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Samsung UE32EH5300 Smart LED TV £259.27 @ Amazon
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10-05-2013 4:50pm#1
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PyeContinental wrote: »I tried to buy this for someone but could not confirm the address in time.
There didn't seem to be any indication that stock was low or that it was selling out so fast. Feel like i missed out on this!
There's one "Like New" from Amazon Warehouse for £240. I think you could use Parcel Motel then collect from a depot for €3.50, or get home delivery for €14.0 -
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PyeContinental wrote: »Thanks, I appreciate it, but second hand/refurb would have to be the price of a pub lunch to feel like a bargain.
No probs each to their own ... I suspect Warehouse items like this is just the last few stock Amazon want rid of, not second-hand or refurbished. Thats why they say "Like New" ... I'm very surprised its still available ...0 -
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I thought people might be interested to hearing a follow up on my experience of buying this TV from Amazon Marketplace with delivery via Parcel Motel.
It was ordered on Friday the 10th.
The TV cost £240.25
I opted to let Visa take care of the currency conversion, and this worked out to be €290.05 (an exchange rate of £0.82831 to the euro)
It was delivered quickly, because I got notification from Parcel Motel early on Tuesday May 14th. For this they charged €21, which I think is excessive. €12 to €15 would seem fairer. Even if they do exist, their email notification does not mention any forwarding or redelivery options.
Although I went to their Finglas Depot in Mygan Park to collect, the cost of this TV excluding the cost of Petrol and my time was therefore €311.05. The cost of the new TV from Amazon direct would have been €313.01 at the same exchange rate. So, the "like new" item from Amazon Marketplace barely scrapes in at cheaper if I pretend I spent nothing on Petrol to collect it.
Just as well then that the TV came very well packaged, and it is indeed like new. Otherwise, I'd feel pretty sour about the whole thing.
I was actually really impressed with the packaging. The TV did not come in its original box. They used a really large box with custom-formed foam packing around the corners of the TV. This meant that it would have been protected from even quite rough handling.
Although the base had already been fitted to the TV (some might consider this a bonus), it was wrapped in plastic, and the branding stickers were still attached to it.
There was no dust on the TV, and no marks or smudges on the screen. There was evidence of its previous packaging, in that there were a few grains of polystyrene caught in some of the grooves at the back of the TV. The batteries had never been inserted into the remote, and the TV never seemed to have been tuned in or configured, if it had been switched on at all.
As for the TV itself, I was impressed with the picture quality. Setup and menu features were well designed, as was the remote.
What about the "Smart TV" aspect of the Samsung? Well I tried the youtube and TED apps. The Youtube one appeared to hang while buffering in the middle of playback of a video (the whole set became unresponsive for several minutes, until the TV rebooted). I gave it three goes and then gave up on it. The TED one played well for about 10 mins or so, and then the TV must have got bored with the topic, because the video just exited from smart apps and it went back to the standard broadcast channels. I tested RTE Player as well, but after about 17 mins of the Late Late Show, I could stand it no longer and had to exit that one myself.
The TV seemed to be able to play perfectly any of the AVI, MP4, and MKV files I tested it with. I have a few MKVs and MP4s (either extremely large or slightly unusual encoding) which other sets and various boxes either struggle to play or can't play at all. This played them all, and has the simple but very useful option to skip 20 secs in either direction with the cursor buttons or scan with the fwd and rew buttons (I would change the skip time to 30secs or more, although I didn't see an option to set the skip interval). Many sets and boxes don't give you the skip through option which can mean it's very difficult and slow to scan through a file to a particular point, and can often cause the system to hang or crash.
One big gripe I have with playback of media files is that subtitles are on by default, and this can't be changed. Every time you start playback of a file, if it has external or internal subtitles, they will appear. Each time, the only way you can switch them off is by going into a nested menu to select subtitles "off" instead of "track 1". There is a subtitle button right on the remote, but that only applies to broadcast channels, and doesn't remap the function when in media playback mode. This to me is a huge annoyance. It's a small oversight, and is the kind of thing that could easily be fixed by a firmware update but is unlikely to be. This isn't just a problem with this Samsung by the way, I've notice the same behaviour on TVs from other manufacturers too.
