Official Samsung UNxxES8000 Owner's Thread - Page 221

Get a vt50

Congrats!! I feel I had the same story. I was going back and forth between those two TVs and I was a Sony TV guy too but had issues that were bad enough with my dealing with Sony that it left a bad taste in my mouth. The Samsung isn't perfect, but if you read the Sony threads, they aren't either. Good luck and welcome to the thread!

Because plasmas don't have their own issues. Dome people love plasma, some people love LCD. I can't do plasma. As for the 65" with terrible banding - very few are acceptable from what can be gathered here. Keep playing the panel library until you're happy or try a different maker. Son'y's 950, may be better with that, but then again, based on it's thread, it seems hit and miss too - and it costs more. If you can go with the 60", you'd be better off in this regard. If you can spend more money, consider and Elite or maybe Samsung's 9000, which seems to be better with banding. Or like Dad said, see how you feel about plasma.

I tend to agree with this. I have my Brightness set at 53 with offset adjustments, and dimming is almost non-existent. It's definitely a a non issue now, and the little it may be doing on an almost totally black screen is not only acceptable, but nice in certain aspects. I have my ECO set to 5 and am considering 4. I feel ECO is key if you're watching in an environment that has a lot of light during the day and none at night - unless you're cool with manually changing your backlight twice a day.

Eagle, if I remember right, you have your gamma up to +2. Now that you've made these changes, maybe try backing it down to 0?

Part of me totally agrees with you guys on this. But there is another issue that I try to keep in mind. Some people want a very thin TV with a very thin bezel. This tech is really at it's infancy. It's almost gotten ridiculous how thin these things are. I love it, but it's mind-boggling. But fitting everything into such a small, thin package costs money. Unfortunately, it also creates problems. I've read many times how such a small bezel introduces way more flashlighting, etc. There are trade offs on everything, but creating such a sleek TV costs more money than a thicker, less attractive TV - regardless of the issues introduced. That said, I still agree that it sucks having to spend that money on something with obvious issues. I didn't want an unattractive TV though.

Eagle, thanks a lot. Power is a wonderful thing. It was a very very weird feeling getting power. My wife and I literally haven't been that excited and happy since the birth of our last kid. We both felt that way, not kidding.

I used to have it at +2 but after using the WOW disc with the ce-dimming workaround, I brought the gamma back to 0 (it's in my settings from the last page).

I agree with you that these thin panels seem very attractive. Unfortunately it means picture quality sacrifices. My girlfriend's folks' Vizio is between 2-3 years old, and it is backlit, not form the sides. It's not even LED. Yet it's really not that thick. Not at all. Is the gain of shaving a few inches worth all the trouble with these screens? I mean compared to my old CRT, that Vizio is beautiful - it's like 85% thinner. Do we really need to have these screens as thin as paper? When does it stop? If they came out with a screen next year literally as thin as paper, but 30% more clouding and flashlighitng, would that be okay?

Just my thoughts on this obsession with this quest for the thinnest screen the manufacturers seem to be on.

Still on original firmware that my un60es8000 came with back in June.... 001013... There is NO WAY I am anywhere near to allowing an upgrade based on this thread yet. Not enough consistent feedback on pic quality, supported by any credible documentation by Samsung...Happrily staying put. I've mentioned that flashlighting is my only issue..yes it is, but its minimal and easily tolerated.

Zero banding vertical or horizontal in 2d or 3d
...am the geriatric poster child for old firmware on this thread as i sit on 001013???

ditto, i feel awful for you...power outtage is horrendous!!!!

...these scenarios are part of precisely why i gravitated away from overtweaking. It's not that I dont want to maximize the performance from my gear...but I've learned to appreciate my gear in a more tolerant way...make sense?

......Sorry daddy, I did weeks of side-by-side comparison between led/plasma...then specifically narrowed down to Panny and Sammy.....Then even after my purchase i revisted this comparison. I used to say that Panny plasma was superior to Sammy for dark or almost dark environments but I retract that. IMH ( and well researched side by side drill) Opinion, I absolutely think that the Sammy can be tweaked to provide the better, more vivid and engaging picture even in the dark environments. Even though it's tricky on our pupils I have actually started watching more tv in the dark. I have not done that since the late 90's. When it comes to razor sharp detail and "live window effect" HD...the Sammy rules over all plasma.

Exactly. I don't know the answer. Too each their own I guess.

