Official Samsung UNxxES8000 Owner's Thread - Page 220

Hey, thanks for that tip! I checked it out and yeah, there is only 1 service location that comes up so that must be the one. Now I can give them a call later when I get back from car errands (discovered I have a blower motor problem in the heating/AC unit).

It took like 10 seconds to find out that information through that link you provided that Samsung couldn't even bother to tell me.

FIRMWARE UPDATE 1041.1

With power restored after 11 days, I couldn't wait to watch my TV and decided to update the firmware so I could report back. My daughter was watching something and it didn't look quite right. Then my wife and I sat down to catch up on Survivor, which is beautifully shot. I could tell things were just not right. This is the first time that I had a negative feeling towards an update so I stayed up after my wife went to bed and broke out the WOW BD and AVS files. I wish I had meters and equipment, but oh well. So I was right that a couple things were obviously off which surprised me, because that hasn't been the case yet for me with updates. So far for me, updates have either looked the same or possibly a little better, but never has been cause for me to change settings. In both Standard and Movie modes, I had to change Contrast and Gamma. In both Movie and Standard I had to drop Contrast by one point (maybe could have gone two but didn't need to) and raise Gamma one point to 0, even with the Brightness trick to diminish CE Dimming, which I raised 2 points to 0 (which makes me feel I could have balanced it by raising Gamma by 1 point and raising Brightness a little, but that didn't feel right). I also felt I had to then lower my backlight, especially in a dark room, so I lowered my ECO by 1. Anyway, I'm back to having an awesome picture and I've updated my settings post based on this firmware update. Good luck everyone!

Garnoch - very glad to see you have power!

Regarding the firmware update - - I'm gonna pass on these for a while. Unless a user on this forum advises that the firmware update is the next best thing to sliced bread, I will sit tight and enjoy my beautiful picture, as is.

I'm starting to wonder about the value of all these updates. Why so many (so frequent) and why so little documentation on what they provide? It has to be primarily related to the applications because I haven't seen very much improvement in the picture since the major update that Anthony (Peace Brother) mentioned a while back.

Every single time I have performed an update, I've had to re-tweak the picture. That doesn't make sense. I wonder if we keep our set on an older firmware version whether we'll get a flashing message from Samsung - - "Firmware Version is Outdated - - Update Immediately to Funky Birds 1800.1267465555)

After this update, I may hold off too, but then again, I say that a lot.

Nitra, thanks for stopping in. I'm curious how you're liking the Harmony Touch with your Samsung.

Who ever added this in GTM73 post (I'm not sure how to add a comment in the original post, sorry)

Quite simply, that is life. Just imagine how ridiculously expensive our TVs would be if corporations researched, developed and tested to the point that 100% of the panels were 100% perfect 100% of the time. I know in most businesses that would be prohibitively expensive and based on my observations of the TV production business the optimal point must be well below that utopian target. I, for one, am happy to play the panel lottery. It means I have a very high probability of purchasing a great TV for an affordable price and if I happen to be unlucky in the lottery, well then I just have to suffer the time and effort of protecting my interests and try, try, try again until I get the panel I am happy with.


Just think of how ridiculously it is for any company to reproduce flawed TV's. This WILL cost them more in the long run in repair/replacement/spare panel inventory expensives. This was proven long ago in the 80-90"s in the electronice industry when TQM (Total Quality Management) was implemented. This impowered EVERY employee to reject poor quality assemblies. Within one year, many companies had far less product returns (I worked for one of them). Now it appears that every body is so scared of their job's these days, this mind-set NO LONGER exists not that TQM was a perfect solution. This weakness goes all the way up the line and most likely the CEO as well. He's got stock holders to keep happy. Funny that share-holders see Sales Stats WAY before they EVER get wind of complaint issues. Thats what companies seem to count on as well as complacent customers that will just settle with marginal performance. Real Bummer for the Consumers who actually expect to get what they have paid for.
Edited by mgh26 - 11/10/12 at 10:57am

