Remote Control, Measurements & Benchmarks

I liked the styling of the Samsung 7000-series remote. It has a gloss black face and a nicely curved back that fits well in the hand. It is completely backlit save for the four colored multifunction buttons. You can engage the backlight and then have it automatically come on when you press the buttons on the remote. To save the batteries during the day the backlight feature can be turned off as well. The remote is organized into three main sections, though this is organizational in nature and not via any specific defined breaks.  The top section is for the numeric keypad and power. The middle handles and menu functions and the lower part is for navigation, volume and channel controls.

What made this remote intolerable, however, was its absolutely horrendous responsiveness. Pressing buttons was painstakingly slow as you had to allow nearly a half second between each press. In addition, none of the keys seemed to repeat, so scrolling down a list was mostly impossible. I don’t think there is any good reason for this and Samsung should take a long serious look at the processing involved in remote operations as it takes a really good experience and puts a very negative overlay over the entire thing.

Video and Audio Measurements & Testing

We again utilized SpectraCal's CalMan software (v3.5) and an X-Rite Chroma 5 meter. This is an excellent combination for reviewing LCD flat panel TVs and the Chroma 5 is now LED-ready so it will deliver correct color measurements. Calibrating grayscale on this set was like playing tug-of-war. Adjusting the Gain also affected the Offset, and dramatically so. This was so much the case that I actually wondered if the controls were truly separated or if there was just one Siamese control for each color that turned up the Red Offset along with the Red Gain. In contrast to this, the Color Space controls are extremely sophisticated and we were able to dial in the color perfectly. This set comes pretty well calibrated out of the box with a few key exceptions, but the calibration options are sophisticated enough to get you where you need to be.

Grayscale tracking was much better after calibration, but the controls
were very awkward and Gain and Offset appeared to be connected

Luminance response was good and users have the ability to tweak Gamma if desired

HD Benchtesting

HQV HD Perfect Score is 100
Samsung UN40B7000 HD Benchmark Score: 95 (excellent)

* Requires Auto1 mode to be set (default is Auto2)

Comments on Testing

Another interesting thing to note is the Screen Fit mode, which we found eliminates all pixel artifacts but does leave an additional few pixel spaces around the image for maneuvering the image up, down, left or right. The Video Resolution Loss pattern allowed us to easily view pixel distortion and see how it went completely away with this mode engaged.

The Film Resolution Loss pattern initially failed until we placed the Samsung’s Film mode into Auto1 (default is Auto2). This test pattern also accentuated the quirks associated with using the various Auto Motion Plus 120Hz modes. Clear mode was the only one that didn’t mess up the pattern and we figured it barely implemented Judder reduction (corresponding to a Custom setting of 1 or 2).

Sharpness on this TV should be set to 0, with anything else adding artificial edge enhancement. Unlike several TVs we've tested, the control actually works and will truly mess up the edges of high contrast objects if you have it turned up (the default is 20).