Official Samsung 81 Series LNT-xx81f Owner's Thread Part II

Okay... since we're restarting here we go. Just to show you 0ire performance of the Samsung 81 vs. other sets. Mind you this is only a black screen. BLacks will 98 percent of the time will not look this way... and sometimes this black screen is a fault. But honestly... look at this black level..



I don't know why it's blurry... probably because I was talking to someone while taking it. Hehe. Sorry. The blank space of nothing you see above the blurry green HDVR box is the 81 series. The TV on the bottom is a Samsung 3251D. And the black level rating is .032 ftl. The difference is even more dramatic in person. So there's .032 ftl vs. 0 ftl. Big difference... YEP.

I forgot. This will be a perfect time to demonstrate w/o Smartled on too. I think it was done before, but since this is a new thread we'll throw it in the mix. Backlight bleeding is pretty nasty. Cloudy.



This is what the newer LCDs I'd imagine for the most part look like. Pretty okay. But nothing I'd write home about. Plasmas and LCDs seem to have these types of glow.

Where did the 81 go


NICE!!!!!!!!!!!

I'd love to see a night scene compared on both sets, just to get a better judgment on real-world blacks. A black screen all the LEDs are off, so the set is effectively off. Not really a good demo, IMO. A nice blend of dark and color in a black room on both sets would be great at contrasting the differences.

I'd second that Chris, something from say Batman Begins. A couple side by side comparison stills.

It's been brought out previously, but JB, we know the set does great "blank screen blacks", (well, and obviously great blacks in general), but could you throw more bones at us of real viewing black levels? I mean contentwise? I know it wil be tough to show the shadow detail with crappy cameras, but side by sides with your 32" of various dark movie scene's at night would be cool.

Don't worry it's coming. Or at least I'll try. My camera and my photography skills are limited. I'll be using this movie for "The Test".



Both screens are at the moment calibrated for best black level performance, not exactly greatest shadow detail. There's a balance to be found I know... but it'll take awhile.

I can't see too much glow on the photograph on my crappy LCD screen but there is an intsy amount of glow on the 81. BTW my camera is doing something funky to the 3251. It doesn't look that bad... trust me. Blacks are crap but it doesn't look as distorted. There's no ISO options on this stupid camera.

And I'm gonna go ahead and sound like an idjut, what the hell is Oire?

That's still cool even though people who understand local dimming technology already knew that black frames would be 0cd/m2 black. Unfortunately, pure blacks are only one half of the equation of what makes picture quality really great. The other side is grayscale performance which seems to be surprisingly average on these sets. The depth and realism of the picture does not depend purely on how black you can make the screen look, but is proportional to how many shades between white and black a display can reproduce. I strongly suspect that poor grayscale performance is the reason why you and others have not been blown away by the picture. With that, I would like to ask you if you could feed your 81 this test pattern.
http://www.walvisions.com/PattPages/...64_pattern.htm
Can you discern all the shades? Thanks for your input.

Now thats an awesome test pattern. My Monitor gets about halfway up the 2nd from the left column before mushing out into nothingness

Well, maybe two thirds up....

What sucks is I got no way to connect a PC feed at the moment. Sharp may be a better candidate for this test.

0ire is basically a black screen.

Can you save the image on a thumb drive and plug it in? How bout it VTMS? got a good HRES JPG of that file?

Great idea... I think I am looking for a USB port... hard to look in my situation.

Yeah, I know hehehe, but wtf, give it a go....

Just to give everyone a yardstick, I'm using a 19" CRT monitor right now and I can clearly see every single step in that pattern.

Let's see if the 81 series can do that.

Also, props to the OP for starting a new thread. The old one was so cluttered, after reading a few pages I just started randomly skiping over posts.

BTW, I should be taking a look at the 81 series tomorrow.

Oh hell Johnny, DOH!!! Just tell us how it looks on your set when you pull it up, cause our crappy monitors sure as hell aint gonna reproduce what your sets doing LOL I was waiting for a pic....Sheesh....

Okay I suck at photography. This is the only pic I was happy with. Great contrast range in film = awesome on the 81. The blacks aren't as black as you see probably on your screen but its plenty dark.

Good shot JB. So, in general, are ya likin the set? Or are you thinking it's too much money for not enough WOW? I'm still sittin on the fence with both Samsungs. My hope is for someone (I'll be watching the settings thread closely) to really dial one of these in.

But either way, I'm gonna be happy judging by Sharps experiences. Thanks ( know you've heard it, but it is such a time saver for us who follow) for all your posts.