Anyway, here are some pics of the connections on the TV, in case it might be useful to anyone:
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Thanks for the detailed and informative post PyeContinental. I'm glad its worked out so well for you. You've cleared up the mystery of what Amazon Warehouse "Like New" really means. Plus you've bagged yourself about a €100 saving too, this TV is still €410 at Argos.
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Just noticed what Parcel Motel charged you. The Amazon descripton says the package is under 10Kg. According to the ParcelMotel website, if you picked it up from their depot, the charge should have been €3.50. If they re-direct it to another address (ie. your home) it should be €14 in total. I'm not sure where the €21 is coming from:
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Thanks a lot guys. I'm really pleased you found the post useful, especially for a TV set that looks to be a model that has been superseded. However, a lot of the aspects of this model are common to all modern TVs, and inferences can likely be drawn about the ability of other Samsung models to play media files.
I forgot to mention that I was also impressed with the sound quality of the TV. It really was quite good. There was nothing tinny or distorted about it. For reference, I consider sound quality to be as important as picture quality for watching films myself, and use a separate amp and speakers for watching Blu-ray discs with great digital surround sound.
As for whether Smart TV functions and apps have reached a level of maturity yet where we can assume that they will work flawlessly, I'm not sure. I think based on this tv alone, it is not enough to make a judgement about all of them. I think it is right to be sceptical about them though, because they will be marketed to you as being something that will change your life and which you simply cannot live without.
A raspberry pi or any kind of home built media centre is really only for someone like me who likes to tinker with stuff, and is prepared to put in a bit of time configuring it and figuring out ways to make it work if it doesn't all work at first.
I bought an Asus Oplay (an equivalent to a Western Digital WDTV) box for someone else a couple of years ago, and it's been great at playing all media files. The only time it had trouble with an MKV, I downloaded a firmware update which resolved the issue and it has since never had a problem with any other file.
This kind of firmware update which might fix issues with certain file formats or codecs that weren't fully evolved at the time of manufacture are fair enough. Other updates that add functionality to cater for phenomena which become popular after release of the product to the market is legitimate and a really good thing too. Unfortunately there seems to be an acceptance these days that things will be rushed to the market in an incomplete or not fully tested state, with the attitude that if something doesn't work properly, we'll see if enough people complain about it and maybe we'll release an update that'll be able to fix it. This kind of thing is reprehensible, and it's driven by the system which demands product releases on set dates due to consumer demand and stock market pressures. It's all part of the race to the bottom which priorities short term gain over quality and long term reputation.
Boxes like the Oplay and the WDTV are a great alternative for someone who doesn't want to have to mess about with making their own plug-in media centre, and I don't think that anyone with one of these who hasn't got it built into their TV is missing out on anything much really. If the TV is still giving a good quality picture, maybe it is better to add features to it in a modular way and keep a TV which has a good quality screen for longer. For many people with a Satellite or Cable box, a screen is all a TV is anyway.
Most Blu-ray players come with many of these so called smart apps too, and should be capable of playing media files as well. One of these may be an option for someone who is looking to add these features to a TV which is still good, but just doesn't have smart features. You'd need to read a few reviews first of course to see if there are any known issues with whatever model you're thinking of going with.
I bought a Panasonic DMP-BDT120, which has been able to play most AVIs, had trouble with one or two MP4s out of my entire collection, and has been able to play all MKVs. I found it interesting that it wouldn't play the sound of one particular MP4 file, but when the audio and video streams were put unchanged into a MKV, it played fine. It can do this via USB, SD, or network. It does however hang when scanning through some MKV files. Annoyingly, it seems to be mostly the ones which I have transcoded from Windows TV format to MKV files with Handbrake, and subsequently trimmed with Solveig trimmer. I haven't figured out the root cause yet though, so it may not be all the unit's fault.
Anyway, I've gone way off topic and have kind of forgotten the question, if indeed there was one, so I'll leave it at that for now 0
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