Official Samsung UNxxES8000 Owner's Thread - Page 137

The thing I fear worst is if they make changes that will actually break movie mode. If it ends up that at some point they force CE dimming/auto dimming in movie mode, that will be the last straw. The best thing about movie mode is the lack of auto-dimming, and that needs to remain the same, or at worst, an option.

But according to their page on shadow detail, it seems it can have an obvious auto-dimming effect on the entire image, and you had control over it. Black enhancer seems to have no noticeable effect from what I see - it's on all the time in movie mode for me and the screen never auto-dims, so they can't be the same things.

I honestly don't see either happening.

A shockingly poor "article" from Yahoo on how to clean your tv screen. It sounds more like an advertisement to me.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/upgrade-your-life/worst-ways-clean-tv-212508943.html

I would think that none of these are safe.

Wtf.... use nothing but a microfiber cloth and water.
If grimy little fingers happen to use it as a giant iPad, 1 drop of basic dish soap to 1-2cups of water will dilute enough not to damage the screen.

Never ever, NEVER use solvents on the screen or Windex. Windex itself will cause the screen to yellow after a few cleanings.

Yeah that article is going to lead to many people damaging their sets.

Yeah I've been using Movie Mode a lot with Black Enhancer and haven't noticed any auto dimming with it on either...so far

Something interesting:

Black Tone: Enhance picture depth by adjusting black color depth

Black Enhancer: Enhance picture depth by adjusting black color depth

So going by what the description says in the menu, they are both supposed to do the same thing. Toggling Black Tone on a paused frame you can easily see it affecting the picture (crushing blacks etc.) from Dark to Darkest. However, trying the same thing with Black Enhancer (turning it on/off) you see no noticeable change in blacks. You can't even tell that Black Enhancer is doing anything at all really...

I don't know if the feature is broken, if the effect can't be seen on a paused screen, or if the effect it has is just too subtle. Correct if I'm wrong...if someone else is seeing it working

I probably was seeing things then because it wasn't even HD. I agree you can't see Black Enhancer on a normal paused screen. Thought it was broke or something but was used in a dark room paused on black, I saw a difference. Or at least thought I did, it was very very late. I'll have to test some more.

Gamer, are you using Black Tone or Dynamic Contrast in Movie mode too? I'm giving both a shot in Movie on the lowest setting with Black Enhancer on.

Yeah you can see a lot of things if you stare long enough. My eyes started playing tricks on me, until I realized you shouldn't have to look that hard for any difference. It's easily apparent how much of a difference Black Tone makes when testing it though

I usually try to stay away from Dynamic Contrast and Black Tone. But I've been testing with Dynamic Contrast on Low in Movie Mode, and I don't think it does much harm on Low and even has some benefits since we don't get micro dimming in that mode

I've noticed the exact same thing. You can see the immediate and obvious difference in black depth when adjusting Black Tone. Black Enhancer seems to do absolutely nothing under any circumstance. It's either broken or useless. And why have 2 settings that are supposed to do the exact same thing?

I feel the same about Dynamic Contrast, especially in movie mode - low seems to do very little if any harm and actually seems to help add a bit more "life" to the image.

Yeah I have the same general thoughts on those things, but I go back and forth a little on what I like or should be right. Narrowing it all down

Anyone get this email from Samsung?

Dear Samsung customers,

There will be scheduled Smart Hub maintenance will occuring on Tuesday, September 25th from 9:00 PM - 5:00 AM (EST). During this time you may experience difficulties connecting to Smart Hub servers and using various functions of the Smart Hub service (App download, App launch, Smart Hub ID creation, etc). Do not setup repair service for Smart Hub issues during this time. The Smart Hub service should be restored at or shortly after 5:00 AM (EST).
During this time you will see the following on screen message when launching Smart Hub:
"Dear Smart Hub User,
The service will be under maintenance from 09/25/2012 09:00PM to 09/26/2012 05:00AM (EST).
We apologize in advance for any inconvenience caused."

Thank you for your patience with this matter, and thank you for choosing Samsung.

Yeah, I did on the 21st.

