2011 D Series Samsung Firmware issues and Poor PQ.

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Someone on another forum said Samsung changed the filter on the later builds to stop the peeling screen problem.

What is the verdict is the Rainbow effect the newer or older type filter?
 
Can u just double check your Eco Sensor setting in the System menu, make sure it's disabled?

My 51" D6900 seemed very dark on the first day, and it did look like the brightness was dropping more than it should between settings, and was gradual as if the Eco Sensor was active. I double checked the setting (may have activated then de-activated to make sure it "knew" it was off). After the first day it was a lot better, and I haven't noticed the gradual drops seen on the first day. Someone else has also said they checked their setting after 1019 and the Eco Sensor was activated.
Anyone else see this after 1019?

Unfortunately it was already off. Tried putting it on and off just in case.

No change.
 
Does anybody know what the differences between the 1017.3 and 1018.1 F/W's were. Did 1017.3 have the same poor PQ effects as 1018.1. When I initially updated they had both been released on the same day but I was too late for 1017.3 and went straight to 1018.1
 
Difficult to tell from reading this thread.

If someone buys a new 64D8000 from the store, what FW do you suspect is on it?

If not the "problematic" version, should we immediately turn off auto-update?

I don't believe any store will let us check the version before we purchase it (easily), as that requires opening the box and turning the set on?

Thanks,
ELmO
 
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Difficult to tell from reading this thread.

If someone buys a new 64D8000 from the store, what FW do you suspect is on it?

If not the "problematic" version, should we immediately turn off auto-update?

I don't believe any store will let us check the version before we purchase it (easily), as that requires opening the box and turning the set on?

Thanks,
ELmO

I noticed that the long number under the barcode label on the Box ends in 11 the TV I have has a November build date and came with 1018 on it, need more feedback though to see if the numbers mean anything? my 64D8000 turned up faulty 2" thick Black line across the centre, wish I had plugged it in and checked it before delivery people left.
 
If true, thanks. So we don't want it to end in 11? Is an october set safe?

Normally you may not turn the TV on if it's been cold outside for a while to let the set warm up a bit...
 
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If true, thanks. So we don't want it to end in 11? Is an october set safe?

Normally you may not turn the TV on if it's been cold outside for a while to let the set warm up a bit...

Its just a guess about the numbers if we get more feedback from others we can see if the last digits under the Barcode on the Box refer to Build date?

If you get an October build you are more likley to get the 1016 or earlier, we has customers should not be needing to be doing this with expensive TV's though its about time Samsung and others began releasing TV's that are at there best from day one and not releasing firmwares that decrease the TV's quality.
 
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I noticed that the long number under the barcode label on the Box ends in 11 the TV I have has a November build date and came with 1018 on it, need more feedback though to see if the numbers mean anything? my 64D8000 turned up faulty 2" thick Black line across the centre, wish I had plugged it in and checked it before delivery people left.

I thought it was the 9th number in the serial number. After 9 for Sept it goes to a for Oct, b for Nov etc.
 
I thought it was the 9th number in the serial number. After 9 for Sept it goes to a for Oct, b for Nov etc.

Is that for the D8000 range? my serial shows the letter A has the 9th digit, on the Barcode though it shows 111 has the last 3 digits so it may refer to the build date but this is only an assumption need others to confirm? if the build date can be confirmed without opening the box this may assist people asking retailers to check there stock for a pre 1017/18 firmware?
 
It really is very obvious how the contrast/luminance has changed.

Mine was calibrated at around firmware 1008 and the picture was far better during the day than it is now. The 1018/9 by comparison during the day now is not really bright enough.

I don't want to play around with the calibrated settings in case Samsung sort the picture out but I don't have a great deal of contrast/cell light left to boost anyway. :(

I'm now waiting a guy from Samsung to try to sort out the poor brigtness issue.... I'll keep you informed.
 