Another thing I've not heard much comment on is the sound. What's your opinion on the built in speakers and sim surround sound? The room this set would be going in is all wood laminate flooring, very echoey (did I spell that right), and not a place for a surround sound system. In here, less is more. Hows this baby sound?

Unfortunately, I don't. Sorry.


Ha, so you see now where I am going with this, don't you? Low-end grayscale performance is (almost) all that counts. I have two monitors, one LCD, the other CRT (not even a good one) and the LCD one gives up at the 24th lowest shade while the CRT displays all of them with no problem.

Thanks. No more photos though.. it's too much of a hassle and its not really indicitive to what I'm seeing. Same stuff. Anyway, am I liking the set? ... Well yes and no.

I appreciate the set because finally black looks black and dark scenes are dark enough to be called dark. I don't know how many sets I've gone through complaining about dark scenes. Out of the hundreds and hundreds of flat panels there are only two brands of TVs I didn't complain. This is one of them. Samsung 81 can render deep blacks w/ SmartLED on. So that's where most my praise is.

There are definite kinks though. I went through it all in a long post last night. Still tinkering to find that happy balance. I don't need to repeat myself.

And I did comment on the sound. These are nicest and coolest looking speakers I've ever seen and heard on a TV set.

Thanks, I think I know the post yer talking about, I'll go reread.

BigJohns1997SS,

It was the BB on Hwy 6 North, just north of 529. The 5281 was in the back room of the Magnolia store. Hopefully they will wise up and either move it, or put a blu-ray on it.

CadJoe

Wow, I just got an email from my dad of some space shuttle pics floating around.

First thought was what better BLACK is there than space, then I immediately wondered what it would look like on the 81.

These are some amazing pics. Originally in BMP, but Wiselink will only allow JPG or MP3, so I converted to JPG and scaled down to around 2000x1250 with zero compression. I was amazed at how clean everything is in pic 6.

Shuttle1
Shuttle2
Shuttle3
Shuttle4
Shuttle5
Shuttle6

PM me and I'll forward you the email with original BMPs.

CadJoe

Yay. Some good news! Or... I guess it would be kinda bad news for some people. I have fixed some of the issues that I had in my write up but at a small/or big price depending on who you are. I knew this would work and others suggested it. You guys are right on.

With normal TVs what I do to set black level is go to a 0ire signal (black) and then crank it until it can't get darker. Of course Samsungs treshhold is 0ftl. That brought me to a brightness setting of 46, just like sharpjunkie. Well by turning brightness up to 51 and gamma at 2, most of the crush is gone. I am seeing more details.

In Batman Begins where Raz is talking to Bruce Wayne in the prison... I can now see the details to the left of Bruce Wayne's face, the details of the jail wall. 56 seemed to bring out all detail... I settled at 51.

Fact is I still see some crush going on. I used a test from Doom and to render all shadow detail I needed to hit 56 on brightness as well, which totally washed out the picture and black levels were now like a bad LCD at that point. So 51 again was my balance and it seems to be my happy spot.

Another benefit? The floating blacks and pulsating is still there but DRAMATICALLY lowered. I don't notice at as much at all. It doesn't look unatural anymore and it seems stable... if you look closely you'll still see it but it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb anymore. AWESOME!!

But the drawback here is all black screen being 0ftl? That goes bye bye. The contrast is still amazing though, but at the 46 brightness setting the contrast is unbelieveable and you had the 0ftl screen (at the cost of stability). Right now after my tinkering, the black level still glows a little at 0ire, but at least its somewhat stable(r).

Another draw back is that washed out colors now seem a tad bit more washed out. Highering the brightness effected bright scenes all be it minor in comparison to what it did for stability.

Well two problems down w/o too much scathing. Now if I can get color to look right then we got ourselves a winner.

P.S.: D-nice, that scene where the many eyee monster kills the dude with that "tongue attack". You're supposed to see the monster? I see bits and pieces of him... but a full blown figure? No.

This is great news JB.

Still wondering if our pot of gold tweak is in the service menu.

I doubt it man. If only for one reason. The local dimming has limits.

It's just the way smartled works. Basically if the image has nothing in it, the SmartLed if calibrated will try to shut off completely in that zone. So in the Star Wars scene I am describing, what is happening is that stars are disappering in that image. So what happens is the black area suddenly gets darker... while the other areas with stars and the ship do not. This doesn't look right.

Same thing with Doom. When there's a flashlight and a halo appears around that area... and the other half the screen is dark, the smart led will darken itself. This also doesn't look right.

In contrast a scene where some guy opens a trunk with nothing in it, that lowering of darkness wouldn't bug you at all.

