Quote:
Originally Posted by grizzified 
I did not have access to the settings, no remote...(I didn't ask for it either). It appeared to be in a higher "dynamic & standard mode" if I had to guess. Backlight probably in the upper half of the range. To be honest, I was mostly concentrating on looking for banding...The blacks overall were inky dark, I could not see any banding, but the backlight bleeding in the corners showed in the picture. It wasn't apparent in the store setting...I'm not familiar with the B-ball score ticker...so could be designed that way? It is oddly symmetric...
I did not have access to the settings, no remote...(I didn't ask for it either). It appeared to be in a higher "dynamic & standard mode" if I had to guess. Backlight probably in the upper half of the range. To be honest, I was mostly concentrating on looking for banding...The blacks overall were inky dark, I could not see any banding, but the backlight bleeding in the corners showed in the picture. It wasn't apparent in the store setting...I'm not familiar with the B-ball score ticker...so could be designed that way? It is oddly symmetric...
I would concur with much of what Rogo stated earlier and go a step further as an owner of the 60D8000 for about 7 months now. Folks your not going to truly see in a store setting the true black levels on these unless they have a totally darkened room. I auditioned my version for months in store and in normal store and home settings/environ the blacks look great most of the time - however, at night when the lights are off in total darkness this TV is exposed as a skinny ass fake blacks be-atch and screen uniformity is horrible - my old Sharp had terrific uniformity these edge lit beasts suck at.
90% of the time the TV gives a great PQ during daytime but just as witnessed during the flat panel shootout this thing is a fraud in the dark next to an HX929 or Elite. It's also a PITA as I have to adjust the settings far too often something I rarely had to do on my Sharp. Even the Samsung BD Player I bought gives a worse PQ than TBS broadcast TV which shocked me. I'll be buying an Oppo in the future after discovering it's BDWise settings were worse than broadcast TV of the same movie on BD.
Personally, I simply don't believe you can do anything to correct the black levels and uniformity of these skinny panels with edge lit tech and I think Samsung will just neglect it and let OLED carry on gradually where it's perfectly resolved with that tech.
Yes, I have Buyer's remorse and hope to go larger with a Sharp 70" 945 or an Elite this summer. Just don't expect your in-store audition to expose just how inferior micro-dimming truly is - cool looking form factor but it burns my ass when I see how bad it's screen uniformity is when viewing in the dark and not only that - this TV gets horrible DSE regularly when using On-Demand services with dark scenes I never got on my Sharp panel. It seems it cannot handle compression well and in all dark scenes and when panning you get this cloudy black smudges/fog that can become unwatchable on this Samsung that doesn't replicate on BD or Broadcast HD. Just feel it's unlikely Samsung has resolved this issue on the ES - it's simply too thin to work from the edges IMO.
