Samsung D series FBr fix discussion - Page 43

Your logic board FW is interesting. Did you perform the update, or was this the original version that came with the set? Have you had any service techs work on your tv? We have the same panel type, but mine is 64 inches. We also run the same FW, and share the Nov. 2011 date.

Re-read my post.

I'll ask again. Are you talking about fluctuating brightness (pops) or floating blacks? These are two different phenomena and you seem to use the terms interchangeably.

Larry
Edited by LarryInRI - 7/23/12 at 8:17pm

Well, I am pretty sure that these are pops as the fluctuations are not gradual . They are not as bad as before the logic board update though. It is obviously visible to the naked eye.

Return of brightness pops after the update had completely eliminated them for me. 4 months later and they're starting to appear again. Much less than before the update but I fear it's gradually going to return full on...

To summarize:

1. We have a 59D8000 and a 64D7000 where the fluctuating brightness has reappeared after the logic FW fix was applied and each set has somewhere about 800 to 1000 MRT hours. On the D8000, the fluctuations reappeared about 4 months after the logic update.

2. We have a 51D7000 and a 64D7000 where the fluctuating brightness has not reappeared and there are over 1200 MRT hours on both the sets. On the 64D7000, there are over 1200 MRT hours accrued since the logic update was applied.

3. Some are using the latest FW updates from Samsung and others are using an older version.

4. The sets were purchased at different times since about May 2011. Two have November 2011 manufacture dates and one an April 2011 date.


Hmmm. I don't see a trend forming. Have I left out any pertinent facts that previously have been posted? Any additional data to present?

Larry

I would like to know detailed info on everybody's TV in this thread like I asked above. This way we can try to find a trend. Like I said, it is not as bad as before, but of course it happens on most of my favorite shows Objects start out nice and black then pop for anywhere from a split second to a few seconds then back to dark. It can repeat, but not always. Very rarely (so far) I have noticed it is so rapid that the only way to describe it is flickering. I wonder if this is why Samsung stopped sending out the USB sticks to begin with. I have tried numerous firmwares to fix this by downgrading to 1013 -> 1014.6 -> 1016.2 then upgrading... fail. I am awaiting a service tech call soon.

@Icon13:
Did you check the material where you notice fluctuations on a different display technology, LCD or CRT?
Maybe it's the material itself, but the plasma somehow boosts the fluctuations from the material.

The black&white FBR testclip in the first post shows the existence of FBR only in the sidebars. The movie itself is fluctuating because of age and A-D transfer.

Yeah, I cross referenced Breaking Bad on my LED. There were no pops at all.

The fluctuations in the test material were present on my LED, so that one was due to the content. You were correct. The fluctuations in this video were slow and gradual, not pops like I see on my shows. Glad that one is cleared up.

Zoyd, on a bit of a different issue, on the D and E series the "hockey pops" or ABL issue remains. Do you think this is also inherent in the drive electronics and not fixable via firmware?

Plasma ABL is ABL, nothing can change or fix this IMHO.

I can diagnose this with my eyes, but the material that pops has no bars it is not in the source material, others have already confirmed this by watching the Breaking Bad scene that I mentioned and my led does just fine. And it is not just a specific object that pops, all the blacks rise on the screen, it is just most noticable on dark objects for the obvious reason. Nobody would buy this TV, or other plasmas if what i am seeing is normal behavior. And when the pops are rapid and flickering, the entire scene is ruined. Dark...light...dark...light...dark...light.... And it does not stabilize until either the scene or camera shot changes (usually the scene to rid all the pops). But like I said, sometimes it is one pop, sometimes two (D...L...D...L) but the worst is rapid. This is not a matter of a simple increase in mll and then it stabilizes, this is a pop. The tv cannot keep a constant tone of black when affected.

I double-checked to make sure I hadn't transposed any numbers... 11-10-31 is correct.

I did the update (downloaded from here) 2 days after I got the TV back in February. Optimization process ran after update. TV came with, and was still on, main FW 1013 at the time of the logic update. Main firmware was subsequently updated to 1015, and more recently to 1016.

TV has never been serviced.
Edited by jcalabria - 7/24/12 at 7:12pm

11-10-31 is not only correct, it was also the version determined to be correct back in February. It is prominently displayed in post #1 of this thread. Too bad Icon did not spot it or look for it.

Larry

I'm not seeing things that's for sure. Just watched the Man of Steel trailer and I see pops twice in 1:30 on the letter box bars and I've gone months without any pops at all... I wonder why this is only affecting some of us?... Could it have anything to do with the ITO? I'm reaching here but this lines up with the fact that Samsung never released a public fix. Even 1026 for the 59D8000 didn't include the fix. There has to be good reason for this.

