Samsung PNXXc550 Owners Thread *NO PRICE TALK* - Page 91

Just tried this and doesn't have any effect on the problem.

I just received a call from Samsung Canada support and they are replacing my defective unit with a PN51D530. I'm taking a bit hit on inputs (2-HDMI, 1-Component vs. my current 4-HDMI, 2-Component), but with my replacement panel now clearly already on its deathbed with frequent flickering, I'm grateful they are offering a new TV.

EDIT: I noticed everyone else from this thread received a PN51D550 rather than the D530. I've politely asked for one with an equivalent number of ports, but now I feel like I'm looking a gift horse in the mouth.

I would say that you have made out pretty good, never nice to have a problem with the big purchases but Samsung has stepped up IMHO...

As for the number of ports, I have always thought this was never much of a problem for most as they connect through a switch or the AVR?

Yeah, I really appreciate Samsung stepping up after a few weeks of issues. In all honestly, I think I can creatively rewire what I have to make it work. I took a look at a couple of D530s at local retailers and neither of them showed the horizontal banding issue, which has me optimistic.

Hey TealShark, what was the problem with your particular panel? Just curious for when I'm going to need to contact Samsung about my displaying bright white color pictures and line bleeding.

I had horizontal lines that could be seen in bright colours and solid colours (like cartoons) on the original panel. Look toward the centre on the picture below, you can see three of them with darkened areas in between:

http://i.imgur.com/iGaXx.jpg

They almost ended my warranty ticket after the replacement because the Samsung tech told the repair guy these horizontal lines were normal in plasmas. I know that bleeding is normal (and I've adjusted to it), but I haven't seen any lines like these in any of the plasmas at my local FutureShop.

The replacement panel they sent me... Well, the less said about this one, the better. The purple right half is becoming more purple as they days go by:

http://i.imgur.com/QTiNi.jpg

The replacement television should ship out on Monday or Tuesday. Again, I am really happy that Samsung Canada is stepping up to stand behind their products.

My friend recently picked up a 58 inch version of this set, and upgraded it to a 590. I wanted to see hoe Game of Thrones looked on it and the blacks were absolutely crushed. This is from HBO HD from comcast. I knew it was off since i alsi have game of thrones and know how certain scenes should look.

We quickly scanned through here for suggestions, but the picture did not change much. Is there any suggestions i could send his way for pic settings?

Movie mode
Brightness 55
Contrast 90
EE and other crap turned off.

That'll get you started. Contrast could be 95 for some extra torch. I run 92 iirc.

Hi All,


I'm been reading this thread for a while now and wanted to post my experience so far with my Samsung PN58C550 plasma. I purchased it back on October 2010 for the local Best Buy. Knowing that plasmas can be sensitive to burn I enabled all possible screen protection on the menus. By about April I started getting a shimmering video noise on the white background problem. First just a little but the problem got progressively worse. I finally contact Samsung in the first part of July. Samsung was prompt in contacting a local tech to service my TV. The tech came out Saturday and looked at the TV. He pulled off the back of the TV and made some adjustments to the power supply. He also had brought a power supply with him but did not use it. He was able to get rid of the video noise. He informed me that the power supply was sending to much voltage to the screen and it caused the noise. Once that was fixed I told him that I had now noticed another problem. The screen had a red tint in the 4:3 area when looking at it in the 6:9 frame. The power supply had burn the screen. That was my diagnosis, not his. He confirmed the screen burn. He could not do anything about it with the parts he had. He had me run the scrolling grey bars in the screen protection menu overnight to see if that fixed the problem and to contact him if the problem did not go away. Jump to Monday. I contacted the tech and told him that the screen burn was still there. He had me email him some pictures. Later in the week I followed-up with him to check the status. I got an email back and was informed that another tech would be coming out to check the TV. Last Saturday another tech came out (with an assistant). They unloaded a very big box from the van. Yes, they had brought a new plasma screen for replacement. This is where it gets fun. The new tech looked at the screen and told me that the screen burn was my fault and not covered under warranty. I told him it was not my fault and it was caused by the power supply. I asked him to show my how the entire 4:3 area could be reddish/pink without any actual images. I told him that we do watch some 4:3 TV but I have enabled all screen burn protection options on the TV to prevent this from happening. After going back and forth with him and me getting visibly upset with him he made a phone call. Once he got off the phone he told me that he would be replacing my screen. I watched them take apart the plasma and I must say they knew exactly what they were doing (it looks like they done this many times before). It took no more than 20 minutes to pull off the old screen and put the new one in. Another 5 minutes and the plasma was powered on. It looked absolutely beautiful. No more screen burn, nothing but a gorgeous picture. He now told me that I had set the cell light too high and need to reduce the cell light down to 15 to prevent this in the future. I asked him why Samsung would give owners that option to set the cell light to 20 if this caused screen burn. He gave me a blank stare and could not give me an answer. I told him that many other owners probably are unaware that setting the screen to dynamic default settings (which gives a cell light of 20) is probably burning their screens. I asked him why Samsung would give owners this option. He again gave me a blank stare (deer in the headlights). I felt that I proved my point with him and didn't want to push it any more (I just had my screen replaced).

