Samsung D6530 LED TV Review

I recently bought a Samsung D6530 40 inch TV for roughly £750. The TV was delivered in a slim large box which was packaged well. The TV was quick to setup which took about 20 minutes, and required just a phillips screw driver.

The TV is very slim and the edge of the picture to the edge of the TV is very small both approx width of a thumb. The TV is supplier with a good quality brushed steel stand, I was glad not to get the black glass one.

Once I had connected the correct cables I switched the TV on and it soon tried to connect to my wireless router, I entered the password and it downloaded the latest software updates. After the TV had updated the software and restarted I started to play around with it. The TV picture is very impressive and could easily see it was better than other TVs I had seen recently, because it is LED I thought the black colour in  the picture was very black. The HD channels looked great and there is a clear difference between HD and the normal channels. The sound is good but nothing special, I think I might look into connecting an additional sound system to it.

The TV is 3D so I bought some glasses,  I believe this is a technology that needs improving, but compared to the cinema is OK. There is an option to convert standard 2D pictures to 3D, this option varies depending on the programme you are watching, but generally I think I will not be using this.

What I was most impressed with apart from the great picture is how it connects to the internet and my PC. Samsung have something they call Smart Hub, this opens a screen with loads of options. There is a panel that displays your apps similar to Apple products. There are various Apps like You Tube, BBC iPlayer, LoveFilm, Skype and Twitter that come pre-installed, out of these I think the most impressive is the BBC iPlayer app. The Smart Hub also gives you the option for something they call AllShare, which allows you to connect other devices to the TV wirelessly. I installed Samsung's PC Share Manager and selected the directories I wanted to see and started the server. I then went downstairs and there was a message on the TV saying that it could see the server, I could then play videos, music and pictures that where located on my PC on my TV wirelessly, which I think is very clever.


In conclusion I think my new TV is great, here is a list of pros and cons:
Pros - Fantastic picture, very slim, easy to use, internet connectivity.
Cons - 3D is OK but not great, remote control feels a little cheap.

Specifications

• 400 Hz
• Resolution 1920 x 1080
• Built in Wi-Fi
• 4 HDMI
• USB 2.0 x 3
• Freeview HD
• 3D with 2D to 3D conversion
• Dimensions - width = 1248mm, height = 805mm, depth = 30mm max 

News of the World rebadged to Sun On Sunday

News of the Worlds owners News International are clearly planning planning on continuing producing a similar Sunday newspaper. They last week bought the SunOnSunday.co.uk and TheSunOnSunday.co.uk domain names so will really just rebadge the News of the World. It will be interesting how long News International will wait before producing the new Sun on Sunday newspaper.

How to report software bugs

I have written an article about how users should report software bugs, here is a basic summary.

1) Do not leave out any facts.
2) Remember more information is always better than less.
3) When an error occurs, stop what you are doing and write down as much information as possible.
4) Make sure it is an error and not a feature.
5) Be very specific on what windows and buttons are pressed.

Click here to link to the full article 

WordPress blog links not working

On one of my wordpress blogs, all of a sudden the links to the blog articles did not work. Looking at the URL of the link it was adding a '/%' to the end of the URL. The way to fix this problem is to go into the 'Permalink' setting of the blog and change it. For some reason the setting had changed to custom and added a '/%' to the end of the URL.