Is that for the D8000 range? my serial shows the letter A has the 9th digit, on the Barcode though it shows 111 has the last 3 digits so it may refer to the build date but this is only an assumption need others to confirm? if the build date can be confirmed without opening the box this may assist people asking retailers to check there stock for a pre 1017/18 firmware?

After the A for October there should be five other digits. For example if the five numbers are 00123 this most likely means that it is the 123rd TV manufactured that month.

The other barcode on the label will be the same for all D8000s of that size, I would think.
 
After the A for October there should be five other digits. For example if the five numbers are 00123 this most likely means that it is the 123rd TV manufactured that month.

The other barcode on the label will be the same for all D8000s of that size, I would think.

Mine is a November build though and the letter B is the 8th digit in the serial not the 9th?
 
Thanks for looking into it guys, you are nicer to me than the AVS Forum was. ;)
 
I've looked over the firmware files and unfortunately there is no way that we can fool the set into accepting the older firmwares by changing them. These are cryptologically signed so if we change even a bit in the files the signature will no longer match and only Samsung have access to the private key needed to sign the files.

Haven't yet looked for my build-date but the firmware is 1014 and it cannot find any newer OTA so the 1015 that seams to be available OTA for others doesn't seam to be available for the Scandinavian version (D8005).

I have yet to see any Floating Brightness but haven't been hunting that long :)
 
Sorry the long post, but I want to make everything clear. So, I will start with a little introduction and describe every problems in details.

I don't say I am the most skilled/experienced display calibrator or reviewer (I don't have any ISF or THX certifications, nor I ever publicized any reviews about displays...) but I have an own spectrophotometer, I also have some "field experience", and I read a lot about color science and display technologies (I mean not only TV reviews, but "real" science...). So, I am a bit more than an average Joe who simply expected more from a "value for money" TV than any TV can provide and now got here to cry...


After some mixed experiences with some 2010 Panasonic PDPs (I saw some strengths but also some notable weaknesses + read about issues like "rising blacks", "floating blacks", etc...), I decided to buy a Samsung PS51D550.


I was very happy about it in the first few weeks.
Well, there was this "fluctuating brightness", but the 2011 Panasonic models also had this problem (0-0). But otherwise it provided a good overall movie and game experience. The contrast ratio was never too high, but it felt "enough" and the color reproduction was very precise and accurate after calibration (lower -but reasonable- contrast but significantly better colors and slightly better handling of fast motion: 1-1 P-S).

So, I thought I made a good choice by picking this TV and I was happy with it. Not only I kept it (I could have returned it to the shop in the first weeks...) but I actually recommended it for the people who asked me to help decide between HDTVs.


Later on (and I don't know if this is because of it changed with either the age of the panel or with some old software updates, but...) I started to feel the "floating brightness" (or as I like to call it "fluctuating tonal response" -aka "f. gamma") distracting. But it was still tolerable (given the other strengths like color accuracy, motions, etc) and I hoped Samsung will fix it (moreover after Panasonic fixed this for their 2011 models...).


And then, something changed. There were some firmware updates in a row, and I thought they fixed the "fluctuating brightness" because this effect got weaker. (It's still there though. You can still catch it if you search for it. It just got significantly weaker. But this alone would be fine...)
On the other hand, however, I think it caused a bunch of new problems.

1: The peak brightness got significantly reduced (not an issue for me personally, but I understand if it may disappoints someone who uses his TV in a bright room and he/she picked this model because it was relatively bright at high settings...).

2: The color precision got degraded. (I will discuss this later.)

3: The "floating black" problem got either worse or more noticeable. I am not sure because I was relatively happy about the contrast feeling (I could use more, sure, but it was reasonable), so I didn't go mad and made paranoid tests like now (I will also discuss this in details later). The real-world contrast ratio feels very bad and the black level fluctuations are very distracting now.


So, all in all, I thought I picked a great display but now I feel I want to get rid of it. I am no longer happy about it and I think the problem is not in me (at least not in 100% :D) but also in the TV.

