Samsung LN55B650 55" 120Hz LCD HDTV: A Layman's Review

Media Features Testing

Before we get into the nitty gritty of the image quality testing for the Samsung LN55B650, we are going to go off the beaten track and take give the media features of this TV a quick test drive. Sure, both you and I will probably spend 99.9% of our time in front of a TV watching a movie, playing a game or watching programs but many of us seem to forget that most current HDTVs are designed to be multimedia powerhouses. They feature Ethernet ports for internet access, USB connectors for uploadable content and many other bangs and whistles which are usually bragged about on a company’s product page. But do they actually work as advertised? Let’s find out.


DLNA Wireless



Digital Living Network Alliance or DLNA is a home networking standard adopted by an expanding group of about 250 companies. The LN55B650 uses this standard to give you the ability to wirelessly stream content directly from your PC to the TV. All you need to do is install the included Samsung PC Share Manager software onto your computer and plug in the wireless LAN Adaptor into on of the USB ports on the TV. Wait a second; I didn’t see a wireless adaptor included in the box, did I? That’s because you have to buy it separately and the best price we have seen for it is about $130CAD but if you are willing to look around south of the border it can be found for slightly under $80 USD.

Samsung didn’t ship one of these adaptors with our review unit so we weren’t able to test this feature. However, if you are someone with a large media collection on your PC we think that paying about $100 is money well spent as long as it works. The only thing I would be slightly worried about is the possibility that a wireless network could lack the bandwidth necessary to stream a HD signal from your computer to the TV. We will be testing this wireless adaptor in the following weeks as it is currently winging its way over from Samsung.


Internet@TV

Many new Samsung TVs have a LAN / RJ45 connector which can connect to the internet to download additional content, software updates and even give you the latest stock and weather updates. You can also use the optional wireless adaptor for internet access if you can stomach its added cost.


Once set up, you can bring up the internet toolbar at any time regardless of the source content you are watching. The selection is limited to News, Finance and Weather.


Each of the categories pops up as a widget on the left side of the screen but unfortunately Samsung relies on Yahoo! for all the information their internet@TV provides which in my opinion is a mistake. While the stock ticker is handy if you watch your investments religiously, I found it to be updated a good 10-12 minutes after sites like Google Finance and the Wall Street Journal’s Market Data page. To anyone that actually cares to use the Finance widget, this type of delay is totally unacceptable.

The weather widget is also lacking since even though it lists most population centers with a population above 10,000, in its current form it only shows the current weather and temperature. If I wanted to know that, I’d have a look out my window. What I really want to see is the weather tonight when I want to go to an outdoors restaurant or tomorrow when I am planning a bike trip.

All in all, the ideas behind Internet@TV seem to be well grounded but the execution is somewhat lacking. Yahoo! needs to be thrown to the curb, the menu transition needs to be much smoother and the widgets need customizability instead of being done in a cookie-cutter fashion.