Well, that's my story. I've fallen in love with my Plasma all over again. Samsung was prompt to respond to our problem but not exactly friendly to deal with. They made us feel that we had broken their TV but they were going to nice and fix it for us anyway.

To celebrate we went out and purchased a new Panasonic DMPBDT-110 Blu-Ray Player (wifey had won a $250.00 gift card to Best Buy) to replace out slow to start up 2 year old Panasonic Blu Ray player.

Does this model have a variable audio output (stereo), or is it just a optical like on the 530 like I have?

If the 550 has this feature I think I'll take my 530 back to BB and trade up.

TIA

Hi AVSF,

this is my first post here ... I just bought this TV and it is my first HD tv, flat tv.
I have the PN50C550 , my previous TV is a 10 year old rear projection 65 incher

few things, I only have analog basic cable that my HOA provides us, I dont think ill be upgrading to digital anytime soon.

1) I noticed that on the new tv, the basic cable looks worse than it does on my rear projection. It is noticeably grainy. Especially the first second of viewing a channel, then it adjusts itself to reduce the grains. but its still not as clear or bright as my projection TV. the Free DTV hd channels are super crystal clear and im happy. any options?... adjustments, or am I out of luck till I get digital cable?

2) I watch a lot of torrented content and I was thrilled to discover the mediaplay USB feature on this set. I hooked up my external and was able to watch everything Except most of the MKV movies or TV shows that I have.

most of the time, I get the "file not supported" or "codec not supported" I understand that MKV is a container that can have many different types of codecs , but WHICH codec does samsung media play on my tv support?... I dont mind re-encoding the videos (never done it before and will need to learn how to )

I was originally planning on either buying a laptop with HDMI-out (my current laptop doesnt) OR getting a WD media player. but since I discovered samsung usb media play, I want to try my best on saving my money by not having to buy extra hardware.

3) Image retention, I always notice IR after watching something with black bars (USA network is a channel that I always watch and it has bars on the top and bottom, Unless I zoom ) but that IR goes away after changing the content or running the scrolling burn protection.

What I want to know is, how long can I watch content with stationary logos or black bars before it becomes a more permanent issue? I dont mind changing the channel, or scrolling to remove the IR, but how much time (hours) do I have before I should do that?


4) many sites including this one, shows different custom PQ settings to help get the most out of the set... which one is the best one according to the people in this thread?



Thank You

Welcome BigJoe!

Regarding basic cable an other non-Hi Def sources, IMHO they generally look terrible on HI Def set, nature of the signal and how the new sets display them, not much you can do if anything about these signals.