Let's take a look at some problems in details.

* I speak about a PS51D550 with the v1026 firmware. But as much as I know, every D-series PDPs got these changes. So, my problems can be unique, model specific, or series-specific.


-------------------------------------------


Fluctuating black level

I watched Moon tonight and I couldn't ignore the fluctuating black luminance. So, when I finished the movie, I muted the sound, placed my spectro to the lower black bar and I started to play with the seek bar while I look at the readings.

I could pick up some scenes with 0.04 , 0.05 , 0.07 , 0.09 , 0.10 cd/m^2 (never in between these discrete points and I couldn't catch a scene in this movie with 0.12 - the highest I ever measured with a specific test pattern...)

But there is a tiny problem with repeatability. I saved two screenshots for each of the five black luminance scenarios. When I started to measure these static images (starting from 0.04 ones) I didn't get any higher readings than 0.07

First I thought the error is in my spectro (like the black calibration went out very fast, etc...).
But I was sure I saw the difference with my eyes, so I started the playback again and I easily caught some scenes with 0.10 again. Ok, I saved new screenshots. But when I tried to measure those screenshots, the readings were 0.07 again.


So, it seems like there are some thresholds in both directions. If you hit a point where the black goes as high as 0.10, then it remains that high until there is a bigger change. I think it's a safety wall against crazy flickering (like jumping up-down-up-down... many times in just a few seconds...) And it proved to be hard to catch a frame which triggers the 0.10 black luminance. But it's there and if you play the movie you will have 0.10 blacks many times (because it's not too hard to trigger and once it's that high, then it possibly remains there until you hit a significantly lower APL scene...).


And there is some connection between the APL and the black luminance, but it's far form linear. Sometimes I could produce high black levels with relatively low APL but keep low blacks with relatively high APL.
But I guess it's a factor of the above mentioned thresholds (once it went up, it waits up there until it "feels safe" to get lower again...).


This is crazy! I effectively have a display with 0.10 cd/m^2 black level + some stupid "black level extender adjustment" like the back-light control of the LCDs.
I always turned it off on LCDs because it's easier for me to tolerate the high black levels than got mad about the fluctuations.


And you know, an LCD doesn't have ABL. So, if you count that too, then the worst-case contrast ratio of this plasma (with a very high APL scene) is something about 600:1 (~0.1 black and ~60 white).
My old LCD had a stable contrast ratio of ~900:1 (WP calibrated to D65 - this PDP can't even be really calibrated anymore...)
I am proud of myself that I upgraded (ok, there were some other reasons to change - but also other PDP manufacturers for that matter...).



One thing I am not sure about:
- Is this some new "rising black" (where the MLL remains low but the peak black level rises with the panel's age)?
- Did blacks got worse with the last firmware update? (Is it easier to trigger the high black levels?)
- Was it always like this and I just didn't notice it back when the grays also fluctuated (and the old "floating gamma" covered the "floating blacks")?


-------------------------------------------


Color accuracy problems

I measured this on my lower tier Samsung D-series PDP which is based on an MStar chipset (the D8000 uses an ARM CPU and Samsung's own video processor, but lower tier models are built around MStar chips...).

The gray lines are the CIE x,y reference coordinates of the Rec709 color space.
The continuous colored lines are the readings of the primary colors with Native color space settings.
The ragged colored lines are the readings of the primary colors with Auto color space settings (and any non-default Custom color space setup show a similar nonlinearity...).




Note that the magnitude of the problem greatly depends on the Gamma settings. I prefer gamma ~2.4, which requires Gamma = -2 which is even worse than the above +1, regarding the gamut emulation.
(But the white balance is surprisingly good if you consider that it's a default Warm2 setting without any fine-tuning: every RGB Gains/Offsets are at their defaults...)