The TV can't pick and choose when to dim or not based on specific scenes. Sometimes it'll work out great sometimes it won't. But in the real world we're not looking at numbers. We're looking at images. So unless the TV literally gets "smart" and begins to be scene specific.. (i.e. treat space scenes, date scenes, and dark cave scenes differently) It won't be fixed.

Or you can just do it the easy way and go pixel by pixel or alot more clusters.

If you're talking about colors though I know you're right. If I had more tools I could mess with the RGB balance a little more. On a side note, the set seems to struggle most in terms of rendering shadow detail on scenes with bright and dark content. Alot of times in Doom I have to get brightness way too high to render details in their uniforms for instance. I don't remember having that problem with other TVs.

My tv was in movie mode with brightness at 45, and contrast at 90. I was only able to see distinct rows from the 2nd column, 2nd row and on through all the brighter shades. Everything in column 1 and column 2, rows 1 and 2, were pure black.

I increased brightness one increment at a time. When I hit a brightness of 64, I'm able to see all the distinct rows in the left most column. I am still able to see all the horizontal rows in the 4th column but while the rows are clearly defined, that entire column looks to be almost the same shade of grey to my eyes.

Changing contrast did not seem to affect it too much.

My settings are now at:
Mode: movie
contrast: 85
brightness: 64
sharpness 20
color: 55
backlight: 5

LED Motion Plus was off. When I enabled it, the screen turned dimmer but when I exited up to to the parent menu it showed backlight at 10 and greyed out so that I could not alter it. If I turn LED Motion Plus off, the screen gets brighter but the backlight is set back down to 5 and is no longer a greyed out option.

Johnny, Naruto, man I have been tinkering with these settings for the past two hours. Jeez samsung....

You have contrast, Brightness, Backlight, LedSmartlighting, ColorTone, Black Adjust, Dynamic Contrast, Gamma, Color Space, White Balance, xvYCC, and LED motion plus, which equals more than 1000 types of combitnations and solutions to make this tv look like and act like we want it too. It is just way too much for the average joe. I can't believe that samsung would make a tv like this and expect the average joe to come home and make it work with the remote control. It seriously takes some real time just to get this tv to look right. Hours of testing over and over and if it works great on one BD it might not look great on another that is more dark or more bright. This tv is a nightmare for me. I am glad that you got one Johnny and can kind of understand my troubles when I was posting the 71 vs 81 thread. What happened to the good ole days when you turn on the tv and had like 3 options, color, brightness, and hue/tint?

Yes. I agree with you. There's WAY too many things going on. You forget edge enhancement, DNIE, Noise Reduction, RGB adjustments, My ColorCorrector... cripes man. I respect you Sharp, I know most people would probably blow up and go off on the forum out of misery of not being able to get the PQ you want exactly. How is the 71 compared to 81 in terms of tweakability?

Also: To Ken Ross, the infamous man on these threads. I now understand what you were saying. ^_^ Haha. There is a haziness. IF. BIG IF. If you can't live with losing a bit of shadow detail. If you want the set to render as much information as possible in dark areas you need to bring the black level way up and lose that awesome contrast ability.

Same but not as extreme. I used someones settings for thier 65 that they got with pro calibration equipment and it looks great with HD content like Leno or Conan as well as the 2 BD that I use, and 5th element has lots of space scenes. It's just with this 81 I want it to do what it should be doing. That infamous bond scene of him starring at the camera with the rock to his left and the out of focus trees to his right is my main concern. With LED LD, it should look perfect meaning that his face should be in focus with no black crush, lots detail on his face, his shirt, and the rock to his left, and most importantly, the upper right blob of sky with the tree branches should be dark and visible. It is almost like you are trying to get his face and shirt and rock perfect but at the same time you are raising the contrast and brightness to get to that sweet spot, the upper right sky blob also get's brighter and less detailed and the leaves began to glow flourecent green, and it should not do this. It is almost like we need the ability to set each individual cluster to a certain light output so that the LED LD is doing what it is supposed to plain and simple, keep the light parts light but not to overly bright and at the same time keep the dark parts dark but not to overly dark unless they are supposed to be pitch black, but then is where that floating black problem comes into play. This set must be a nightmare for engineers, I can only imagine...

About the 71, 81, it was like I was saying from day one even with little tweaking and play time on both, I almost had to get rid of the all black effect on the 81 to get the same type of image displayed on both sets. That is one of the reasons I kept the 71 was mainly due to the fact that they almost both compared equally minus the really dark blacks on the 81 which you would have to sacrifice to get it to display a nice picture... AHHHHHHHHHHH