Keep that manual handy, but there is a section in it (page 37) that lists the exact video/audio file formats that this set accept including MKV's. I ether use a USB HDD attached to the TV or network connect the set and allow it to see the Windows 7 PC that I have with suitable files, or even the NAS storage device that can also serve up files to the Samsung.

IR, greatly decreases after about 100 hours, until error on the side of caution, since the time before IR sets in is determined by the brightness of the object and the numbers of hours on the panel there are no hard/fast guidelines.

There are a number of settings for this set as you suggest, but because this is subjective in nature, you will have to be the decide what you like. On the other hand if you want accurate renditions of the source material there are settings that give spectacular results.

Here is the thread you will want to read about settings for this set, it is only 5 pages and has a wealth of information! Calibration settings thread.

Although the C550 has both analog and digital audio out, I beleive that like the digital output, the analog is line level.

Thanks for your reply..

Im checking out the manual on page 37. I think I found my issue..

for example , the particular file I downloaded off torrents, is :
H264 - MPEG-4 AVC (part10)(avc1)
Audio: a52 (aka ac3) (a52)

manual says it doesnt support MKV AVCHD
----

Im guessing I need to re-encode the whole file?... or transcode?... been doing some research, and started getting confusing real fast.

and I hope I dont need to do this with each HD video I get off the torrents, but it seems like the case.

I wonder if getting WDTV or a computer with HDMI-out and VLC player is a less frustrating solution.

Glad to point you in the right direction, most of the files I downloaded didn't need transcoding as they had the correct audio already. Once I bought this set I made sure anything I got had the right audio/video format. In your case you would have to convert those that do not (something I don't have much experience with), Handbrake or something similar would what you need.

As for other hardware solutions, WDTV and the like could have some restrictions, I decided that having a PC close to the TV was the best solution, a HTPC of sorts, but only for pctures and video, movies are handled by my HD-DVD or BluRay player.

Yeah, that's what I'm seeing in all the displays that I like. It's not that big a deal, as I've got a workaround until I move my Denon 3802 into that room.

have there been any firmware updates lately?

Thank you Al sherwood, I have resolved my issues with MKV's with a WDTV... it works flawlessly.

anyways, to the rest of the board, I have new concerns.

The tv I have is PN50C550 and I have realized my set has a few issues that are irritating me and want to know what my options are warranty wise.

I bought the TV used off Craigslist , from a gentleman that bought the set from Brandsmart USA with an extended 5 year warranty. ( I have the original receipt from him with the warranty details on it) and the set has the remainder of samsung 1 year left on it.

am I able to pass the warranty on to myself?... the seller said it should be possible, no guarantees. He said just call and pretend like I am him.

Issues

1) My tv has the buzzing issue, most of the times I ignore it, but sometimes I cant, especially when Im watching with a low volume, or playing video games that at certain parts, dont have much audio being played.

The buzzing is consistent with what iv read here, It increases with brightness or contrast, especially on dynamic mode.

2) On a white screen or other light colors, I can see light bands going horizontally across the screen from end to end. I think I see 2 bands, one on the lower portion and one on the upper portion. Its pretty annoying , the bands look very faint, resembling a burn in but im sure it isnt a burn in, but some other issue.

3) light leaking? color leaking? Im not sure what this problem is called, but on light backgrounds, IF there is a few words of texts, the whole horizontal line that the text is displayed on will leak the color of the text across the screen horizontally.

pretty much, white screen + dark object = color of object leaks around the object onto the white parts of the screen.

*EDIT*: This issue is noted as "line bleeding" on some youtube videos iv seen, occurs on menu's often.


What are my options?... Thank you , greatly appreciated

Joel

All three issues you have are very common. 3 is common among all plasmas and is normal. Just a negative about plasma tech. 1 is tough for warranty. You likely won't have much luck there. 2 is your best fight. People have had sets replaced for that.

thanks for that reply... should I just give brandsmart a call and pretend like I am the original owner?...

number 2 is good enough reason for me to get it fixed, its quite annoying/ embarrassing when watching movies that are light (animated movies)

also, 1 thing I noticed is that this used set came with 1 ferrite core, on the power cord near the TV end of it. nothing for the power outlet side of it.
Is this a reason for my issues?... how can I locate another one?


thank you

Joe

The ferrite cores do nothing.

