Photo gallery: Samsung PS50B850The PS50B850 is the latest flagship plasma TV from the Korean company. What makes it unique is the 50-incher's ultraslim design and value-adds galore. These include an integrated HD tuner, a comprehensive multimedia playback system and Wi-Fi support. In terms of picture quality, this panel stacked up pretty well against our reference Pioneer LX Kuro. There are, however, a couple of minor shortcomings due to the space crunch.
Design
For a 50-inch plasma TV, the PS50B850 is surprisingly sleek at just 29.5mm thin. This is achieved with an all-in-one design that does not require an external media box like the Panasonic TH-P54Z1A. Although the bezel features the company's dual-tone crystal design, it looks piano black and is trimmed with a translucent lining instead. Aside from the recessed auxiliary A/V ports, tight socket placements and mismatched swivel-stand in aluminium, everything else is just about right.
Breakout cables to keep the panel 29.5mm slim. (Credit: Philip Wong)
The bundled remote is identical to the Samsung UA40B7100's version with orange backlighting and is well laid-out. In action, it's ergonomic and offers tactile feedback and good responsiveness. The remote has a healthy selection of buttons, ranging from video playback controls to various hot keys for major functions such as Internet@TV. Switching between video inputs is catered for by separate TV and Source toggle buttons. The latter is equipped with smart detection to filter out unused ports.
Features
The most notable feature of the PS50B850 is its Media@2.0 suite. This comprises of four different elements: Internet@TV; USB 2.0 playback; DLNA, both wireless and wired; and Content Library. The Yahoo widget-based Internet@TV gives access to YouTube videos (now revised with search function) and weather reports. The USB 2.0 multimedia centre provides comprehensive music, photo and video playback, while DLNA wireless adds media streaming from networked PCs via Wi-Fi.
For offline content, there's the Content Library system preloaded with four genres of edutainment materials: a photo gallery, cooking recipes, children songs/stories and wellness tips. Out of the 2GB memory available for Content Library, 877MB can be used to copy multimedia files from USB thumb drives and similar storage devices. To receive HD broadcasts, the PS50B850 has an on-board DVB-T digital tuner and Freeview-compliant MPEG4 video decoder.
YouTube video playback now comes with search function. (Credit: Philip Wong)
Although some TVs have started appearing with a massive five HDMI sockets, the PS50B850 stacks up pretty well with its six 1080p inputs: four 24p-ready HDMIs, a component-video and an analog PC jack. As for multimedia file playback, it is well taken care of by a USB port, Ethernet and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi using the included USB adapter. To wrap it up, there's a digital optical audio output that supports Dolby Digital surround sound from HD programs and some HDMI sources.
Samsung has overhauled the software menu and added embedded diagnostic functions, a user guide and localised contact details. Additionally, there are animated icons for its user interface and useful descriptions of the highlighted sub-menus and configurations. There are four video modes that encompass in-depth configurations with a separate memory bank for each video input to allow optimum customisation. For example, this can give you different levels of sharpening for TV broadcasts and DVDs.
Six 1080p inputs including four HDMIs. (Credit: Philip Wong)
Performance
The PS50B850 outperformed our reference Pioneer LX Kuro in regular TV broadcasts in terms of cleaner visuals and a smoother news ticker. Going digital improved sharpness and dot crawl artefacts which were matched by largely stable reception, while playing back higher-quality DVD movies brought clarity to a new level. This was verified in our HQV benchmark with strong results in the detail and jaggie suppression tests. This 50-incher also delivered a convincing show with Avia test patterns displaying perfect greyscale tracking and colour decoding.
Moving onto HD broadcasts, the Samsung was neck-to-neck with our stand-alone set-top box, rendering mostly clear and pixellation-free pictures. That said, it was Blu-ray that shone through a mixture of intricate details, natural hues and realistic skin tones. More importantly, the black level was in the same league as the Pioneer, losing out slightly only in shadow details. The TV passed HD HQV benchmarks including video and film resolution loss tests at Auto 1 film mode, though mild judder was visible for 24p films at all settings.
Interestingly, fast motion was silky smooth as far as console games were concerned, reproduced in fine graphics sans jarring jaggies. Equally impressive was the crisp and flicker-free PC text at 1920x1080 resolution. The only setback was mild diagonal and circular false contouring on our colour chart. Multimedia-wise, we were delighted by the brilliant image quality and fast loading speed of 8-megapixel JPEGs, but were disappointed with its mediocre MP3 musicality. It was hit or miss for videos, with DivX, MPEG1/2/4 and H.264 in HD working flawlessly, but WMV-HD clips played without sound.
Despite the Samsung's built-in subwoofers, getting clean and deep bass was a problem due to strong chassis rattling and distortions when driven hard. We also felt there were times when vocals were somewhat muffled. Nevertheless, the treble extension and stereo imaging were more than respectable, plus SRS TruSurround HD was effective in opening up the overall soundstage.
Conclusion
If you're willing to overlook the sound quality and the soft buzzing of the set in operation, the AU$4299 PS50B850 is good value for money. Unfortunately, it's still not a Kuro killer.
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