Samsung and Philips

Good approach


Web TV


Samsung's upscale class of televisions offers both Internet features, as well as a Mediaplayer menu item called Content Library. There are pictures from the fields of art, nature and animals, recipes, games (currently bowling and a puzzle game), a children's section with English songs and texts as well as a wellness area with chillout music, fitness exercises and massage tips .


Picture gallery


In terms of Internet, Samsung's TV also offers little: you have access to YouTube videos, but only in the SD variants, Yahoo News, Yahoo Weather as well as Yahoo Finance can retrieve flickr pictures and Sudoku play - more widgets are to follow. These widgets open at the bottom left devon at the bottom up and lie half-transparent over the current TV picture.


If desired, you can also reduce the TV image so that it is to the right of the hinged widget. However, the YouTube interface will pop up as you fill a dot from the widget menu as well as the Sudoku game. While the space for widgets is sufficient for weather reports and the latest stock values, Yahoo News scores just one or two sets.


What really bothers us is the slow response to the pushback of our model Samsung UE40B8090. Apart from a short flashing of the television lighting, there is no indication in the widget main menu whether the integrated software has registered the remote control command. Even a progress bar is in vain. In addition, navigating the menu from one point to the next takes more than half a second.


In the YouTube area, the next weakness is revealed: The software does not handle SMS-like fast input via the number buttons, but you have to navigate letters for letters through a displayed keyboard field - here at least with a 1/4 second response time. If you enter another letter, the software looks for matching videos and displays their thumbnail with a brief description in the right-hand screen area.


This makes the processor sweat, because during the search, the cursor control becomes much slower. If you enter more than one keyword, it does not seem to search for the individual terms, but for the complete phrase. You can not sign in to your own YouTube account. Despite all this criticism in Internet mode, it is enough for an occasional look at the news and the most popular YouTube videos. The device can rather score as a mediaplayer - more about this in a separate box.


If the term Internet TV fits on a television, then most likely to the Philips models, in our case the Philips 52PFL9704H / 12. On the homepage of the Internet function, which is preceded by an optional registration, you get 20 links, including YouTube, eBay, tagesschau, Bild.de, Kino.de, Kicker, wetter.com, WeltOnline.

Selecting "Show all services" will get even more links sorted by category. If that is not enough, you can also specify your own URLs. However, there are huge differences: the services presented by Philips are optimized for viewing on TVs from a distance of several meters.


Own URLs, on the other hand, usually appear in the normal look known by the PC - no wonder the Opera browser works in the background. However, there are also restrictions: First of all, the TV does not support flash - which could also be difficult with regard to navigation, because the cursor is not freely controllable but jumps on a website from link to link. A second point, which can still be detrimental at the moment, is the transferred user agent data: The television logs in with the identification


On a web server. First of all, the web server must be able to handle the CE HTML tag. Secondly, it must ignore the profile name in pointed brackets, which is also necessary to identify the device on the Philips server, or at least ensure that the request is not rejected. Furthermore, it can happen that, as was the case with Spiegel.de, it is forwarded to the stripped down page for mobile devices.


At Philips, the TV picture is completely replaced by the Internet menu - times just in addition to the television additional information retrieve, so does not work currently. At YouTube (also currently in SD only) and other services, you can not only register, but also enter search terms by SMS input field. You can even place orders with PosterXXL.


Overall, however, the sluggish navigation with a 0.5 second response time is also a source of frustration - after one or two hours of trial and error, certain fatigue phenomena occur which lead to a more regular use of a selection of services. And also browsing through YouTube or eBay is more of a matter, if you take a lot of time or the PC is just not tangible.