Reports of pops, peeling on Samsung plasmas explored

[Wingman1977]

LINK

[Gempulse]

Interesting that David would still purchase a D7000 or D8000 even after noticing the brightness pops. I sure wouldn't.

[Steve]

Originally Posted by Gempulse

Interesting that David would still purchase a D7000 or D8000 even after noticing the brightness pops. I sure wouldn't.

Same here. But I'm somewhat biased against Samsung given my experience with a Samsung plasma I previously owned.

[HeavyHitter]

I am swapping my 64D8000 out for a Panasonic 65VT30. The brightness pops have been horrible and very distracting. Unacceptable if you watch in a dark environment IMO.

[movieeddie]

I have this Samsung it has a fantastic picture but this popping issue is the most distracting thing I have ever seen.Played with every setting in this plasma and nothing will fix it.looked at every T.V. out there and evey one of them have some kind of issue or another.I've come to the conclusion that the PERFECT T.V.has not been created yet.Pick one and live in peace with the crap you bought.Untill then.Enjoy.

[elwaylite]

Originally Posted by Gempulse

Interesting that David would still purchase a D7000 or D8000 even after noticing the brightness pops. I sure wouldn't.

It's because in my experience, they are very rare. I was also broken in on a Panny with floating blacks, and it was pretty bad, so I'm probably a little numb to the effect.

And it actually only shows in certain content. There are 4-5 shows I watch every week where you know it's gonna crop up, other than that, I find I rarely see it. My 2010 panasonic was a good deal worse, and it had horrible IR.

I reported the floating blacks within a week of buying the D7000 in April, but of course most people on forums dont wanna hear it. I also blasted the 2010 panny for FB's and IR, but once again, no one wants to hear it.

They all have issues, and if the FB's are the only thing I have to ***** about on my D7000, I take it. Also, when using Cinema Smooth 96hz mode on Blu-rays, the FB's are nowhere to be found.

As far as the peeling goes, it took them a few months to fix production, but they implemented fixes for the field, as well as replaced panels. Not much more you can ask. I bought this Samsung because I was curious of the hate, especially after owning 3 Panny plasmas, and what I found is the best looking plasma Ive ever owned, at a great price, with less IR and more calibration controls than the Panny's.

Hmmmm. Goes back to "haters gonna hate".

[Wingman1977]

Originally Posted by movieeddie

I have this Samsung it has a fantastic picture but this popping issue is the most distracting thing I have ever seen.Played with every setting in this plasma and nothing will fix it.looked at every T.V. out there and evey one of them have some kind of issue or another.I've come to the conclusion that the PERFECT T.V.has not been created yet.Pick one and live in peace with the crap you bought.Untill then.Enjoy.

Ever heard of the Pioneer Kuro Elite 101?

[movieeddie]

For those who are having problems with there 7000 and 8000 samsung plasma brightness popping.I found a setting that may fix it where you wont notice it as much.Set gamma to -1 and set blacktone to darkest setting.contrast to 95 and brightness to no more than 55.Leave dynamic contrast to off setting.Should give you a much better picture where you wont notice the popping as much.It worked for me.I watch my films in a darken room with only a 5 watt bulb behind the tv to give just a little brightness to the viewing area.Good luck.Hope it works for you.movieeddie

[Cevolution]

Originally Posted by movieeddie

For those who are having problems with there 7000 and 8000 samsung plasma brightness popping.I found a setting that may fix it where you wont notice it as much.Set gamma to -1 and set blacktone to darkest setting.contrast to 95 and brightness to no more than 55.Leave dynamic contrast to off setting.Should give you a much better picture where you wont notice the popping as much.It worked for me.I watch my films in a darken room with only a 5 watt bulb behind the tv to give just a little brightness to the viewing area.Good luck.Hope it works for you.movieeddie

Setting the black tone on the highest setting will cause the image to be too dark in some area's, affecting the detail, plus if the contrast (and brightness) is set too high it can increase the amount of image retention you experience and the risk of permanent burn in. The best way to stop the majority of the pops is to turn the 'cinema smooth' feature on, I know it's not ideal for blu-ray viewing, but it's a much better solution than everything being too dark. Most movies I watch only suffer from the issue to very small degree, which is why I have cinema smooth set to 'off' 85% of the time, but for those few movies where it's a bit annoying an quite noticeable I just turn cinema smooth on and it eliminates the pops almost altogether. Hopefully Samsung release a firmware update to fix the problem, I personally think it would be as easy as that to correct the issue. I don't believe it's a hardware fault, especially since it's pretty much non existent when using the cinema smooth feature.

[dsf767]

very interesting article

[movieeddie]

thanks Cevolution.Turned on the cinema mode and turned everything off and the popping not happening as much and the picture looks much more natural.Film still looks like film to me.Thank you for help.Life is good again.ED

[Flux88MPH]

So here's what I have uncovered about this issue. I purchased my PN64D7000 from Amazon and received it on 12/16/11. I started noticing the "brightness pops" or black level fluctuations a few days into setup and noticed that they really only occurred when the viewing room was mostly or completely dark other than the TV. FYI - my calibration settings are almost the same as CNET editor David Katzmaier.

