Samsung F8000 -- 2013 Flagship Models - Page 50

More zones than you'd think...as in hundreds...as in essentially the same # as the Sharp Elite.

Don't ask me how I know.

I doubt it too. But keep in mind Samsung is saying just that (brightness of an LED) with the F8500. So someone may have found a way to do it. Judging from what we've seen and heard with the F8000, I am less skeptical than I'd normally be.

Cmay, where did you hear that Panasonic was bowing out next year?

The auto-dimming does not appear to be tied into any light sensor or ambient light detector. Instead, it's based solely on the brightness of the screen image. That's why the workaround is able to overcome the auto-dimming (at least last year). The higher you adjust the brightness setting, the less aggressive the auto-dimming is. At a brightness setting of 46-48 (average setting last year), the auto-dimming is very aggressive. If you move the brightness slider up to around 55-60, it becomes virtually unnoticeable. Having the main menu up last year was an easy way to see how aggressive it was. Just pull up the main menu, and put on the end of a film while the credits are rolling against a black screen. My test was using Star Trek - the Next Generation because the opening titles sequence caused the auto dimming to go all over the place as bright planets whooshed by the screen against the black of space. By the time brightness was moved up to around 58, it was clear that auto-dimming was virtually defeated. But of course, brightness was now far too high. So to compensate you would drop the white balance offsets equally until the screen dropped back to normal brightness again. This defeated auto-dimming because it seems auto-dimming is directly linked to the brightness setting - if the brightness is set high, auto-dimming doesn't kick in because the tv thinks the screen never hits a low enough threshold to need to dim, based solely on the setting of brightness, even though in reality the offsets have brought the brightness back down to normal again. It was a clever workaround that somebody figured out last year and it was the only was I could tolerate the auto-dimming, because it was basically gone with that tweak.

Also, last year the screen had a nasty habit of turning off completely when the screen showed nothing but black. Probably to try and hide all the lousy screen abnormalities like clouding. But this was very annoying when your film would fade to black between scenes, because the tv panel would literally shut of it's illumination, and pop back on again when the scene faded back in. Turning the brightness up past 47 or 48 seemed to defeat that annoyance also, so it seems those "features" were tied directly into the brightness setting last year. I wasn't able to tell yesterday if the screen turned off with black fades - so I don't know if the behavior will be the same this year. If the panels are as good as they are supposed to be this year, and the blacks are so good, then I don't see why the tv panel should need to turn off with black fades, since it should be able to present a nice true black screen without turning off the panel illumination.

From what I could see, these auto-dimming "features" could not be disabled - just like last year. I saw nothing in the settings that disabled the dimming I saw, and most of the settings in the menu were already familiar to me from last year - the new options didn't sound like they had anything to do with any type of micro-dimming or auto-dimming.

It would be great if somebody could get to the bottom of all this - last year we were all very puzzled in the ES800 thread between auto-dimming/CE-Dimming and Micro-dimming, and ultimately the auto-dimming workaround was the best anybody could come up with.

Cool! I did not know that the Spanish Samsung site had the F8000 listed already. I havent found it on any of the other EU Samsung sites, so I cant give you any confirmation.
Lets hope they just forgot to add it on the features sheet I saw Precision Black listed on one of the Swedish retailers. Don't know if they got their info directly from Samsung or if its just copy&paste from the US specs. Anyway.. IF they indeed remove stuff from the EU version we should find a way to flash the sucker with the US firmware

Yes. Inquiring minds want to know.

How do you know?

More hardware dimming zones that the D8000? Because I wasn't too impressed with the implementation there. Last I heard the D8000 had around 250 hardware dimming zones that they were claiming which is really not that great

I know that Samsung is claiming that they have "thousands" of dimming zones OVERALL but a lot of that is chalked up to what they can do via dynamic contrast ratio software and even with the smaller number of zones alloted by the edge lit local dimming, it's not nearly as good as real backlit local dimming. I don't care how many zones they claim it has, it will never equal a fully backlit set from a technical aspect. From an execution standpoint...we'll see

From the reviews so far has it been well implemented and effective? Yes. But I don't think we've yet seen the day that edge lit dimming has surpassed full array dimming

Ken, it's floating around here and other forums. check out Reuters for some info.

here yohttp://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/18/us-panasonic-plasmatv-idUSBRE92H00020130318u go:

CNET article:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57574828-92/panasonic-may-part-ways-with-plasma-tvs-to-save-self/

All very true. Funny that the Best Buy guy told you that about "Samsung would kill us if they knew" because the guy I talked to said Samsung would not spend the extra money to have the set displayed in the Magnolia room. I think these Best Buy employees have no idea what they're talking about.

Especially Pannys. Samsungs are less vulnerable. Not sure about LG.

Smart LED was also available last year, and it had no effect on the auto-dimming that I'm referring to.

I haven't heard anyone (thus far) talking about this fluctuating screen brightness. The calibrator that Robert used didn't mention it and so far I haven't heard AGuy mention it. Hopefully it's not an issue because I could see this being a problem.

Are you sure this is not a by-product of 'Dynamic Contrast'? It's the only setting I saw in the manual that would seem as if it might manifest itself the way you describe.

BTW, that screen going black with nothing on it, why was that an issue? If there is no content or zero input, I'd expect (and hope) the screen would go completely black. I wouldn't appreciate a dark gray. We strive for those pitch blacks. So perhaps I'm misunderstanding the problem.

They didn't makeup their mind yet, wither to quit plasma business or not.

