Thursday, July 02, 2009
Media Streaming and the Samsung UE40B7000 LED TV
We got a shiny new Samsung LED TV the other week; and the first thing I wanted to try out was DLNA media streaming capabilities (soon after I finished getting excited about how thin it was!) since Samsung boasts that it supports a wide variety of formats up to and including the MKV container, and the H264 codec. This is sounding good!
The PS3 is set up already to stream content via PS3 Media Server over the local (gigabit) network. It works amazingly well; I've yet to find a file it can't handle (except the malformed Bluray rips I attempted to create... But that's another story...) So.. I pressed the Media P button on the TV remote control; and it found Ps3 Media Server immediately sitting on the network. Cool! This is amazing....
The default settings in PS3 Media server seem to work fine, but the first thing I noticed was that to quality is not quite up to that of the PlayStation. The difference on the blacks is definitely noticable! Oh, and it randomly cuts out back to the menu every so often.. Quite annoying ten minutes into a movie! Perhaps I should try using the Samsung software; but I shouldn't have to use that since the TV supports DLNA. Perhaps someone has had a positive experience? Please let me know! :)
Overall the PS3 provides a better overall experience (giving that we can actually watch a whole movie using it!) but the TV is simpler for everyone to get their heads around. It's one button press, compared to setting the TV input and turning the PS3 on.
Perhaps I do really need to try the Samsung software but currently PS3 Media Server does the job fine. If you've had any experiences streaming to these new Samsung TVs please leave a comment with your thoughts!