This may be a stupid question but has anyone tried to calibrate their set using Game mode? Obviously Game mode uses Standard mode by default and as I understand it, it has full calibration controls. I just wondered whether CE Dimming worked in the same way when Game mode is enabled?

Anyone still debating whether to pull trigger on the es8000 (not es7500 or any other than 8000 series), I say go for it unreservedly on any size up to and including 60".

My experience since May has been great. I am also sitting on fw 1013, have seen no need (yet) to update, and I and my wife love the pic quality. 3D has no banding or ghosting that I've seen. Calibrations: Using something close to Nitra's settings, after WOW disc. Started with the un55es8000, and upsized to the 60 simply to get bigger screen.

No significant/unliveable quality issues whatsoever on the set, minus minor flashlighting in corners. Not all that noticeable, truly. The WOW disc has a couple great tests to determine screen uniformity, dead pixels, etc, and fortunately our set has none of those negative issues.

It's been mentioned before, but perhaps there are indeed more significant diffs between PQ of the es7500 and the es8000? As I said, both my es8000s are terrific, so I'd recommnend not waiting till 2013 if you don't have to and get to unxxes8000 sets up to and including 60" size.

After 6 and a half months, count us very happy.

Congrats. I agree - up to the 60" and I have the 7500. The CE Dimming may react differently because of the 8000 having more Micro Dimming zones, but they look the same.

I haven't read hear of anyone doing that specifically but yes, Game mode will turn off all processing - like CE Dimming. I'd rather go back to Movie mode for that though - with the added calibration settings.

You're right and I mentioned that. What I did was use Samsungs built-in HDMI calibration tool to recalibrate my panel (in the SM). Doing this really darkened the screen, but when I calibrated the TV with those settings (there's 6 SM settings that changed) the picture is absolutely kick-ass! I've never been able to get my white levels dialed in correctly until now. Even though my brightness setting sounds high, you have to ignore the number. The actual brightness isn't that high, it's just the starting level is now much lower than with the standard SM settings. I messed with this a lot yesterday and was finally able to get my white levels dialed in, but I was going back and forth for so long that I didn't actually realize how much better it looked until I started watching football today. I can finally see details in the whites. For example, the Falcons white jerseys finally showed creases and I could easily and clearly see the mesh, which was usually crushed out with the standard SM settings. I'm loving this picture 100% now! So much so that I'm probably going to cancel the pro calibration appointment I have.

I'm more convinced than ever that Samsung changed the default SM settings to get the brightness down so the dimming feature would not be disabled. You can still get a great picture with those factory SM settings, but it's impossible to really dial it in. Using their calibration tool to set the SM settings allows you to get the white and black levels spot on and it really makes a big difference! A huge plus in that is the fact that I no longer have the bad dimming in my Standard mode because the brightness level is set high enough. And I didn't have to actually set the brightness too high to get rid of it. That high brightness setting is exactly where it should be because of the changes the HDMI calibration tool made.

If anyone is interested in what actually changed in my SM menu, here they are:

2nd_R_L
2nd_G_L
2nd_B_L

2nd_R_H
2nd_G_H
2nd_B_H

All of those SM settings changed significantly, which allowed me to finally dial in this picture about as good as I believe possible. It can look very good without the SM changes, but I don't think it's possible to really get it dialed in completely without those things changing. I've never been happier with the PQ than I am now. It's the first time that I've felt like I no longer need to mess with the settings to try to improve anything. It's perfect at this point.

Actually I did use the WOW disc the other night on game mode. My settings for game mode turned out to be identical in every respect due to it being based on standard mode. There seemed to be no benefit to me using game mode over standard since the settings end up being the same. Garnoch had mentioned that CE-Dimming doesn't affect game mode. Unfortunately I can confirm that CE-Dimming does affect game mode just like standard mode. My girlfriend could see it easily when I demonstrated it earlier. Leaving the menu up on screen is an easy way to observe the level of CE-Dimming - if any auto-dimming is happening you can instantly see the menu dim with the rest of the picture, and it does auto-dim in game mode. Just like in standard mode, a high brightness setting can disable the ce-dimming.

