A really great smart TV upgrade disguised as a good
Blu-ray player
Samsung has, frankly, thrown everything at this handsome
flagship Blu-ray player, loading it with every feature you could possibly need (and
a few that you probably won’t). It certainly looks great on paper, thanks to a
nippy dualcore processor and is pretty damn fine in the flesh, courtesy of a
brushed steel exterior and slick, snappy user interface.
Top-down,
touch-sensitive control for those times the remote is in hiding
Perhaps most impressively, it doesn’t just upscale SD to HD,
it boosts HD to near-4K – so now there’s no reason not to shell out on that
next-gen telly. Less flashy but arguably more useful is the plethora of apps on
offer here, and the intuitive UI that helps you access them.
A
band of brushed steel protects the top-end player
All the catch-up TV and on-demand services we could think of
are here in handy app form; if not pre-installed, they’re free to download.
There are literally hundreds more weather, social networking and news apps on
hand to decorate the Smart Hub home page with.
You also get a decent fistful of AV connections, with two
HDMI ports and 7.1 analogue outputs alongside optical digital audio. Overkill
perhaps, but Samsung is keen to leave nothing out of its top-end deck. Disc
loading times have long been a bugbear of Blu-ray, though, and this is no
faster than average, taking 28 seconds from opening the disc tray to an onscreen
image.
Remote:
Luminous buttons aid night-time location
More surprisingly, video is marred by noise. It’s just a
slight background graininess and the occasional flicker, but it’s enough to
hand the advantage to the incoming Sony and Panasonic. Some might prefer the
Samsung’s bolder colours; we found the bright tones unnatural, but you can
adjust these parameters in the settings menu. Sonically it’s a similar story,
with the Samsung a little forward in the treble and heavy in the bass.
It all adds up to a deck that, like a puppy or the Chuckle
Brothers, is eager to please but lacks a certain refinement.
Love: Apps galore, with a full complement of catch-up
TV services offered. Comprehensive connectivity. Speedy menu navigation
Hate: Many of the apps are fillers. Some video noise
and judder mars the image. Closed-in soundstage
T3 says: Blu-ray playback isn’t bad, but it’s the smart
extras that steal the show here
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Specifications
·
Smart TV Smart Hub ·
Video Up to 4K 2D, 1080p 3D ·
Connectivity Wi-Fi, Ethernet, optical digital, 2x HDMI, 7.1 analogue,
USB ·
Audio Decoding Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD MA ·
Media Streaming Anynet+, AllShare, Wi-Fi Direct ·
Height 46mm ·
Width 430mm ·
Depth 201mm ·
Weight 1.7kg
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