Did not notice the 51 inch has different logic FW. Maybe that is why his is still trucking along just fine. Oh, and thanks for the sassy remark :P

There is really simple test to see if it is just my set or all of them: DVR BREAKING BAD, LARRY! Please, It will be on all week. We have the same TV. Are you not curious if yours reacts the same? Watch it in the dark and get back to us. There is no way you will miss the pops if present. Thanks for the help.
Edited by Icon13 - 7/25/12 at 1:20pm

Icon,

Last night, I set my DVR to record the episode of Breaking Bad showing this evening. BTW, I do watch True Blood and have not seen any brightness pops or even floating blacks on any episodes of that series.

EDIT: Just so I don't have to watch a full episode of a series that I am not familiar with, where do you suggest that I pay most attention? I remember someone mentioned the last scene is one where he/she saw brightness pops. Any other specific time spots?


Larry
Edited by LarryInRI - 7/25/12 at 3:19pm

If you haven't seen it on True Blood I definitely wouldn't expect you to see it on Breaking Bad. It's so few and far between on Breaking Bad for me but more often on True Blood. In fact if you still have last week's True Blood episode and watch the scene where Russel, Bill, Eric and the two girls are talking about 20 minutes or so into it, there are multiple pops in that scene. Pops and also anti-pops Where it actually goes darker instead of brighter. One part in particular in that scene is when the girl points to Russel and his black shirt pops. For Breaking Bad the final scene and also a scene in the interrogation room with the bald older gentleman (about 40 minutes in off the top of my head). I would also like to note (Icon you can try this as well) - if I lower my brightness below 51 I do not get any pops in Breaking Bad.... True Blood yes but BB no. However blacks are completely crushed below 55 for me so 50 is terrible looking. It acually seems like the more I turn up the brightness the worse it gets in that last scene. I'd also like to reiterate that the pops are annoying but nowhere near as bad as they were before the "fix"

The strange thing is that I went back and watched that last scene, and I do not get much for pops there. Strange. I cannot miss them in the scene where Mike (Bald/Grey Goatee) is being interrogated by the DEA. You cannot miss this scene; it is obvious what is going on. When Mike gets up to leave the room they ask him more questions. The majority of my pops are evident on the right hand side of the screen, since that is the dark area, when Hank says, "He's not impressed Gomi." There are more in other scenes as well, but this is a good reference point for me.

Also, BB is great. It is also on Netflix. 13 Emmy nominees coming up. I highly recommend you get into it. Best show on TV.

I remember the scene in True Blood that you mentioned and I saw no fluctuating brightness. I am very sensitive to this phenomena.

Before the logic FW fix, changing the Brightness level was my way to reduce amplitude and frquency of the brightness pops. I use a specific scene from Goodbye, Mr. Chips as a reliable indicator. As you can see from my 64D7000 calibrations, my Brightness setting varied from a high of 66 to a low of 52 and the gamma setting was either 0 or +1. (The optimum Brightness setting is a function of other settings -- Contrast, Gamma, White Balance Offsets, and the lowest two 10 point interval values.)

My calibrations can be found here. Do not use any of these setting on a D8000 -- they will not work at all.

I now have my D7000 gamma curve calibrated to the latest standard, BT.1886. This has the effect of, in essence, acting as though the Brightness control has been increased at the extreme low end of the luminance range. My Brightness is set at 55.

The point of all this rambling is to show that there is no "standard" setting for the Brightness control. There are a few ways to set it properly. I suggest using a calibration disk. The AVSHD 709 disk is free and has a terrific screen for this. It can be downloaded here.


@ Icon: Thanks.


Larry

Thanks Larry. I think it is obvious we have defective sets. I 100% agree with JHummrich that our pops never left. They were simply minimized by the update. Most pops are so minor I just thought this is as good as it gets, and that you all had them too. Then I stumbled across the real pops in certain material, and I am finally finding out it is just the few of us who experience this. If you are sensitive to this phenomena then there is no way you would be satisfied with my set. Tech is coming out next Wed. I think I will downgrade to 1013 first in case my mainboard is not replaced. I will test out the repair before updating the logic board. I will also note the FW version. If pops continue I will upgrade to 1014.6 via the USB I was lucky enough to receive from Samsung. Any thoughts?

Oh, and I just plugged in Larry's newest calibration settings. It pretty much eliminated the pops when Hank says, "He's not impressed Gomi," but other pops are still present in the scene. I suggest you watch the entire scene to be sure, it is only about 6 minutes long.

Hey Zoyd, could these pops be the result of improper voltage settings that can be adjusted?
Edited by Icon13 - 7/25/12 at 8:57pm

Icon,

If the panel is replaced, the logic board is part of the panel and it will get replaced also. So make sure that you note the logic FW version before updating it. In fact, watch a clip that you know has the "pops" and see whether or not it is different before doing anything. (A panel replacement does not change your main board and, therefore, the software version will remain the same as you have now -- 1016 IIRC -- or what ever it is when the panel is replaced.)