Other than that, I think the color accuracy of my TV got significantly worse overall. I don't know the cause of this, but it could be one of these:
- A technician swapped my main-borad (not a long time ago) to solve a problem with remote controlling. May be I got a faulty main-board (may be with this color decoding issue...)?
- The last firmware updates for the EU models doubtfully changed the behavior of the device, so may be the color accuracy got worse with the new software...?
- May be aging of the plasma panel? (I think it would be too early, but who knows...?)

Unfortunately I didn't have either the time or the willingness to test everything in details after every changes. But I know that I would have sent this TV right back to the shop if I had the same color accuracy at the first weeks which I have now. (And chose the better contrast of the Panasonics if the colors aren't accurate on any sides...) And unfortunately I didn't make nice graphs like this, nor I archived my measurement data which I took right after the break-in to test the TV. But I tell you, it was way better than it's now.
And it's not only the internal CMS. I tried to move back to external CMS when I noticed this big change in the color accuracy. I have significantly worse dE2000 values if I evaluate an ICC profile now than I initially had in the first weeks.

And about color precision outside of primaries, secondaries and grays, this is the closest accuracy I could get by profiling the Movie mode with Native color space and Gamma=0 settings:



And here comes one with Auto color space:



But I found an older report where I tried to evaluate the internal CMS this way (I profiled the hardware-calibrated display with a simple matrix+gamma profile and validate it with ArgyllCMS+dispcal):



Just as I remembered, 100% cyan had a relatively big peak error but the dE values were significantly lower otherwise. And this was after the hardware calibration (10p gray and 6p gamut in the user menu...). When I tried to evaluate the hardware calibration this way (with my current main-board + v1026 firmware) yesterday, I got horrible results (average dE above 5.0, peak around 7, etc). And the same thing applies to the Auto color space now. It's unusable.


By the way, I sent these charts along with the raw excel spreadsheet and some additional reports to Samsung.
I can't wait for their answer but I think they wouldn't even understand my problem (well, at least the first few people who take a look at it but somehow I doubt they will forward it high enough instead of treating me like an idiot until I stop emailing/calling them about this) and somehow I doubt this counts as a warranty issue, so... hahh... I bet on the wrong horse this time, I guess.


/// Sorry that I copied many parts of this post from my older posts on various forums (this is the reason if you find some strange things in some sentences + English is not my native language...) I wrote those as I discovered the problems, one at a time. This is a summary of my findings.
 
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I think CNET said this years Samsungs MLL rises with age BUT it can be calibrated back to the original state.
 
I think CNET said this years Samsungs MLL rises with age BUT it can be calibrated back to the original state.

There are no Black Level controls anywhere (not in User Menu, not in the Service Menu, not in the Top Debug Menu and as much as I know, there are no physical pots inside the case to play with...).

I think they talk about the Brightness control. I guess they increased the Brightness right until video level 17 started to flash. And later they had to reduce it because video level 16 became the old 17+ level and started to glow.

If we talk about the black level (which comes from the initialization, not from firing cells), there is no way to control that. And I talk about it when I say it fluctuates. (Pure grayblack, not the dithering noise from dark grays...).
 
There are no Black Level controls anywhere (not in User Menu, not in the Service Menu, not in the Top Debug Menu and as much as I know, there are no physical pots inside the case to play with...).

I think they talk about the Brightness control. I guess they increased the Brightness right until video level 17 started to flash. And later they had to reduce it because video level 16 became the old 17+ level and started to glow.

If we talk about the black level (which comes from the initialization, not from firing cells), there is no way to control that. And I talk about it when I say it fluctuates. (Pure grayblack, not the dithering noise from dark grays...).
AFAIK Brightness is Black Level. Contrast is the Brightness :)
 
i give up on this set now. i wont be able to buy one without this blasted firmware issue. now what set should I get? or how about I give up on TVs and buy a projector and black diamond screen.
 
Sorry the long post, but I want to make everything clear. So, I will start with a little introduction and describe every problems in details.