It is not dynamic contrast. It was off. I am very familiar with this auto-dimming, as is many of the owners of the ES series last year. It isn't linked into the dynamic contrast,. It also has nothing to do with motion lighting or smart LED. Those were always off on my ES7500 and the auto-dimming was still very much active. What I'm referring to is often called "CE-Dimming" - apparently, some years ago, it used to be hidden in the service menu, and you could disable it from there if you dared to enter it, which is a very bad idea. Last year, they disabled that option even in the service menu - it was greyed out, so it could not be disabled.

Many people in the ES800 thread swore they never saw any signs of auto-dimming, so not everyone will notice. But for those that were aware of it (and I honestly don't know how anyone can miss it), it can be very annoying.

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1463886/panasonic-may-end-plasma-production-in-2014

your right not "officially" yet.

I told you not to ask!

Actually the hardware dimming zones are more than the 250 you mention. As I said, it's comparable to the Sharp Elite which is a really nice thing.

We may not have seen the day that edge lit has 'surpassed' full array, but we may be witnessing it 'equaling' it.

Samsung never issues patch notes. Get used to it. Last year the same patch notes were issued with every single update - nobody ever had any idea what was actually new or changed. Everybody in the ES8000 thread always had to try and figure out what if anything changed. This is very poor practice by Samsung.

Yeah, I freaked out last year when I saw that - it was in the owner's manual also. The manula warned of not leaving static image sup for too long in case of image retention. Another case of Samsung not quite being on the ball with their documentation. I have no idea why they say that because this does not apply to an LED LCD set.

Wow, didn't hear that. Art will go catatonic.

Samsung's terminology is completely confusing. I swear they like to keep us all confused. Several of us last year called Samsung to try and get some answers on micro-dimming, auto-dimming, etc - and even they had no idea about any of it. It's all very confusing. One thing that I'm almost certain of at this point - we cannot disable auto-dimming/CE-Dimming in the menu settings, just like last year. Read the forums - every year people scream and holler for Samsung to let us have that option to disable CE-Dimming, and every year Samsung ignores everyone.

Because it's not a true show of a sets black levels, so going pitch black to lighter black for real content shows a sets limitations. I would prefer the screen remained on and didn't switch from pitch black to lighter black inbetween scenes.

Aaron

If so, then what was Smart LED last year then? Because last year we had that setting also but it didn't disable auto-dimming. And yesterday I had Smart LED off, and the screen still dimmed.

I will leave this link here - it links to a setting called "shadow detail" that Samsung used to have on their sets before they removed it. Last year the ES series did not have this setting as an option. It describes what I believe was CE-Dimming/auto-dimming.

https://support-us.samsung.com/cyber/popup/iframe/pop_troubleshooting_fr.jsp?idx=161759&modelname=UN46C9000ZF&modelcode=&session_id=NJ2H4hpMLRzlGdj4RzLXr0K8VYwppbvcSQyjslnTxmD1RWX8QFQq!640189940!1761676348!7501!-1!-944161233!1761676444!7501!-1!1296659975846

This is for the C-series sets.

"The Shadow detail option on the TV functions to automatically dim the TV for low light scenes to enhance the black levels. Because this dimming is automatic and based on the signal depending on how this option is set it can enhance or degrade the image. To set this option:

Use the ◀ and ▶ to make your adjustments to Shadow detail.

Setting Shadow detail into the negative (-) direction makes the TV dim more for darker images.
Setting Shadow detail to 0 disables the auto dimming.
Setting Shadow detail into the possative (+) direction makes the TV brighten the darker images."


I believe this used to let people control the auto-dimming. We no longer have that option - it's just forced off in movie mode and forced on in all other modes. This is what I was hoping to see new this year in the menu - but they have not put this option back in ,even though many have asked for it.

I had the B6000 from 2010 and it the dimming was annoying. I got used to it though. It would dim only in darker scenes and credits. The youtube app on many tvs displays the logo in the middle of the tv with black everywhere else. If dimming is a function of the tv like my B6000 and many other Samsung's the whole picture will dim but when I press info on my Tivo the screen would get brighter and when the info banner faded it would go back to the darker, dimmer version. The same thing would happen if I got into the TVs Menu.

Not having seen their implementation, I'll reserve judgement, but I definitely agree with your logic. I thought I had previously seen a Samsung comment about it, but I could be wrong. I thought they had mentioned (though not in the manual) both top & bottom as well as the sides. Although I'd normally dismiss this, I would have also doubted they could have achieved the apparent PQ they have with edge lighting. So who knows?

I suspect either way it will be quite dark and not such that it would be disturbing. 4:3 content is 4:3 content, so I wouldn't get too crazed about it. It's exceedingly rare that I watch 4:3 content, but this should be easy for AGuy to check out.

So we need to verify that this still is the case (the implementation of non-defeatable CE dimming) and that it's impacting the picture in the way you describe. I'm hoping that the fact that people haven't seen it thus far is a good sign (I didn't notice it with the 3 units I've seen), but as you say it may be a sensitivity issue. However, with that said, I'm not sure how people could miss it.

Edit: I should have added that, given the excellent black levels reported, I can't even see the need for this.

I was operating under the assumption that the black stayed black until content called for a brightening. If it behaves as you describe, that's something else and it would depend on how much variation there is in the black levels going from a 0 MLL to whatever it settles at with any kind of content. If the actual content calls for differing black levels, then it's behaving as expected.

Depending on how this actually behaves and not having seen this issue thus far, I'm not sure how much or if it would be disturbing/noticeable.