Ugh! Hopefully someone can help me. I went into the service menu to see if there was a way to turn off the dimming in Standard mode and didn't see anything. I was looking around in there and changed some things, but made sure that everything was changed back to what it was set to when I entered the service menu before turning the tv off and getting back to regular tv mode. Well, for whatever dang reason my picture is totally crap now! When I turned the tv off and on to get out of the service menu it had reset all my settings, so I put them all back in, but the picture was really bad. It was very dark and the colors looked like they were glowing. I tried to "Reset Picture" and redo the settings, but it didn't help. I remembered there was a "Factory Reset" option in the service menu, so I went back in and performed that reset. The tv turned on and went through the whole set up process like it did the day I got the tv. I put my settings in again and the picture is still very bad looking. How the heck do I reset this thing back to what it was really like when I got it. Apparently me changing the 2 or 3 things I changed, then immediately putting them back how they were, really screwed up something and I don't know what to do to get my nice picture back. Can someone please help?

You can't fix it.

When you altered the settings you lost the base factory calibration settings.
And also voided your warranty, they can see you've been in the SM.
If you're under 30 days, return it and hope they don't notice.

If all else fails, check on the Sammygo forums, they might have some help.

For anyone else reading, this is why you don't go into the SM

Nitra has talked about the SM many times and has gone in there too, so I assume he's right. That's crazy though that changing things, then changing them back would actually change anything. I think it's worth going back in to make sure it's all as it should be.

Too bad you didn't ask first though because there is a way to get rid of not only the screen during off during black moments but also the recently found trick of reducing the dimming to basically be a non-issue. Way back in this thread though, Nitra had confirmed it can't be done by the SM though.

Good luck. I feel for ya.

I got lucky! I went back in to make sure nothing obvious was happening and noticed the "HDMI Calibration" had a "failed" status. I remember selecting that to see what was in there, but it started to calibrate it, so I backed out. I tried calibrating it again, but it failed again. I searched AVS and found that you have to use the checkerboard pattern that's in the SM when calibrating, which I did and the failure status changed so "Successful". The picture came back, but was darker than normal. I read that the factory applied settings for my specific panel would have been reset, just as you suggested. I ran through my calibration disks again and my picture is back as good as new. Actually I think it's better. Here's why:

The one complaint I had with my picture is that the whites were overblown. In order to get my black levels where they should be, I had to set the contrast at 100 like most everyone else. Well now, my contrast is at 90 and my brightness is at 74. I know that sounds way off compared to what we all have seen, but reseting those factory settings put me with those settings to get the exact same picture I had before, but now my whites aren't overblown. My white and black levels are now clipping exactly where they should be. Before I had my black levels clipping where they should be, but my whites could not because I couldn't go higher in contrast (was at 100 already). So, when all is said and done, this little situation, which scared the crap out of me, ended up giving me a better picture and eliminated the one thing that bugged me about my pic (overblown whites).

The warranty thing worries me though. I'm about to have someone come out and professionally calibrate my TV. From what I've heard they will have to go into the SM to do that. I believe that's where they activate the day and night Cal modes. If that's the case, and Samsung can tell if the SM has been accessed, then wouldn't getting your TV calibrated void the warranty? That doesn't make sense.

What are your thoughts on that?

Well, I got the service manual for the ES8000 and found where the HDMI calibration did not match what was set at the factory. There's only 6 numbers that needed to be changed and now I'm back 100% like before. I now have to have my contrast back at 100 and my normal settings are back in place. I am probably going to change it back though, because the HDMI calibration settings in the SM allowed me to set the contrast where it did not crush my whites. I might just leave it alone for now because I think the pro calibration that I'll be getting done is going to actually change those SM items anyway. I might as well let the pro do that.

Anyway, does anyone know if a pro calibrater gets into the SM, if that voids the warranty? They have to get in there to calibrate the tv and enable the Cal modes. I can't imagine that any TV maker is going to void your warranty if you get it calibrated, but who knows. Anyone have any real world experience with that?
Edited by Jestered - 11/10/12 at 3:19pm

Congrats, Jestered! I'm not sure about the pro calibration but that makes sense to me.