More tests tonight.
-The darkening I thought I saw in Movie mode was my imagination or a crappy video.
-I might see a slight difference with Black Enhancer on black screens, but I'm not even sure now. Seems useless.
-In Movie mode, without Micro Dimming, I am still finding Black Tone to be your friend, but keep it on the lowest setting of Dark. The middle setting of Darker is nice with certain content, but with other content, you can really loose detail. If deeper blacks trumps detail, then go for it.
-Last but not least is something about clouding. Clouding and flashlighting have definitely diminished since I got the set 3 weeks ago, and even then I didn't think it was too bad, but without Micro Dimming in Movie mode, clouding can be more apparent and can take you out of the moment during moments of pure black. I decided to give massaging a try and it was my friend. I really didn't expect it to help but 99% of my remaining clouding is gone even in Movie mode. And being CE Dimming doesn't kick in for Movie mode, setting the ECO backlight lower still gives you a brighter picture than in Standard mode, so mine being set to 4 is working very well. I've been back and forth with modes a few times now so we'll see how this works out, but it's looking like Movie mode can be a keeper this time. Now all I need is my freaking Micro Dimming.

From the "Black Level" section of the UK HDTVtest review (Samsung UE55ES8000 Performance):

"When we were performing measurements, we saw some unusual behaviour with the luminance output of the Samsung UE55ES8000. Its output would occasionally vary when fed with sequential patterns. For example, during the beginning of the measurements, we measured a mostly black screen (with a few white pixels at one of the corners, to avoid the TV turning its lighting out and giving a false impression of real-world performance) at 0.05 cd/m2, and a fully white screen as being the 120 cd/m2 we’d lined it up to during calibration. Then, measuring the same encoded brightness values from the separate ANSI-style test chart, we saw the same 0.05 cd/m2 measurement for black, but a brighter 140 cd/m2 white, indicating that some sort of contrast manipulation is going on in the HDTV.

Later, when we returned to measure black again (without changing the [Backlight] setting!), the panel was producing a darker 0.03 cd/m2, with white now coming in at just 76 cd/m2 on the full white screen, and just 90 cd/m2 on the ANSI chart. We then went into the menu and set [Backlight] to “8″ again, which caused the TV to suddenly jump up to a higher level of light output, and the original numbers began appearing. All of this points to the Samsung UE55ES8000 performing some manipulation of contrast at both the video processing level, and also at the physical light sources (LEDs). It’s incredibly subtle, and we wouldn’t have noticed it if we hadn’t actually measured the light output from the display. We’re intrigued as to what’s going on, but the bottom line is that the contrast performance is excellent, and we noticed nothing in the way of distracting darkening or lightening during viewing.

There is also a mysterious new option called [Black enhancer], the description of which reads: “Enhance picture depth by adjusting black colour depth”. This option appears to be a repackaging of the [Shadow Detail] control found on previous Samsung LCD televisions. Enabling [Black enhancer] simply dims the LED lights further during dark scenes. With this control enabled, a nearly (but not entirely) black screen measured at 0.016 cd/m2. Of course, this sort of light source manipulation isn’t for free: the trade-offs for perceptibly better blacks are that shadow details will become harder to see, and colour saturation will be lessened during these moments where the ES8000 is dimming the lights.

http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/news/samsung-ue55es8000-ue46es8000-201205301790.htm?page=Performance

Thanks to our UK brothers at avforums.com ES8000 Owner's Thread for this find

http://www.avforums.com/forums/lcd-led-lcd-tvs/1624478-samsung-ue-es8000-owners-thread-part-3-a-31.html

Maybe this has been covered before so please excuse - - but I do not understand the fascination with "Movie Mode." Now maybe my situation is different in that I'm running everything through my Yamaha RX-A2000 receiver (HQV high-class chipset “VHD1900” for HD/SD Video) but I found the "Movie Mode" to really take away from the razor sharp images that the "Standard" mode delivers. I've even started experiencing with the "Dynamic Contrast - Low Setting" and even taboo AMP settings.

I'm still unclear as to all the issues surrounding Micro Dimming, CE Dimming and have a general idea on what these mean but more unclear on how it really works with the Samsung UN65ES8000. Way back on my first set (third one was a charm, first damaged in shipping, second with serious vertical banding) I tried the CNET "Movie" settings from Katzmier and it was like spray painting your screen. That didn't work and I've even tried many of the suggested "Movie" settings in this forum and always end up going back to "Standard." For my eyes, the picture is just better. I get very inky blacks, no clouding, no flashlighting and a dynamite picture for 95% of the channels I watch on DirecTv.

I was watching Amazon Instant Video last night - Prohibition by Ken Burns and the black and white photos in "Standard" mode were absolutely stunning. We watched a ton of football on DirecTv and that was enjoyable. My major issue - - if I have one, is very faint vertical banding, still, mostly on golf shots and rarely, if ever, on bluray - - which leads me to believe that it's also source dependent.