Not sure about the warranty.

I have the same problems, especially the #2 of the bands going across the screen. Samsung tried to say it was burn in but I knew it wasn't. Was very careful with the tv and made sure to avoid static images and letterboxing. Now my tv has gotten worse with it now having pixelated red in the boxes too. I've got some photos of that and some bad line bleeding too.

After samsung claimed it to be burn-in and your fault, how did you proceed?.. did you proceed at all?... or just live with it?

are you out of warranty?...

Mine isnt as bad as that, but I really dont want to it to become that bad and would like to remedy this before hand.

any suggestions anyone? Id like to arm myself with some knowledge before going to warranty and facing them.

I didn't fight it, samsung wasn't willing to fix it under their warranty. Wasn't until I contacted them with these problems getting worse as it is now that they were willing to replace the screen. Might be easier to deal with the 5 year extended warranty which seems generous.

The techs came out today and only fixed the voltage on my set making those red flickering dots go away but I'm still noticing the dark bands across the set on white background. Tried running screen burn in protection to no effect. This is frustrating and my warranty is up in about two weeks here. Think last time I go with Samsung.

When changing input slide the RC mode switch to "TV". In "DirecTV" mode it'll do volume/mute and "source" BUT the "select" button (to select the input and close the GUI) will ONLY work in "TV" mode...

If this was answered earlier, my apologies...playing thread catch-up.

hey all.

a 550 showed up at my house unannounced a few months ago. apparently my wife had an impulse to get a nice big plasma for our den.

i finally got cat5 run to that room a few days ago. i hooked it up to the 550 to try to stream media. the TV can see my Windows XP machine running Media Center, but it won't let me stream anything from it.

my main viewing tv is a samsung 8000 series plasma that i absolutely love - that streams movies from my xp machine with no problem.

does the 550 only support the samsung allshare dlns or something like that? anyone having luck streaming to it from an xp machine running media center?

sorry if this has been covered a million times .... i just did some searches and found some semi-related posts but most of them were related to issues streaming from windows7, which is a different problem.

thanks,
joe

The 550 is not restricted to just AllShare, I don't recall if I have tried is with my XP machine, but I have with just about everything else! Even USB sticks and hard drives.

I would hazard to say that a network setting is at fault, do you have a work groups assigned or something that would prevent the TV from seeing the XP machine?

With the TV and the XP machine in the same subnet, start with the PC on, turn on the TV and go to Media Play and have it search for devices, you should see the PC come up.

thanks for the feedback Al. good to know i'm not trying to debug a problem that can't be solved.

this weekend i played around with it a little more but still couldn't get it working. it's frustrating that the 550 can see the server but when i select it there is an error message and it kicks me out of the media section.

i did notice a difference between the tvs (the 8000 that can stream and the 550 that cannot stream). the 8000 sees two different streaming sources from the xp machine whereas the 550 sees only one. in the past i never bothered to look into why the 8000 sees 2 sources, but i guess i should. maybe that's confusing the 550

My post is likely off topic, but Al's comment regarding workgroup intrigues me. Streaming DLNA to my 550, OPPO, or Denon 4311ci is a frustrating endeavor for me; sometimes it works, but is erratic and never correctly. I am a DLNA novice and setup a Win7 home group network presuming this was "best practices."

I added a WD My Book Live as a NAS to the home group, hoping the NAS would become the hub. The NAS came with Twonky server installed, but Twonky forums suggest a different version is needed for proper server operation.

Based on the information, can someone suggest a "step 1" for troubleshooting as too many variables exist for me to solve this "rocket science" problem that I created. I am open to all suggestions and not averse to starting over, but I still need to know "the first thing you gotta do is..."