Thanks Garnoch!

This whole thing has got me thinking. First, why would Samsung have built and designed this HDMI calibration tool in the Service Menu if it's "off" or not correct? I'm wondering if the HDMI calibration tool is actually calibrating the TV correctly, but since it requires you to bump the brightness above the level where the dimming stops working, they manually adjust those settings to force you to set the brightness low enough that the dimming is enabled and working. I'm just curious why the calibration tools in in there, along with the test pattern used with it, if it doesn't work properly. Doesn't really make sense to me. Anyway, it's just a thought.

Let me first say that in no way am I suggesting that anyone go into the Service Menu, but if you want to know the default settings from the factory, and the calibrated settings (there's 6 values that change), I can post those things. I'm a software engineer, so the Service Menu doesn't scare me, but I still ran into trouble. Luckily I was able to fix it pretty quick, and in the process think I found better settings and a better picture. With all that being said, unless you've already been in that menu and are comfortable with it, you probably should stay out.

As I mentioned earlier, I have the service manual for the 8000 TV. I had to buy it, so I won't be sharing the manual itself, but if anyone has any questions that may be answered in the manual, please feel free to ask and I'll tell you exactly what it says.

Can someone with a 65" measure the distance from the top and bottom of the screen to the mounting holes? I'm planning on getting the 65" and want to plan out where to put my mount, outlet, and connection wall plates.

I think I just stumbled on some information regarding the bad dimming in Standard mode. This won't really do anyone any good if you're using the factory set SM settings, but thought it's worth mentioning since there's been a lot of talk about when the bad dimming occurs as far as the brightness setting. I'll try to explain without this becoming a book:

I went ahead and changed my SM settings back to what the HDMI calibration tool set it to. This causes the brightness and contrast settings to be way off from what everyone is used to seeing and hearing, so these things won't work for you with the standard factory SM settings. I used my WoW disk to create my settings in Movie mode because I didn't want to deal with the brightness settings and the dimming features in Standard mode. After getting it set up, and seeing that these SM settings had my brightness set up in the 70s, I decided to try and calibrate it in Standard mode since the bad dimming should be calmed down with the brightness that high. Here's what I found:

*Before I would never use the all black test pattern to set brightness for Standard because the dimming is so bad that it's not accurate.
*I decided to use the all black test patter with Standard mode this time because I knew my brightness was going to be set pretty high and the bad dimming should be minimal from what others have said.
*When I was increasing brightness step by step, I noticed that from 73 to 74 there was a big difference in the change. All the other incremental steps were equally changing the brightness, but when I went from 73 to 74 the change was noticeably much more than the incremental steps before and after 73-74.

I believe that may be the point at which the bad dimming is actually not active at all (74 brightness). In fact, after calibrating both Movie and Standard, all of my settings (brightness, contrast and everything else) are exactly the same, except the backlight is different between the two modes. My backlight is set at 13 for Movie and 10 for Standard. The picture looks pretty much exactly the same in both modes except I can see a little bit of good dimming in Standard mode.

The whole point of this is not to try to get people to do what I did, even though I'm loving it, but to inform that I believe the bad dimming is totally disabled at brightness 74. The problem for the rest of you that are in Standard mode that hate that bad dimming is that you won't be able to use 74 or higher with the standard SM settings. Again, this is only to inform what I believe is the point that the bad dimming is actually killed and disabled in terms of the brightness setting (74).

They don't adjust anything in the SM other than enabling the Cal modes.
Going in and doing that generally won't trip the counters, other alterations will. You are lucky you got the set working again, I've been in the SM many times it's nearly as bad as minesweeper.

