Samsung 46ES6710 micro review - backlight bleeding

Hello everyone. I just got one of the newest 6 series LCD's from Samsung. It's the largest 6710 available and I haven't found any reviews on it, so maybe somebody will find this information useful and, maybe, throw in an opinion about it.
In a nutshell, the unit is great but, unfortunately, it suffers from pronounced (i think) backlight bleeding / clouding. It is an edge-lit panel and, from what I could find out, these problems are somewhat common. It is, by far, its greatest flaw, and you would expect a little better for the kind of money you pay for this. Besides this issue, it's an awesome TV, it has a great design, a little strange that there are no buttons on the unit though, it features high speed N WIFI and can stream 1080p mkv from a PC flawlessly, it features a full array of connectors, CI slot. Apps are cool too, including the browser, although using your remote to input text takes forever. The browser also supports Flash. The 3D is good, I don't care much about 2D to 3D conversion, but 'native' 3D looks great, minimal disconfort. It comes with two pairs of bluetooth glasses, they don't have rechargeable batteries, but work with a small lithium battery (CR2032 or something similar). They're light but maybe a bit too small.

Now, back to the problem at hand: the clouding. I'm not familiar with edge LED TV's and I'm thinking of returning and exchanging the unit. But I would like your input on this, is this kind of thing acceptable for these types of displays ? If I exchange it, do I risk of getting the same problem or worse ?

I attached a picture done with a 4 second exposure, ISO 80 without any other light sources than the TV.

Thanks

A small update : it seems that when first starting the TV, the bleeding is almost unnoticeable, after an hour or two, probably due to the heating produced by the LEDs which causes some dilation or something - a blue-ish screen will look like the one in the picture.
That is unfortunate, if you were to test this unit in a shop, you would not notice anything wrong with it, unless you would sit at least half an hour with it. So, buyers beware !
I will post pictures ASAP and will try to get a refund or a replacement on this.

Did I say something wrong there ? As it's most likely obvious, English is not my native language.

As I said earlier, I find it interesting that the problem doesn't appear too obvious when the TV was just turned on. I took 3 pictures. They're from the opening scene of The Usual Suspects (a 720p mkv). One was taken right after the TV was turned on, one after 30 minutes and one after 4 or 5 hours of playing Call of Duty on my XBox. It's probably because the LEDs take some time to reach their maximum brightness. All pictures were taken with an exposure time of 4 seconds.

Now ... 4 seconds exposure time might be a bit overkill, so the last picture was done with an exposure time of 1 second.

It is a bit closer to what you see with the naked eye.

It's still bad and I'm really not sure what to do - try to exchange it or get my money back on the 31 day return policy, or live with it. On one hand, it cost a lot of money and I would like it to be perfect. On the other hand, it's a big a** TV and I'll have to pack it and bring it back to the store myself, pick another one that might still have this problem, or worse, have dead pixels or whatever and have to repeat the process.

Samsung would better start to favor image quality over slim-ness or design. It's ultimately the consumer's fault, because that's what they're demanding - slim, minimalistic design, not realizing that what they actually want is image quality.

The retailer won't exchange it because they consider that it can be fixed with the right settings, and kindly pointed me towards the Samsung service to get the magical values that will make the clouding just poof away. They won't accept it under their normal return policy because, according to their internal rules, 'any item bought through a credit system (e.g. with a special credit card from Citibank which I used, I won't get into details) can't be returned'. So, if you're in Romania, and feel the need to buy something from Domo (that's the retailer chain's name), do yourselves a favor, and don't - in fact, turn 180 degrees and start running.

Samsung will probably say 'it's within the acceptable limit'. I'll send them the exact email I sent to the retailer, maybe they'll be more sensitive to the issue, but I really doubt that. Thanks for everyone's support. If anyone wants to buy this set and has questions about it, post them, and I'll answer them gladly.

The 'Standard' preset I think.

So, any other 6710 owner around here, I'd love to get more opinions about this and I'm curious if all 6710 are as ****** as mine.

Hello everybody !

A little update here, or, rather, some more random weirdness from this TV. I spoke with the Samsung Costumer Service and, after sending them some of the pictures I posted here as well, they suggested some settings to 'fix' the problem - to switch to Movie mode and set the backlight to 4.
Doing this attenuated the clouding issue, but uncovered a new one. As you can see in the boon_test_mov.jpg picture, I get a beautiful dark rectangle in the middle of the screen when viewing the respective .avi from my PC using AllShare. When setting MotionLedPlus to Off it gets slightly less obvious but it's still there. Setting the backlight above 10 with MotionLedPlus off or above 15 with it on, and the effect is no longer perceptible.
Now, here's where it gets weird. When viewing a still image, with the exact same content, and using the exact same settings, there's no apparent problem. You can see that in the boon_test_still.jpg file (I did a snapshot of the movie and shared it with AllShare). Not only that, but not even on a white image is it obvious (white_still.jpg). Only when setting the backlight to zero, the darker area become visible once again, but, still, it's better than in the case of the movie.
It seems to me that Samsung's local dimming algorithms fail as hard as a monkey doing a math equation.
My only choice now is to send it to repair, but, I don't feel that this is something fixable and I'll probably receive it back full of prints and dirt, so I'm really not sure if I should do this.