Plus, you lose some options, like auto motion plus is disabled. So there seems to be no point in using game mode, other than of course for gaming, which definitely is a plus because there is certainly less lag in game mode.
Edited by eagle_2 - 11/11/12 at 4:55pm

Sorry but that's nonsense. People are spending close to $3k on some of these sets. You don't think that deserves some quality control? They must love customers like you. There is absolutely no reason to expect prices on a tv set to double or triple in price just to have some level of quality control on their panels. That's just baloney! According to Cnet, they were very impressed with the uniformity of the Panasonics (they didn't like much else about them, but if they can make panels with good uniformity, then there is no reason why Samsung shouldn't be able to also). And my girlfriend's folks' $450 Vizio from 3 years ago has NO CLOUDING OR FLASHLIGHTING WHATSOEVER. So that is just plain nonsense. I can't believe that some people actually think the panel lottery is a good thing for anybody. It's bad for the consumer and bad for the company too. Anybody that thinks otherwise has no idea what they are talking about.

Yeah, let's not hope the execs read this and decide to give us quality.
Edited by eagle_2 - 11/11/12 at 4:43pm

Cheers for the replies guys. Garnoch, I initially too thought Game mode did disable the CE Dimming but I established, as eagle_2 rightly says, that it doesn't unfortunately. So as you've both stated, there's not really a need to use it other than for it's true purpose, gaming.

@Paulybaby77,

Yeah, I added a bit more to my post after I read Garnoch's comment, just to clarify and add a bit more explanation regarding game mode and ce-dimming.

CE DIMMING IS ON IN GAME MODE???? That's freaking crazy. The point of game mode is to have all than nonsense turned off for least amount of lag. My bad but that's odd. Thanks for the clarification.

Does it stand to reason then that game mode while using Movie would have less lag?
Edited by Garnoch - 11/11/12 at 5:29pm

I agree it sucks that quality control isn't what it should be and that the panel lottery stinks. If one panel can be good, why can't they all be? I'm just not positive they can do it with a TV with such a small relative footprint without it costing them much more - which would then be passed onto the customer. I don't know. It sucks though. I'll tell you this.... I would pay more to be guaranteed to get this TV with a perfect panel. Regardless, I think if people want to talk or complain about this and other issues, this is the perfect place - assuming you own the TV.

Thanks for the info Eagle, Garnoch, and GTM73. I'm thinking you are probably right about it being a compression issue. I've only seen it on live TV. Just FYI -- I'm running a DirecTV HR21-700 box through a Marantz SR5007 with no video processing as I understand it (output resolution is set to "auto" on the AVR). Everything goes through the AVR to the TV through one HDMI cable from the AVR.

Any thoughts on why the "Update Firmware Available" box keeps popping up every time I turn on the TV and is nonresponsive? Very, very annoying! Am I the only one with this issue?

Nope, won't help in the slightest, because if you enable game mode while in movie mode, it just reverts to the same game mode based off of standard. Try it. From standard mode, go into game mode and set it up as you wish. Now leave game mode, and go into movie mode. Now go back into game mode from movie mode. It's the same exact game mode you were just in, with all the same exact settings, based off standard mode.

Bottom line: there's only 1 game mode, so no matter if you are in standard or movie or natural or dynamic, game mode is game mode - it's all the same mode - with CE-Dimming.

And yeah, I agree, it's ridiculous. The whole point of game mode is to disable all unneeded processing to improve lag. So then why is ce-dimming active? I bet I can answer that: because Samsung knows that they have major uniformity issues with their screens, and game mode doesn't change that. So they are willing to hurt our game lag in game mode by forcing ce-dimming, just to help hide the uniformity issues.

Not sure about that one. I really can't imagine why the update box would keep popping up like that and freezing. Very odd.

I see no reason why it would cost that much more to improve the quality control of the panels themselves. Everything else is fine - it's the panels that have the issue, so that's really the only are that needs to have extra attention devoted to it (and better firmware but that shouldn't cost any more money - just better people making the decisions). It certainly wouldn't double or triple the cost of the entire set. If the cost of each set went up a couple hundred dollars next year, but that meant instead of 10% of the panels being close to clouding/flashlighting free, 80-90% of them could be, I think that would be a good situation for everybody. A bit more cost for us, with the benefit of stepped-up quality control on their panels, so the odds are very very high in getting a great screen, instead of how it is now, with the odds very very high you're going to not get a good screen. And many many less returns for the company, since uniformity issue related returns would be greatly reduced. The reduced returns could also mean better return policies by stores, and maybe better sales or discounts, since the stores won't be getting hit so hard by returns, again due to uniformity issues. It would be a win-win situation for all of us.