I thought that too until someone told me there's more to it than just adjusting the user available settings. Also, the service manual tells you how to calibrate the picture and the SM settings using different calibration equipment. I'm assuming to truly calibrate the tv that you are going to have to make some adjustments in the SM. I'm going to ask the guy I was going to have calibrate mine whether or not he's going to do any of that. If not, I'll probably leave it alone. I just can't see how anyone can truly make a big difference in picture quality (with my settings now) without messing with all of those settings, and there's a crap ton of them, in the SM menu.

I went into the SM and set cal mode and tried to do a full calibration with my Calman 5 / C-6 profiled to my i1Pro / DPG-2000 pattern generator. I couldn't get really good results and got some strange artifacts after calibration. I went back into SM and disabled Cal mode and re-calibrated in movie mode.....much better. The SM calibration setting's sound interesting but scared to mess up the tv.

I watched a movie tonight in the 2:39:1 aspect ratio, in standard mode using the workaround to disable CE dimming.

Now, my current settings are after using the WOW disc. The film itself looked right. According to the WOW disc, everything is balanced well. But unfortunately, to completely disable CE-Dimming, the brightness in standard needs to be on 62, and the white balance offsets dropped very low to compensate. I tested repeatedly and 62 was the number needed to disable CE-Dimming to the point where you will never see it rear it's ugly head. The problem is that even though the WOW disc says everything is set ok, the black levels are completely trashed due to the high brightness. My backlight currently is on 6, which is very very low, and the brightness is on 62, which is very high, again, to compensate for CE-Dimming. Yet WOW says this is ok.

But all through the movie, the blacks looked pretty awful at this setting, even with black tone on darker (medium setting). The black letterbox bars were not very black. And the clouding was especially bad. That V-shaped clouding near the bottom was dreadful throughout the film, even with the backlight on 6. Even during fairly bright scenes, the clouding was hard to ignore.

I'm sorry, but growing up with CRT sets, when a screen started to look that bad, with blotches all over the screen, it meant it was time to get a new tv. My friend used to own a lousy projection tv, and when it developed a big cloud in the middle of the screen, they bought a new set. Now, we're expected to accept that in a brand new set! Nonsense.

I'm really starting to believe that it's not possible to get a good looking image on these Samsungs without some major compromises in one way or another.

- adjust your standard mode without bypassing the CE-Dimming; clouding is harder to see, but CE-Dimming is very aggressive, having a very noticeable impact on dark scenes; and the screen turns off as well during black screens; micro-dimming voodoo is supposedly doing it's thing (good?)

- use the method discovered a while back to work around the CE-Dimming in standard mode; CE-Dimming is gone, and the screen no longer turns off with black screens; however, blacks are ruined and clouding is very easily seen even with a very low backlight setting; micro-dimming is active but it doesn't seem to matter since the black levels are now destroyed

- use movie mode instead; except now no micro-dimming (which many of us specifically paid the extra money to get); backlighting is still very noticeable since the backlight has to be set higher than in standard to give a comparable image

These are the choices it seems to me. None of them are good. The bottom line is there are some serious issues with these sets. The combination of poor quality-control with the panels themselves, coupled by very poorly thought-out firmware which gives us no control over the features that are the most annoying, makes this a difficult set to get happy with.

I have done my absolute best to try and get this screen looking good, and it just isn't happening. I missed the call by the service tech today while I was out and they closed at 2:00 pm, so I'll have to wait until Tuesday now probably to call them. They said in the message they left that Samsung didn't give them the serial number of the set. Unbelievable!

I would advise anybody considering this set to look at all their options. I'm not saying that other companies don't have issues either, because they certainly do. But the lack of quality panels combined with the forced dimming modes and disabled micro-dimming in movie means that there will be lots of sleepless nights while you try to get this screen to look acceptable, and if you buy these sets, be prepared to deal with lousy customer service (I can say that with confidence), and likely multiple repairs or exchanges before getting one that is "good". I'm sure this will piss some people off, but this is where I'm at with Samsung right now. I've been trying for over a year now to get a tv from them that doesn't have major issues, and I'm still trying.
Edited by eagle_2 - 11/10/12 at 9:39pm

Garnoch, glad to hear your power is restored. Wow, 11 days. I'm sorry.

