Samsung LN40B650 40-Inch 1080p 120 Hz LCD HDTV with Red Touch of Color
- 40-inch LCD HDTV with full HD 1080p resolution for the sharpest picture possible and red Touch of Color design
- Auto Motion Plus 120Hz for amazingly fluid motion, 100,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio
- Side-mounted USB port for displaying JPEG/MPEG files and listening to MP3 audio
- Inputs- 4 HDMI-CEC, 2 component, 2 composite, 1 PC, 2 USB, 1 Ethernet, 1 optical digital audio output
- Includes removable stand- measures 39.2 x 27.8 x 10 inches with stand, 15-watt x 2 bottom mounted speakers with subwoofer
Samsung LN40B650 40
Price:
STUNNING. Period.,
I’m happy to be the first to rate this wonderful LCD. I’ll be short and to the point, and maybe come back and supplement this review after a few more weeks of use.
Aesthetically, the TV is clean and elegant. Love the touch of red. Love the crystal base. Love the fact that it swivels. It’s a beautiful piece of equipment, and looks a good bit more modern than the more curvilinear A model. I’m very happy I waited for this one.
Set up was a snap. Took me about 2 minutes to connect the base. It took longer to remove the stickers. The manual is on a little USB drive that plugs in the side of the TV, but I haven’t bothered with it yet.
The picture is stunning, right out of the box. Absolutely beautiful. Only adjustment I made was to turn the brightness down slightly, as I have a very dark TV room.
The on-screen graphics and menus are both intuitive and elegantly designed. I hate when the industrial design is carefully considered, and the on-screen UI is forgotten. That didn’t happen here. Both are wonderful.
I somewhat skeptically connected my camera card reader to one of the USB plugs on the side, and inserted a memory card from my father’s camera. He’d hoped to show us pictures, but didn’t have a plan for how. Perfect timing, as the TV had arrived that day. The TV recognized the card, and very quickly we were watching pictures and video in high res on our new TV. Fantastic.
Less than perfect: the sound. Actually, it’s a bit of joke. But, that doesn’t effect my rating because I don’t feel that the internal speakers are really meant to be used w/ a TV like this. I’m using a 5 channel surround system, but before I hooked it up, I heard the speakers. It makes sense that they wouldn’t sound good since you can’t even see them.
Also less than perfect was the delivery process via this company, CEVA/Eagle. Note that they claimed to have contacted me via email to set up delivery, but I never rec’d anything. They didn’t call. So, I had to google them and call them. Plan for this! Stay on top of them. The driver called me no less than 4 times during the day, each time making up some goofy excuse for being even later. I think he was watching the NCAA tournament at a bar somewhere. But, in the end, it arrived 1 day late, and in perfect condition. So, I don’t care. And, I can’t take away a star from the TV due to the delivery service. I just think Amazon needs to communicate the process better with it’s customers and make sure that CEVA does a better job too.
Anyway, Amazon’s price is great, the TV is fabulous. Enjoy!
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|Beautiful, Feature Rich and Future Proof,
I returned the 40A630 that I bought last month because of one dead pixel, and I replaced it with this spanking new model (date first available at Amazon on March 9th). This LCD TV is really beautiful – the “Red Touch of Color” is not quite subtle but I’m sure you’ll like it as much as I do (it will match whatever furniture you have). The picture quality of this model (100,000:1 contrast ratio) is quite stunning compared to the 40A630 (40,000:1) that I returned.
This TV offers the newly introduced Internet@TV. Currently, only Samsung B series has this feature, other manufacturers will incorporate this feature in their future models. This feature is better than the first generation Infolink (RSS feed) that’s offered by the A series. You can actually add all sorts of TV widgets, which in the next couple of months will include some of the big online content providers (NY Times, Netflix, eBay, Twitter, Google, etc). Currenly, only Yahoo widgets are available (news, weather, Flickr, finance). You can connect your TV to the internet via ethernet, or you can plug Samsung’s Wireless USB adaptor (sold separately) in one of the 2 USB ports.
Other notable features:
a) 2 USB 2.0 slots – I use one slot for the included flash drive which contains the TV manual, and the other slot for my 8GB flash containing pictures, music and video.
b) Content Library – Intenal flash with preloaded content like cooking recipes, artwork screensavers, games, and pre-school children contents. You can download more contents from the internet. I don’t find this feature interesting. I tried it twice during the first week, and I haven’t explored it again since.
c) Swivel base – I think Samsung is the only brand that offers this feature, which I find really useful.
d) Firmware upgrade via direct internet connection.
Get this TV, you won’t regret it. Your friends will be envious if you tell them about the great features of this TV, which are not yet available in LCD TVs prior to March 2009.
I bought this from Electronics Expo, one of the most reliable merchants of Amazon. The company is located in New Jersey — a) quick delivery because I live in New York City, and b) no sales tax because I live in New York.
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