I wouln't mind it if it only happened when paused...it happens when I am actually playing.

I think the set is not correctly determining when an image is static.

I still have yet to see the dimming when watching SDR content.

I am essentially playing God of War with the HUD off and only available when I touch the pad on the dual shock controller. Otherwise a minute into combat it gets super dark and hard to see.

I live in Brazil and I'm having the same problem ... I received a visit from a Sony technician and he told me that the only way to get back the firmware is to change the motherboard and install the old firmware ... it seems to be something simple , but sony has to accept the exchange of this board, it's expensive.
I'm expecting a response from sony, my tv had a beautiful image, now I want to hit with a baseball bat.

Could it be that sony tried to implement a logo dimming feature like the LG Oleds have but instead of dimming just the static logo it will dim the whole picture?

We do not know ... but one thing caught my eye ... almost all screen savers of apple tv 4k darken after 1 minute without any static image or logo ... it does not make any sense the algorithm implemented by sony

I'm so glad i'm not the only one having this EXACT same issue!

Let's hope a future firmware update will fix this. It's just mental to think Sony's PS4 Pro is advertised as the ultimate combo with their A1 and they don't take this seriously.

Are there any links out there to the previous firmware? Want to take a look at it and see if i can force to downgrade it. I don't believe it's impossible.

I (almost) got it to update with the firmware from October 2017, by simply renaming that firmware file to a higher number (this way it tricks the TV into thinking it's a newer version than the recent firmware).

I got excited; it completely copies the old firmware, but quits after 1/4th of the updating process. After this failed update, it still shows the latest firmware (PKG6.2858.0082EUA), glad it didn't brick the TV. Played God Of War, just to be sure, but unfortunately the dimming is still there.

I tried to do the same but I could not ... did you put which number? we can try again

Hello,

Just a heads up. The issue occurs mostly while gaming. What I noticed is that if there are static objects in the viewport, such as HUD you will heavily noticed the dimming effect from time to time. In case of god of war, as someone suggested above, you can turn off the hud (increases the difficulty), thus you can't have the dimming effect, and the image looks as bright as it should. However, there are games where you can't turn off any static elements such as FIFA, something that ruins the experience.

Really hope a firmware update could solve this problem

I have the impression that the peak of brightness has decreased too ... I was playing Gears of War 4 and I remember the brightest maps, especially the dark ones.

My tv only messes up when I watch netflix through the tv on Dolby vision. It will get really grainy and weird artifacts on the picture. is anyone else experiencing this?

DV looks excellent on my A1E via ATV4K.

Here aswell. Pretty much everything else does too.

Is this "dimming bug" a 100% certainty when upgrading to the latest version? Or does only some people have it?
Do we know this?

Seems like only some people have it, which is very odd.

SONY told me that it's not a bug and all TV's are set like that.

Again, when contacting support make it clear that you understand there is an auto-dim feature...but that it is enabling at incorrect times.

I have not yet noticed it on my 77

God of War is really annoying with HDR on.
So the HUD off suggestion works wonders, but having no information on your health status or the enemy health status and such is a pain too.

It seems the TV detects static bright images and then proceeds to dim the entire screen.
In god of war combat outside in the bright world, it makes it seems like night has started falling suddenly, but it is the TV dimming.

I have no issues in HDR tv shows or movies, because these do not have static elements in netflix or blu-rays.


Adjusting the Peak luminance setting to medium makes the dimming less noticable, because the image has less dimming to do.
Having it on low made me not notice the dimming at all, in fact this seems like this is the setting the screen dims too when it does dim.
Peak luminance setting on high is the standard setting for HDR though and you want the peak brightness high for HDR highlights, so setting it to low makes you miss some of the beauty that HDR offers.

I have not checked raising the peak luminance on SDR yet and do things like watching sports, the feeling i have now is that those that have this problem with SDR, might have their peak luminance setting on high for SDR or something? I have it off normally in SDR, so in SDR i never noticed a problem.

So for those that don't have this problem, playing God of War with HDR on and HUD on, makes the peak luminance setting go from High to Low every damn minute until you head into a menu or something and the screen slowly brightens to high peak luminance again.
This dimming is pretty actually slow when it activates, so you are sometimes fooled into not noticing the change happening immediately, but then you suddenly think at times, why is the image so dark?
I will try to find some God of War spoiler free bright areas where i can show the dimming on youtube, or perhaps just demo it with the menu screens.
This will probably not show up on camera as clearly as you see it in person however.

I wish i could roll back the firmware, the difference dolby vision makes is not worth HDR game issues.
This TV was expensive, to think a sony firmware update made this product worse for me without an option to make it better is kind of hard to swallow.

The firmware update has totally ruined the set as far as I am concerned. There are owners here in the UK who had nothing but high praise for the TV before the PKG6.2858 firmware update but are now left in a state of utter despair. Sony Support are in denial of any issue and I quote their email response "Kindly note that the picture dimming is normal and is within specifications after the latest software update ".

I have studied the Firmware update v6.2858 and nowhere in the "Benefits and improvements from the latest update" is there anything with relevance to picture dimming. If it was there then I would have refused the update. Sony have introduced the effect without giving any options so this under UK Consumer Rights Act deems the set not as described and make them open to litigation.