I'm glad to see somebody else feels this way besides me. I think it's shameful what Samsung is passing off as quality for $2k - $3k sets. And yes, that's expensive.

Exactly. Avoid the Service Menu. It's poison.

That's a great question, and I've wondered the same thing in the past. If a calibrator goes into the service menu, won't that void your warranty then according to Samsung? How will they know it was a calibrator and not you in there? Do you need to keep the receipt for your calibration for the date on it, to prove to Samsung if you ever need service that on that date it was calibrated?

Though I didn't go into the SM, I did apply the CE-Dimming workaround by bumping up my brightness and dropping the white balance offsets to darken the screen back down. I found 62 brough the auto-dimming to the point where it was impossible for me to see it kicking in even slightly, with even the trickiest of scenes that used to really trigger the auto-dimming. Even the on-screen menus didn't even show a hint of auto-dimming at 62 for me.

But, it does seem to still be active somewhere deep inside, because when you change inputs or sources the auto-dimming still kicks in. But that's the only time when you are likely to see any hint of auto-dimming with the brightness set at 62. One strange thing to note with brightness at 62: during the black clipping test from the AVS disc, the screen went into a frenzy with the flashing bars. It happened before 62 as well. But during regular viewing, you are very very unlikely to see any hint of auto-dimming with brightness at 62. But again, even with the offsets lowered, and black tone set to darker to compensate, the blacks are still terrible at that point, and any clouding is very noticeable.

As you seem to have discovered, perhaps with a setting of 74 the dimming is completely disabled. I think 62 should do a good enough job at hiding it to the point where you just won't ever see it though. Very interesting observations though and very good to know.

And glad to hear your set is back to working "normal" again. That SM sounds scary.

I hereby join the ES8000 crowd as i purchased my 55" set tonight since it was reduced to $2249.95 plus I received a free 32" free LED tv. I had been looking at this TV for months and was torn between this and the HX850. The 850 had been reduced to $1697.00 but could not pull the trigger. I'm a SONY guy and have been for years, but after the bad taste I received from an issue stemming with my 52 XBR4 a few months after purchasing it, this made the decision to go elsewhere quite easy. Plus this Samsung set gave me a better overall picture in HD and 3D then the 850 did while trying them out over the past 4 months. I've learned alot from reading this thread and will get my local Best Buy to do a professional calibration on the set before I can really see what it can do. But out of the box, OMFG it's awesome!!!! Can't wait for tomorrow to catch all the games with this awesome set.

Just to put my frustrations over these Samsung sets into perspective, I was reading a bit about one of the supposedly better Panasonic LED 3D sets - the TC-L47WT50 - and just like Samsung, it has issues that totally break the tv. Poor black levels, and especially this comment (from CNET):

"Cinema is basically broken for videophiles, however, because it inexplicably omits the ability to disable dejudder/smoothing -- the Motion Picture Setting is stuck at Strong in Cinema, causing the infamous, obvious Soap Opera Effect and accompanying artifacts in film-based material. Custom does allow you to disable dejudder, but its color performance isn't nearly as accurate as Cinema despite plenty of controls."

That would immediately get packed back up in the box and go back to the store if I discovered the new set I just bought forced motion smoothing in Cinema. So Panasonic doesn't seem any better than Samsung really. I hear tons of complaints over on the LG threads, and I've read a ton of comments on the poor reliability of the Vizios. Sony seems to have terrible 3D, plus they're not even part of the 3D standard with glasses (typical Sony). Like I said before, I don't think any of these tv manufacturers have their crap together anymore. If Samsung would actually care about their customers and give them full control over their settings, and actually have a quality-control department for their panels, and offer better customer service, these sets could be the best out there. But Samsung royally screwed us with their choices. Look at the nonsense we have to do to get around auto-dimming. How can they see so many people hating this and not decide to help us out here? They just don't care. Hell, they even took away an HDMI port from last year. What a cheap, lousy way to save a dollar, when they know how important it is to have connectivity options.
Edited by eagle_2 - 11/11/12 at 12:48am

