GITweekly

In the world of plasma, black is king. We don’t mean Martin Luther King, we mean the regal kind, although some would argue the aforementioned are one and the same. Politics and reverence aside, when your average plasma-ite (as they are wont to be known) is researching a new TV, they will run around asking about the ‘black level’ until they black out. Everything’s black, then. What are we on about? We’re talking about how black your telly looks when the lights are out and the screen goes dark. The purists will say it’s meant to disappear entirely, although unlike a David Copperfield show, it’s meant to still be there once the lights go on again. The black levels question is a bit like fuel economy for hybrid car drivers, or wheat content for coeliacs. Ok, the coeliac comparison is a bit of a stretch, but the point we’re making is that it’s the question that is ALWAYS on people’s minds when they’re looking at buying a plasma. Is the question really meaningful? How long is a piece of string? What IS the meaning of life? Ok, we’re heading off on a bit of a tangent here, what we’re trying to say is that in our opinion, many hairs are cleft in twain over the issue of black levels. This telly produces blacks that look pretty black to us. Granted, our eyes haven’t been calibrated by an ISF-certified professional, but we’re guessing yours haven’t been either. Having said that, we’d love to have THX certified eyeballs. That would be cool. We’ve gotten ahead of ourselves a bit here, but we feel the digression is justified. In light of the near-religious fervour that is generated over the issue of black levels, we felt it was important to preface this review with a discussion about how important we feel it really is. In short, we think it’s secondary to all else the TV has to offer. So, without further ado, let us review.

Our sample measures 147cm, or 58″ in the old money. That’s a diagonal measurement, and Pythagoras himself would agree that it’s really big. It’s big enough that if you try and play your old Super Nintendo on it, you might just have to watch it through binoculars in reverse, just so it looks a little less ridiculous. No, TVs this size are not for playing your old-school, kilopixel resolution 8-bit games on. But that’s not why we buy them is it? We buy them because we’re a.) Irresponsibly wealthy, and/or b.) We seriously get off on technology and watching movies or playing games in high-definition. My bank balance has lots of zeroes in it. It unfortunately has no other digits, so that puts me squarely in the second category. Put simply, watching a good movie (action flicks baby!) in full high definition, on a good TV with the sound turned right up gets my juices flowing. Ok, that’s a bit creepy. Size isn’t everything however, and there are a raft of genuine reasons why we simply love this set. Natural yet vibrant colours, white whites and black blacks, paper-thin chassis, loads of inputs and more features than the Cannes film festival. If you live in a shoebox or simply aren’t satisfied with anything but a preposterously large TV, then you can be assured that both the 50″ and 63″ (yes, 63 inch) versions will come just as well stocked with technological goodness. The tech-goodies extend to Internet connectivity via Samsung’s Internet@TV service, which is simply their version of Panasonic’s Viera Cast service. In short, Samsung makes a bunch of widgets available that you can install onto your telly if you connect it to the internet. The widget roll-call includes a YouTube player, CNN news ticker, Weather report and others. It’s fun, but we personally don’t find it a major selling point. What’s very handy however is the ability to stream video, music and pictures over your home network using the DNLA feature. If you have a media server running anywhere in the house, then it’s trivial to play all that content on your telly without having to fire up another DNLA device like your PS3 to do the work. Add to that the ability to play movie files off a USB stick plus record TV once you connect a hard drive, and this TV seems well placed to feature at the centre of your modern digital media savvy household. Another feature worthy of a mention includes the ability to tweak the more arcane aspects of the set’s functioning. Gamma, Colour Space and RGB Offset may make good hard rock band names, but they also represent settings that, when tweaked appropriately, enable a TV to produce the most accurate colours possible. The menu system works well, overlaying whatever’s currently showing on the panel with adjustable transparency. The many and varied picture, sound and connectivity functions and options are all easily accessible by no more than a few clicks of the stylish remote’s keypad. A feature popping up on alot of network-enabled TVs is the ability to control the set with your mobile phone. Samsung have ensured that the C7000 doesn’t miss out, and there are apps for both the iPhone and Android-powered phones such as the Galaxy S that give you full control over the TV. Controlling the TV via the phone was surprisingly snappy, and we actually found that we preferred to use the phone over the remote! One big plus is that you have access to a QWERTY keyboard on the phone; text input via the remote is tedious at best.

We’ve blathered on about the picture quality, tweakability, transparency and QWERTY, but we haven’t made mention of the small matter of 3D. Oh yeah, we forgot this is a 3D TV!!

What can we say – forget about Avatar, if you have a 3D TV and don’t already own a PS3, head out right now and get one, buy as many 3D games as you can and go nuts. 3D movies are nice and all, but gaming is where it’s at right now. WipeoutHD in 3D is awesome, and we’re actually drooling at the thought of Gran Turismo 5 in 3D later this year. The glasses are cumbersome, but that’s by design – they need to fit over your coke-bottle specs! The 3D effect is impressive and suffers only occasionally from little glitches that don’t necessarily intrude on the effect nor do they detract from the enjoyment of it all. Basically, it’s a hoot playing games in 3D and arguably well worth the expense of buying a 3D telly. When Avatar 3D comes out later this year on Blu-ray, that’ll be just a bit of icing on the cake.