Lastly - - I hope that the improvements that Samsung does really focuses on PQ and not all the bells & whistles that I don't even use. (Keyboard, anyone? Wireless - wired with builit in mouse - will it accept a USB keyboard (backlit) ?)

As of writing - - the firmware update has not been "pushed" to my TV (even though I downloaded the file from the Samsung support site) and I'm hesitant to update via USB I know that they have a major "SmartHub" upgrade tomorrow.

Thx-Rick

Hey, man. Personally I'm glad to see you back. You may be right about the firmware helping Movie mode. I mentioned it but thought I was seeing things at first, and I do feel mine has settled and improved over 3 weeks, but between those two things, my Movie mode looks amazing at the moment. I had a few minor clouding issues still present, but after massaging the screen a bit, it's 99% gone - basically zero flashlighting, which I was very surprised about in Movie mode.

I wonder how long its going to take to push the firmware update out via internet download.

Could someone take a measure tape and tell me the dimensions of the stand ALONE. Not the stand with the TV, just the stand, alone. I need to find out if my existing platform is large enough to hold the stand (or do I need to build a new one?). I need to raise the TV up over the center speaker. I need the largest dimensions, as the picture looks like it might be wider in the front than the back.

Again, just the stand, not the stand with the TV. I keep saying this because I've asked Samsung 3 times, and each time they give me the specs dimensions of TV with stand.

Thank-you.

This is hard to answer because we all see - and hear, smell and think, differently. If it works for you, I say keep doing what you're doing - or find and try different settings, playing around to see what others might be seeing. The fact that you are running everything through a receiver though, changes things. You seem to be using processing in the receiver so it doesn't surprised me too much that you're not seeing what other's are seeing. Are you connecting all your gear to the receiver then one HDMI to the TV? This can also create an issue with different inputs benefitting from different settings, but perhaps you were able to do that in the receiver. For instance, I have DirecTV and DirecTV really needs the HDMI Black Level to be on Low, where all others of mine need to be on Normal. When I don't do this, DirecTV is very washed out.
With the same setting in Standard and Movie modes, they should look almost identical, but with blacks being better, with less clouding and flashlighting, in Standard because of Standard using Micro and CE Dimming. This is the reason I've added Black Tone to the mix in Movie mode. Being you're seeing such a difference from Standard to Movie mode, I assume their settings are the defaults that came with the TV and not self-calibrated to be almost identical. If you were to calibrate with a pro or even just by getting someone else's settings, Standard and Movie would look even better, and be very similar to each other. Remember though, you would have to change settings for each in every input, including 3D and when using something like Netflix in the SmartHub. Also remember that if your receiver is already processing the picture, everything I wrote may not matter.

Usually it goes via the TV first, and gets pushed to the website hours/days later, this one is different for some reason.
Given the minor version number change in the file, I'd not expect anything big from it, new/larger functionality is normally represented by a major revision number ie. 1012 to 1021 or 1021 to 1034, going from 1034 to 1035 is just a point fix.

I needed the same info and it took me forever to find - finally found it at crutchfield.com, and it's one of the reasons I went with the 7500. It was great info. I'll copy and paste.

UN60ES8000
detachable stand (stand "footprint" is 41-1/2"W x 8-3/8"D)
54"W x 31-7/8"H x 1-1/4"D (33"H x 8-3/8"D on stand)

UN60ES7500
detachable swivel stand (stand "footprint" is 28"W x 12-1/4")
54-1/4"W x 32"H x 1-1/2"D (35"H x 12-1/4"D on stand)

Yeah I mean the norm is Normal, but for some reason it seems like a lot of STB's need to be on Low. Same goes for Nitra's in Canada if I'm not mistaken. No one seems to know why though. I'm glad Samsung put the option in there, that's for sure. That's the problem with running everything through a receiver though with one HDMI cable connecting it to the TV. It's the reason why my next receiver will be the Onkyo with two HDMI outs, so I can go through the receiver to take advantage of 5.1 with built in delays to match the picture yet have to HDMI connections for those two different settings.

I can only speak to the UN65ES8000 -

4 feet (48") from end to end
27" - Touching, in that the base curves up and approximately 27" of the stand is on the surface
11 1/2 " in Depth - front to back
2" High - elevating the screen

Hope this helps

It's the same for STB's that use Windows CE as the middleware.
IE. U-Verse boxes, and Bell FibeTV boxes, I'd bet that your DirecTV box uses Windows CE in it's middleware.