a built in media player that works with digital media one would normally only be able to use on a computer. These functions operate a little slower than one would desire, but since the Samsung LE40B651 is the first generation of televisions with such PC like features, we really can not complain much.
The LE40B651 is another one of those darned tormenting TVs that's got me really torn over what final mark to give it. For while its feature count, design and HD picture performance are all more or less outstanding for its price point, its standard definition pictures are only good rather than great, and its sound definitely doesn't support the visuals as powerfully as it should.
In the end, the set's design flare, HD quality and pioneering spirit (as represented by the Yahoo Widgets functionality) ultimately persuaded/seduced me in to giving it a 9 out of 10 - with the recommendation that you try and feed it as much HD as you possibly can.