I did not pay a premium for this set to watch a soccer match for a couple minutes of pristine image which slowly fades to about half the original brightness and then being told by the manufacturer that this is normal.

We need to harass Sony and the press about this problem - similar to the fiasco of Dolby Vision over HDMI a few months ago. Forbes wrote that piece first?

Tweet/Facebook and bringing it up to media outlets might put enough pressure on Sony to respond.

Hello ... I have the same problem and I contacted Sony in Brazil. They promised to replace my motherboard with the older firmware or remove mine and reinstall the firmware. I'll keep you posted, but at first the sony seems to be pretty flexible.

I do not believe in future improvements, because the peak of brightness is less, hardly the TV will return to be what it was, Sony wants to have less losses.

So i tried to make a video about it.
Might be light spoilers for god of war (im just sitting in the boat)

The camera does not notice it as much as the human eye, but this is just a recording from my iphone 6.
The camera also seems to try to correct incoming light which also does not help in seeing the dimming.
Since the camera is not hdr capable, the image looks overlighted, i assure you that it looks amazing for the human eye



You should be able to see it dim between 1:20 to 1:40 and 2:55 to 3:20 and 4:15 to 4:35 (i think this one is less noticable on video due to the camera correcting the light better?)

When i enter the menu i can see it brighten very clearly, because it brightens since the whole image changes....
The camera only makes it one block of light, i dont know if you can see it brighten much in this video.

Just to note, i am just sitting in the boat here, but the dimming happens in combat or during anything as long as the HUD is showing.
When the HUD is off, it does not seem to dim, or dim very rarely.

KD55-A1

I have the same aggressive dimming issue and it all started after the last firmware update.

I am finding it very frustrating when playing God of War, if you leave it stationary for a minute it will dim the brightness acutely, in the menus it happens a lot or even during combat, hit the home button and it will return to full brightness within 10 seconds.

I have tried adjusting every picture setting, restored the TV to factory settings (if there was a way to restore to previous firmware update I would take it, I knew that it was the cause of the issue right away) I have also tested it using different HDMI sources, this problem persists across SKY Q, Xbox One X and Playstation 4 Pro that are connected to the TV.

The TV worked perfectly fine up to this point, the picture was great and I was thoroughly enjoying gaming, watching sports and the Netflix and Amazon apps worked great.

I am in the UK and have contacted Sony customer support, they have acknowledged the issue I am having, I stressed the fact that this can in no way be an intentional function of the TV, had it been one at point of purchase, I would never have bought the TV, furthermore the TV worked great before the Dolby Vision firmware update.
They proceeded to give me all the standard steps to follow, tweaking settings which obviously didn't fix a thing as it is a software issue that is causing the problem which I told them, they then instructed me to send over video footage of the problem, which I have done, I asked the guy from support, if all these steps don't fix this brightness issue, what will happen next and he said they will replace the set with a new one, no worries.

This is less than ideal as I would rather not have to disconnect my TV which is wall mounted, have to send it back and then wait for a replacement, but it is progress as I would not be able to live with this problem forever considering the price I have paid for this TV and the fact it was great before Sony decided to mess with it.

Hopefully you get better service than the rest of us has received. More than likely they are going to say your set is functioning normally and then refuse to send a tech to review the issue in person.

I got information today from sony that the next firmware version will return the features as they were ... I do not believe much, but we'll see

Anyone who wants to see the problem, I've locked the focus and the lighting of the camera, you can see the brightness variation

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1TZ...q4c1alcjBSR2SC

I have just contacted Sony support asking them to repair this or else refund my purchase of this TV.

I watched football last night for the first time in a while on terrestrial broadcast TV (HD, 1080i). This is Aussie rules footy where the score is on the screen the whole time, but the image is otherwise moving at a fast pace (see the video here which is highlights from last night's game - note the score in the bottom left corner: http://www.afl.com.au/video/2018-05-...-geelong-v-gws ).

After 1-2 minutes of action the TV very aggressively dimmed the image, to the extent that it looked like the lights were dimming at the stadium. It became tiresome and unpleasant to watch the game. Every time a goal was scored there would be an ad break after which the image would be back to its best before dimming again after 1-2 minutes.

This is totally unacceptable to me - the set was purchased for gaming, watching sport and watching movies and two out of those three activities are severely impacted by this problem.

Under Australian law consumers have a right to a repair or refund where a product has a fault - I think particularly given that Sony has added this problem without warning after purchase that there is a strong argument that they must either fix it or give me my money back.

Commercially I cannot fathom why Sony would ruin a beautiful, high end product in this way. It's insanity.

I'm in almost exactly the same boat. Really don't want to return this TV and mine is wall mounted etc too - but this problem is too severe to just ignore or live with, and I would never have bought the TV if I had known about it when I bought it (which I couldn't have, because Sony had not yet decided to wreck the TV at that point).

Hopefully if enough people are aggressive enough with them it will start costing them real $$$ and they will just fix the problem. Then everyone is happy.

Has this shown up on the 2018 A8?