Well, I went and contacted service - returning it to the pricks at Domo was out of the question because their return policy states that if you bought something with any type of credit (card, bank etc), you're out of luck - and sent them most of the samples I posted here as well. They were kind enough to forward the problem to Samsung Romania, which were as useful as I expected them to be : 'clouding can be solved by adjusting settings, the other issue will be fixed by a firmware update'. I have some great respect for eMAG in this regard, they are a lot more flexible when returning items. They also don't have any idiotic clauses to their 30 days return policy. In theory, you could send it back, if you're within the 30 day period, and have it exchanged or have your money back, no questions asked. I did this with a laptop once that had two dead pixels, they had no problems giving my money back.
If you can't live with the issue, you can have it exchanged, but keep in mind that there's a significant chance you would one with the same problem, or worse. I have a lower end edge-lit 40'' LG (no 3D) and it shows some bleeding, maybe not as bad as the Samsung, but maybe that's because the Samsung has a much more powerful back-light.

The solution in that topic seems like a good way to destroy your LCD panel. I wouldn't it try it, poking your LCD screen will, in the best case scenario, do nothing, in the worst case, make things a lot worse. Seems more like an urban myth to me.

As I said before, the clouding becomes obvious after an hour or so, in the first 30 minutes (approx.), it looks perfect. So, checking it inside the store won't do, unless the guys in the store have a lot of patience to let you check it for at least 30 minutes. Also, you need a dark room you won't find in many stores.

I'm at work right now, and I'm facing some serious overtime here, so I don't know if I'll be able to post some test pictures today.

Another thing, after I bought this TV, lucky me, I found out that some stores were offering special prices for the new Samsung models, and the ES6800 was actually just a little more expensive than I paid for this one (usually it's significally more expensive). It's still an edge lit model, but it might be higher quality, due to being the best model in the 6 series (I think).

Ok, I'll try those settings, but, I can assure you, you would be dissapointed if you got used to a backlight level of 15 (20 is max), and you would have to go to 7 or 8 just because of that crappy clouding. The image just doesn't feel as lively. It's like having a fast Ferrari, but you can only speed up to 60 km/h.
As I said, I'll be at work for quite a long time, so I don't know when I'll have time to post pictures, but I will do so ASAP.
I tried watching 3D, there's an Samsung app offering 3D content on there, and also you can watch 3D videos (side by side) on YouTube (also an app). There's some flickering and ghosting in there, but I guess the quality is overall pretty good. I really like the glasses, they are very light and use a CR2032 battery, so they are almost as small and light as a pair of passive ones . Also, the TV has a refresh rate of 200Hz, so it's as good as a mid-range TV can get, but, as I said, flickering is still slightly noticeable.
I don't watch TV too often, but, from what I saw, the image is pretty good even in SD.

It's 400Hz 'CMR' or Clear Motion Rate. I think that it's a 400Hz 'perceived' rate obtained thru image processing, and a 200Hz 'real', 'physical' refresh rate. I would love to have some info about this from someone who knows about this measuring standard, which is a marketing ploy, of course.
In 3D that mean 100 'real' Hz per eye which should be enough, but, oddly enough, it doesn't always feel so.

When playing Xbox 360 thru HDMI I use Standard image settings and a backlight level of 14, which I feel is ok, but most of the 'cloud spots' are still visible even with a backlight level of 4. Clouding is a variable issue with these TVs, so you might get lucky and get a better one.

I'll try to summarise the pros and cons.

PROS:
- Image quality is very good, even when being upscaled from standard definition, blacks look great
- 200Hz, should be enough for anything
- It is very configurable, it has a crap ton of image settings you can fiddle with
- It's a smart TV, you have apps for YouTube, you can stream movies and images from your PC (although using Samsung AllShare isn't great, it crashes sometimes and it's a bit slow on the PC side)
- I use it mainly to play on my consoles, the response time is great, i'd say it's a very good TV for gaming
- for such a slim TV, sound is also good, and quite powerful
- for analog sources it has a noise image filter, i use it with digital TV, so I don't know how well that works, but it's there
- it looks pretty, white is not such a common color for a TV, and blends nicely against a white wall
- i have to double check, but I remember it has a picture-in-picture feature, you can watch a source like HDMI and have a small window with output from the normal TV source
- 3D is nice, nice glasses too, 2 pairs in the package
- has high speed n-standard WIFI, it's really fast, I was amazed it could stream 1080p content from my PC without problems

CONS:
- F*ing clouding, good luck with that
- Expensive in my country, the google currency converter gives me 1024 pounds, 1275 euros or 1611 US dollars
- Very simple physical controls on the TV, just a 4 directions joystick on the back side which can turn on the TV and control sound volume and channel (i think it can get you in the menus as well, not sure though)
- for Scart and CI it has adapters, probably they could not fit the required connectors on the TV unit in order to keep it so slim, so they used some custom connectors and it comes with adapters for each
- the stand doesn't look so stable
Edited by NK0d3R - 6/16/12 at 11:35am

I'm still at work right now, so I can't test anything. And, being 1:10 AM right now, I don't think I'll test anything today. But, I tried basically all backlight settings, it seems that the screen will change it's brightness in a somewhat uniform fashion. What I mean is that the brightness difference between a cloud spot and a normal zone will not vary that much with the backlight settings. This TV has another feature that should theoretically help: local dimming. That means that the TV will lower the brightness of specific LED emitters according to the brightness of the image displayed. It can be enabled or disabled, but even with it enabled, clouding is still there.
Even worse, when playing a movie from the PC, you get the issue I talked about in an earlier post : the local dimming feature messes up and you get problems like that above (that darker line in the middle of the screen, probably the TV 'thinks' that that specific area is darker than it actually is and tries to adjust backlight accordingly). The official answer from Samsung about this : we'll fix it in a firmware update. The good think is that when viewing TV, this issue doesn't exist.