| Nowadays, though, Samsung LCD TV owners are no | | | | debuting last year is the Content Library concept, |
| longer forced to have obnoxious image enhancement | | | | whereby the TV ships with a wealth of pre-loaded |
| functions locked on at all times, nor are they stuck with | | | | interactive content, including photo screensavers, |
| having the backlight lamps behind the panel pumping | | | | recipes, children's stories and songs, and even a very |
| out light at eye-burning levels. In fact, most of the | | | | basic game. |
| company's displays, like the LE40B651 here, are a | | | | This has been improved this time round thanks to a |
| minefield of image processing options and tweaks | | | | slicker interface and the provision of 189MB of built-in |
| which allow you to get the best (or worst!) out of | | | | memory, into which you can add extra content (via |
| them. The whole package is topped off with 4 HDMI | | | | USB) promised to be made available on Samsung's |
| inputs (one of them side-mounted), Ethernet/LAN | | | | website in the future. You can also delete content |
| connectivity, an analogue VGA input, 1 RGB SCART | | | | from the Content Library if you don't want it to free up |
| terminal, another standard SCART, and USB inputs, | | | | extra memory for things that you do. |
| and is available for just over £800 from retailers | | | | But to be honest, aside perhaps from the artistic |
| such as Amazon. Today, we're going to take a look at | | | | screensaver gallery, I still have my doubts about how |
| how all of these come together when this 40 1080p | | | | much you'll really tend to go back to this feature after |
| LCD has been configured to the best of its abilities. | | | | your first inquisitive exploration of it. |
| The LE40B651's design is impressive and a tiny bit | | | | Once you've set the TV to Cinema mode, we found |
| disappointing all at the same time. Impressive because | | | | that our measurements were more than satisfactory: |
| the 'Crystal' design's subtly triangular shape and | | | | the deltaE94 score of 3.7 demonstrates natural |
| semi-translucent 'honeycomb' feature both look | | | | colours. The average gamma of 2.16 guarantees an |
| stunning; disappointing because it just doesn't look quite | | | | even distribution of tones. The contrast ratio of 1992:1 |
| as distinctive as last year's red-tinged Touch of Colour | | | | is the result of whites at 192 cd/m² for blacks at 0.1 |
| design. | | | | cd/m². The latter aren't perfect, though, as in an |
| The LE40B651 does a great job, too, of rendering the | | | | entirely dark room, they appear slightly grey. It's still a |
| detail levels and clarity we know and love from our | | | | long way from the worst screens with blacks of 0.3 |
| favourite HD sources. And it does this without the | | | | cd/m², but equally far away from the best which fall |
| slightly grainy, forced look experienced on some | | | | below 0.06 cd/m². |
| previous Samsung sets. So long, at least, as you avoid | | | | The overall result is generally good, and watching |
| the set's over-aggressive Edge Enhancement setting. | | | | some movies confirmed this initial finding. HD looks |
| I'm happy to report, too, that this HD sharpness isn't | | | | great, with good contrast, tones evenly divided, natural |
| reduced much when there's a lot of motion in the | | | | colours--everything is there. Standard Definition is just |
| picture. For the 100Hz engine can take out the vast | | | | as good, but has a slightly weak upscaling, which is |
| majority of LCD's traditional motion blur. | | | | nowhere near as good as it would be on a dedicated |
| What's more, provided you're careful with the 100Hz | | | | DVD player. We still recommend then that you use a |
| system's settings, it can do its thing without generating | | | | player that can upscale to 1080p as a source for this |
| many of the sort of processing side effects that have | | | | TV. |
| blighted some previous Samsung TVs. | | | | The use of Motion Plus 100 Hz allows you to remove |
| That said, the LE40B651's motion handling certainly isn't | | | | jumpiness from films shot at 24 or 25 fps, but if you |
| perfect. I did occasionally spot shimmering and flickering | | | | prefer, you can deactivate this mode to enjoy movies |
| artefacts during fast camera pans, for instance. Yet I | | | | in their original frame rate. Despite the 100 Hz, we |
| also found that turning off the 100Hz engine completely, | | | | noticed a small amount of ghosting, especially on |
| resulted in a large rise in blur. | | | | subtitles moving across the screen. |
| Another Samsung innovation making a return after | | | | |