Samsung Wants To Fix Your Terrible Cable Experience With Its New Smart TVs

Kevin Smith/Business InsiderSamsung announced its next generation of web-connected Smart TVs today, a clear attempt to disrupt a market that has been the target of nearly every tech company from Intel to Apple.

Samsung has several new television models in various sizes and resolutions, but the Smart TV features are the same on each. The TVs can suck in data from your cable or satellite provider and show you a visual representation of what's playing and what you can stream.

The goal is to replace the clunky TV menu from your cable/satellite provider or TiVo and give you a better way to figure out what's playing and what you might want to watch.

Here's a quick breakdown of what Samsung's Smart TVs can do:

• The menu is divided into five panels for live TV, movies or TV shows, your personal photos/videos/music, social content recommendations from services like Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube, and apps.
• The interface recommends what to watch based on what's stored on your mobile devices and what your friends like.
• You can control the TV with your voice or motion gestures.
• If you have a Samsung smartphone or tablet, you can beam video content to and from your Smart TV. It's similar to Apple's AirPlay.

We got a look at Samsung's new Smart TVs at a preview event at the Consumer Electronics Show last night. First of all, the picture quality is amazing. No photo or video of these TVs will do it justice. You have to see it in person. But that was to be expected. Samsung is one of the best at making killer displays.

The real story is the interface, which looks surprisingly good. The main menu shows what's currently playing, how much time is left in each show, and offers recommendations for upcoming programs that you may want to watch. There's no need to manually type in a channel, just navigate the cursor to the show you want and click. Pretty cool.

We got our demo in a noisy, dark room, so we couldn't really test out the voice or motion controls. Supposedly, you can just say something like, "I want to watch SportsCenter" and the TV will automatically change the channel to ESPN. We'll have to check that out at Samsung's booth on the CES floor tomorrow though.

There's no word on pricing or launch dates yet. Samsung is holding a big press event this afternoon to demo the full array of its Smart TV features, so check out our live blog for all the latest updates.

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