So as all good consumers do, I registered my product with Samsung and began initiating a warranty service ticket. This is where things get pretty amazing. There is a ton of published documentation on the web about this issue, including an article on CNET from said editor above as well as many screen shots of people submitting the issue to a rep over Samsung's online help chat...but Samsung swears to have zero knowledge of the issue and always responds very dumbfounded with, "we have no record of this complaint from any other customers". So I laughed at that canned bullshit corporate response and just went through the motions of them sending out a local contracted tech to come witness my "unique phenomenon".

Now to the meat of the story; so the Tech shows up yesterday around noon 12/29/11, and as I mentioned before I don't have the issue when daylight is filling the house or when the room lights are all on. I pulled out all of the blu-rays that have given me the most pops/fluctuations over the past two weeks but to no avail I could not replicate the event for the Tech. Then he dropped the bomb, "we get called out for this issue on the 2011 D series plasmas all the time and Samsung knows about it". So then he says, "Let me get a Samsung Engineer on the phone so I can file a report of this - again - and so you can hear their response."

Tech: The customer has trouble shot all setting options already and has calibrated the unit.

Samsung Engineer: Are all of the auto and dynamic settings turned off?

Tech: Yes.

Samsung Engineer: Good. OK, then the main thing that needs to be turned off is the Eco options under general settings. It's the Eco Sensor that causes these issues.

Tech: The customer has this all turned off already and said that the issue happens the most the darker the room is, as if the changing scene brightness is auto adjusting the TV to do this.

Samsung Engineer: Well, that's because the OFF setting on the Eco Sensor doesn't really turn it OFF but just puts that setting on LOW. Just tell the customer to watch with a lamp on in the room or something.

Tech: OK I'll tell them that. END CALL

So there you have it, the source of the problem. I'm just speculating here, but I'm wondering if Samsung did this meet certain energy ratings and if they change it, it would compromise the spec data of a unit that is still currently on the market. Based on my own educated assumptions, I wouldn't expect a firmware update (if it's ever released) to correct this until the it's officially discontinued and replaced by it's 2012 successor.

Other than this small irritating issue, the TV is absolutely gorgeous.

The 2011 Panasonics just don't have the same color accuracy and saturation, as well as blacks that are as rich and overall clarity of the Samsung D7000 and D8000 models. I don't want another TV, I just want Samsung to correct this one thing.

[dobyblue]

Originally Posted by Wingman1977

Ever heard of the Pioneer Kuro Elite 101?

Still not perfect.

The zero luminance/absolute black extreme contrast concepts would probably have done it though!

[MrFattBill]

Just put tape over the sensor if its located on the bezel.

Bill

[Flux88MPH]

Originally Posted by MrFattBill

Just put tape over the sensor if its located on the bezel.

Bill

Already thought of that. The only sensor board is the same one used for the remote so if you cover it you lose the ability to use your remote.

[movieeddie]

I was able to find the calibration settings for my samsung plasma pnd518000 series on cnet website.They listed all the setting numbers from there isf calibration from there review of the pnd598000 series.Did it to my plasma and all the popping went away.Runnning image on 1080/24p.I like my movies to look like film.After the calibration the only thing I notice was that the image had a slight geen tint to everything.To fix this problem the setting they had it on was warm 2 so i but it on standard color temp and everything looks just lfantastic now without all those anoying brightness pops.It only took 4 months of hell to get to where iam at.Would I still buy this samsung t.v.again.In A HEARTBEAT.fantastic image when the t.v.works the way it should.For all of those who are still in hell with this problem look up cnets review and set the settings.It will make you sooooooo happy.Good luck.movieeddie.

[Chordata]

This is total threadcrapping so I'll apologize in advance, but I swear when I read the thread title at first I thought it said "Reports of Pops Peeing on Samsung Plasmas Explored." Glad to see I was wrong!

[Wingman1977]

Originally Posted by Chordata

This is total threadcrapping so I'll apologize in advance, but I swear when I read the thread title at first I thought it said "Reports of Pops Peeing on Samsung Plasmas Explored." Glad to see I was wrong!

Well, we know where your mind was when you read the title.

[Chordata]

Originally Posted by Wingman1977

Well, we know where your mind was when you read the title.

Soooo far in the urinary gutter.

Anyway, sorry again for this mini-derailment.

[Cevolution]

Originally Posted by movieeddie

I was able to find the calibration settings for my samsung plasma pnd518000 series on cnet website.They listed all the setting numbers from there isf calibration from there review of the pnd598000 series.Did it to my plasma and all the popping went away.Runnning image on 1080/24p.I like my movies to look like film.After the calibration the only thing I notice was that the image had a slight geen tint to everything.To fix this problem the setting they had it on was warm 2 so i but it on standard color temp and everything looks just lfantastic now without all those anoying brightness pops.It only took 4 months of hell to get to where iam at.Would I still buy this samsung t.v.again.In A HEARTBEAT.fantastic image when the t.v.works the way it should.For all of those who are still in hell with this problem look up cnets review and set the settings.It will make you sooooooo happy.Good luck.movieeddie.

According to what I've been reading on AVS in their thread about the pops (I haven't been in that thread for a couple of days on that site), is Samsung U.S have new firmware which is only available via request (they send out 2 USB sticks loaded with firmware), which apparently fixes the issue. Last I read, most who have installed the firmware have said it successfully got rid of the problem.