All in all, we think this TV is a storming effort by Samsung. Solid 2D and 3D picture quality, all the geeky goodies you could want and then some. Oh and it looks the business too.
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The Good:
Excellent picture quality, up there with the best of them
Fully widget-laden, for the widget-conscious
Lovely finish, with a brushed-metal bezel
Good value 3D telly

The Bad:
It does buzz a bit more loudly than your average plasma, but in practice (as in, at normal volumes) we didn’t notice it at all.

So here’s the thing. An iPhone with 1 Terabyte of storage is sitting in my hot little hands. Seriously. Except the hands being little. They’re more of an average man’s size. Honest. And it’s all due to a sub $4 app called Air Video.

Before you get all up and in my face about the deceivery – let me say this. I get tired of syncing my iPhone to take music off to fit more video on. It drives me bananas. But then I found my true love. Air Video.

This amazing app lets you set up your home PCs and Macs – and we’re talking plural here folks – to convert video files of multiple flavours into an iPhone friendly format. All on the fly. You don’t even have to wait until the file has completed its conversion before you start watching. It just streams beautifully from the remote computer into your iPhone. Aceness.

If you want a little more control over those legally acquired video files you can add them to a queue to be converted prior to playing. Add these files, from the comfort of the iPhone, straight into your iTunes library. They appear under the films tab. All saved for later on so there’s no need to use a program like iPodMe* to do the conversions – The Air Video server is a bit of a one stop shop really.

Here’s the rub though. And there’s always a rub – although this rub is our fault not Air Video’s. You’re supposed to be able to stream via the wonders of the internet to your phone – anywhere. But we haven’t been so successful yet – stupid old wireless router. UPnP capable routers should sort out any issues.

But anyway – for an iPhone with a near endless supply of video enjoyment – go and download Air Video. You can even try the free version – it only limits the amount of files you can see in the file explorer window. It’ll give you a good idea of what to expect from the great Air Video.

So in a word – getyourmitsonthis.

*We really do love iPodMe though. Top little bundle of freeware greatness.

Ever looked behind your TV cabinet and shuddered at the morass of plastic and wire that has accumulated there? If you’re anything like us, with a TV, DVD, VCR, TiVo, Foxtel iQ and a Sony Playstation 1/2/3 doing entertainment duty in your loungeroom, there’s a good chance you’ve assembled yourself a nightmarish mess of cabling that is the domain of the brave and time-rich only.

How did this happen? Well, it’s simple. Back in the good old days, all you needed was a single cable from your antenna to the TV. You got a black and white picture, and Bruce Gyngell welcoming you to television. Then some bright spark invented the VCR, which thankfully at the time sent all of its picture and sound down the same cable! Perfect! Admittedly, you needed two of them now, one to connect the VCR to the antenna, the other connecting the VCR to the telly. Still, it was the same plug. Then someone decided it would be better if the sound and the picture went down a different cable. We started hearing terms like ‘composite video’, and it was all downhill from there. Two cables became three, then one of them changed so we could get a better picture, but it was still one cable. S-Video, which was usually only the domain of the sun-starved, osteoporotic video editor, didn’t really catch on for the masses, but it did make the picture alot nicer. All of a sudden, DVD players started popping up, and we were told that the best picture was available via the ‘Component Video’ inputs on your, by now, wide-screen, 32 inch television. So, one video cable now became three! Let’s count them again: Audio left and right speakers, 2 cables;Component video, 3 cables. That’s a total of 5, and it’s only one box. Multiply that by 2 or 3, factor in the multitude of ways you can connect the TVs and the boxes, and all of a sudden the TV cabinet is chock full of cables and you quickly forget what is supposed to go where!

Luckily, the digital era is upon us. The big technology giants have finally seen fit to ease our pain a little, and have rolled out the do-it-all cable to connect your little boxes full of ticky tacky to each other. Yes, HDMI has arrived, and isn’t it wonderful. One cable, carrying the picture AND sound, all in high-quality, hi-fi, digital glory. 5 cables becomes one, and the picture and sound quality improves to boot!

HDMI stands for “High Definition Multimedia Interface”, but for the punters, it’s just a cable. A long piece of wire with a plug at each end. One end goes in the DVD (or Bluray) player, the other in the telly. That’s it. One cable to save them all, and in the darkness bind them!

For the brave, go visit http://www.hdmi.org/ for lots more information about HDMI and what it can offer.

For the scaredy-cats, when you go out and buy that new LCD or Plasma TV (as we know you will!! resistance is futile!), make sure you check out which of your little boxes has a ‘HDMI’ plug on it. Lay down the cash, get yourself some HDMI cables and save your sanity.