Jim, I have to agree with you. I was excited and ready to pull the trigger on the 65" panel but first started to read this very long thread and the more I read the more I questioned buying this model. It really seems all this sized model is defective in one way or the other. I currently own a Samsung un55C8000 and for the last 2 years have been very happy with the PQ. My only complaint is the tendancy for ghosting/crosstalk on viewing 3D, which I do a lot. I need a 65" set to fit a particular space in a new home but after reading through this thread the "panel lottery" sounds like to much of a hassle for 3 grand. My question also is do you guys in the know about Samsung think these defective 65" panels will be re-engineered in 2013 or has Samsung just lost it as far as quality control goes?

Jestered:
I think during tour trip inside SM something altered your reference level of brightness. Where you have 74 value others have value at about 50. I believe CE dimming should start to be eliminated at 50 (brightness). This may cause blacks to be gray and for it you can alter RGB offset. As start point use difference between old brightness and new brightness.
Do not go too low with RGB offsets else you will ruin black levels at about 30% and you lose colors in dark scenes.
My current settings are brightness at 51, RGBoffset 18,20,19. If blacks are not deep enough, try dynamic contrast and or black tone - I know many of you (including me) are allergic to bother with dynamic contrast and black tone, but one can tray.

Other point of view is : raising brightness also raise contrast so you can dim picture. I am using backlight level at 3-4 (eco sensor) for night viewing and this compensates clouding to zereo while black details are good and white is enough to not to be fatigue and picture is not dull. Standard mode is probably not to be used for critical viewing and calibrating, but can be used to set "what you want to see"...
Edited by prsut - 11/11/12 at 3:11am

Hey Guys,I also owned a Samsung UE65ES8080#European Version)

The Banding is Horrible and i changed the TV 3Times. Are there any 65" Panels from Samsung without Banding?

Thx for Reply,
Roman

Everything you've mentioned here I found to be true over the last few days as I've tweaked settings, except the clouding issue.

Above 50 the CE-Dimming starts to go away for me. For me it took a setting of 62 to totally completely eliminate it to the point where I can see no trace of it during viewing. But I realize that's high. To compensate, I had to drop the offsets down very low. The benefit of this should of been that I can get away with a really low backlight setting, but with my backlight at 6 and a brightness of 62, my clouding is still way too easily seen now. To fight that, I found that dynamic contrast on low can help a bit, and bumping black tone up helped the black levels also, though black tone definitely crushes black. I found having black tone on dark didn't really mess up my WOW settings, though in real viewing it does indeed affect the image. I could try dropping the backlight a bit more, but honestly, I don't want to go any dimmer, as one of the benefits of an LCD over a plasma is a brighter image. As it is now movies seem just the right brightness and contrast. The image looks very good, I've got the color looking as good as I think I can get it probably, it's just that with these wacky settings, the black just isn't black enough now, so the clouding is really visible. During credits now for instance you can really see how light the screen appears - it's like move mode, not deep black at all.

If somebody wants to take a crack at suggesting an improvement that might help, here's my standard settings:

Backlight - 6
Contrast - 96
Brightness - 62
Sharpness - 15
Color - 35-40
Tint - 50/50

Flesh Tone - +5
Gamma - 0
Dynamic Contrast - low
Black Tone - dark
Color Tone - standard
LED Motion Plus - off
Color Space - auto
Auto MOtion Plus - off/clear

White Balance
R-Offset - 3
G-Offset - 7
B-Offset - 7
R-Gain - 5
G-Gain - 25
B-Gain - 27

Eco is off - if I want the backlight lower I know how to do it.

Dropping brightness even just 2 points, from 62 to 60, helps quite a bit with black levels, though every point down from 62 makes the CE-Dimming more noticeable. Maybe on 60 it will be low enough that I may not notice it during regular viewing.
Edited by eagle_2 - 11/11/12 at 8:23am