This past weekend, I watched 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' and 'La Dolce Vita' both in 2:35 aspect ratio. I saw no pops and any brightness variation in the letterbox bars were not at all noticeable. If there is a movie that will cause the brightness to fluctuate with the original logic FW, La Dolce Vita would be the one.

I haven't had time yet to watch the that portion in latest episode of Breaking Bad -- but I hope to in the next hour or so.


Larry

I rerecorded the episode last night on both my TWC DVR and HTPC setup, and critically watched the interview scene multiple times from both sources. I watched between 5:00 and 5:30 am before it got light out. I watched "normally" and I watched with a magazine blocking various parts of the screen so I could isolate parts of the image. I could detect absolutely no artifacts whatsoever. The video levels were rock solid throughout.

Just thought I would mention that it is not really unusual to have pops after applying the fix. There were several reports of this when the fix was first released, myself included (I was even able to spot a few immediately after the fix). I believe most people have commented that the pops are less frequent and smaller in magnitude now.

So far, in my experience:

They are most certainly very dependent on the specific program I happen to be watching. I can go weeks without seeing any, then suddenly they appear. Usually I see them in the black bars while watching 4:3 content. Frequently they come in bursts - a flurry of rapid changes in brightness (faster than before the fix). I have seen them on letterboxed blurays from time to time as well, so I've decided to stick with cinema smooth (which never fails to stop them).

The odds of seeing them improve the brighter you set the image. This has always been the case, even before the fix, and may at least partially explain why some people don't see them.

I don't have my panel specifics on hand, but I am near 2000 hours on a PN59D7000 with 1014.6 fw.
The small amount of TV I do watch is OTA (and, no, you couldn't pay me to watch Twilight ).
Edited by AvidHiker - 7/27/12 at 6:47am

I have to agree with AvidHiker. I have the PN64D8000 and I still see some fluctuations on my TV even after the fix. Like him they seem to come in bursts, mainly in the black bars when I'm watching movies in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Really though the only thing the fix has done for me is it makes these bursts seem less striking then before. Unfortunately, they are still somewhat distracting for me, so I watch blu ray movies in Cinema Smooth mode. Do I think the fix improved my TV...to some degree yes. It's not perfect, but I still enjoy this television.

I recorded on my Directv DVR last night. I too watched that episode multiple times. I even turned off my backlight.

The first time, I just let the interrogation scene play through and I watched it as I would normally. At one point, I thought that I saw a very slight change of gray level in Jonathan Banks' jacket -- the dark area on the right side of the screen. But that brightness variation was so slight that if I had not been aware beforehand, I would not have noticed it. (The most annoying thing that I saw was the poor editing during parts of this particular scene. At one point, there are about four editing cuts in a period of no more than ten to fifteen seconds.)

On subsequent viewings, I focused on that apparent anomaly. In fact, I stepped frame by frame through the sequence where I thought I saw a change in brightness. Yes indeed, it is a very minor brightness pop. However, it is so slight that it really would not discourage me from buying this set. Those with the 51 inch version should not be seeing this because of its inherent higher minimum black level.


@Icon and JHummrich: There are a few possibilities that may be the cause of your problems. 1) The acceptable tolerances manufactured into your individual units may have been marginal and further aging has moved them more toward the unacceptable. 2) Your settings may be incorrect -- remember these sets have a variation from set to set and copying values probably will not work. 3) Maybe you got a bad baggie of weed.


EDIT: I just re-watched the scene in True Blood where JHummrich saw brightness fluctuations. I saw none at all.


Larry
Edited by LarryInRI - 7/26/12 at 8:39pm

Interesting. So, you did get a pop, just not as significant as mine. I wonder if you may start to notice them in other content after prolonged usage.

UPDATED: Aha! You do suffer from brightness pops Larry. As I recall, once switching to your newest calibration settings the pops in that scene were minimized to one smaller pop on my set as well. This is an improvement from the factory movie settings, but after changing to your settings I noticed that pops were still present in other scenes, although performance is enhanced with your settings it is still unsatisfactory for me. Watch the entire episode again and then get back to us. Also, if you want to be very thorough about it and do not mind inputting your custom settings again, you can try to reset movie mode to default and then tell us what you see. If pops are present then I am sure that by now you will start to notice them in certain content too, but maybe to a lesser degree than some of us.
Edited by Icon13 - 7/27/12 at 2:35pm

Icon,

Please stop. From normal viewing distances, I do not have any noticeable fluctuating brightness pops. If you have been following this full thread, you should understand that I do know what I am talking about.

I have no intention of re-watching anything. I do not have to.

WRT settings: If you have read my posts over at the calibration thread, you will have seen that I do not recommend copying files for these sets.

Please leave me out of this now. I only wanted to help you not start a uncomfortable relationship.


Larry