I don't say I am the most skilled/experienced display calibrator or reviewer (I don't have any ISF or THX certifications, nor I ever publicized any reviews about displays...) but I have an own spectrophotometer, I also have some "field experience", and I read a lot about color science and display technologies (I mean not only TV reviews, but "real" science...). So, I am a bit more than an average Joe who simply expected more from a "value for money" TV than any TV can provide and now got here to cry...


After some mixed experiences with some 2010 Panasonic PDPs (I saw some strengths but also some notable weaknesses + read about issues like "rising blacks", "floating blacks", etc...), I decided to buy a Samsung PS51D550.


I was very happy about it in the first few weeks.
Well, there was this "fluctuating brightness", but the 2011 Panasonic models also had this problem (0-0). But otherwise it provided a good overall movie and game experience. The contrast ratio was never too high, but it felt "enough" and the color reproduction was very precise and accurate after calibration (lower -but reasonable- contrast but significantly better colors and slightly better handling of fast motion: 1-1 P-S).

So, I thought I made a good choice by picking this TV and I was happy with it. Not only I kept it (I could have returned it to the shop in the first weeks...) but I actually recommended it for the people who asked me to help decide between HDTVs.


Later on (and I don't know if this is because of it changed with either the age of the panel or with some old software updates, but...) I started to feel the "floating brightness" (or as I like to call it "fluctuating tonal response" -aka "f. gamma") distracting. But it was still tolerable (given the other strengths like color accuracy, motions, etc) and I hoped Samsung will fix it (moreover after Panasonic fixed this for their 2011 models...).


And then, something changed. There were some firmware updates in a row, and I thought they fixed the "fluctuating brightness" because this effect got weaker. (It's still there though. You can still catch it if you search for it. It just got significantly weaker. But this alone would be fine...)
On the other hand, however, I think it caused a bunch of new problems.

1: The peak brightness got significantly reduced (not an issue for me personally, but I understand if it may disappoints someone who uses his TV in a bright room and he/she picked this model because it was relatively bright at high settings...).

2: The color precision got degraded. (I will discuss this later.)

3: The "floating black" problem got either worse or more noticeable. I am not sure because I was relatively happy about the contrast feeling (I could use more, sure, but it was reasonable), so I didn't go mad and made paranoid tests like now (I will also discuss this in details later). The real-world contrast ratio feels very bad and the black level fluctuations are very distracting now.


So, all in all, I thought I picked a great display but now I feel I want to get rid of it. I am no longer happy about it and I think the problem is not in me (at least not in 100% :D) but also in the TV.

Let's take a look at some problems in details.

* I speak about a PS51D550 with the v1026 firmware. But as much as I know, every D-series PDPs got these changes. So, my problems can be unique, model specific, or series-specific.


-------------------------------------------


Fluctuating black level

I watched Moon tonight and I couldn't ignore the fluctuating black luminance. So, when I finished the movie, I muted the sound, placed my spectro to the lower black bar and I started to play with the seek bar while I look at the readings.

I could pick up some scenes with 0.04 , 0.05 , 0.07 , 0.09 , 0.10 cd/m^2 (never in between these discrete points and I couldn't catch a scene in this movie with 0.12 - the highest I ever measured with a specific test pattern...)

But there is a tiny problem with repeatability. I saved two screenshots for each of the five black luminance scenarios. When I started to measure these static images (starting from 0.04 ones) I didn't get any higher readings than 0.07

First I thought the error is in my spectro (like the black calibration went out very fast, etc...).
But I was sure I saw the difference with my eyes, so I started the playback again and I easily caught some scenes with 0.10 again. Ok, I saved new screenshots. But when I tried to measure those screenshots, the readings were 0.07 again.


So, it seems like there are some thresholds in both directions. If you hit a point where the black goes as high as 0.10, then it remains that high until there is a bigger change. I think it's a safety wall against crazy flickering (like jumping up-down-up-down... many times in just a few seconds...) And it proved to be hard to catch a frame which triggers the 0.10 black luminance. But it's there and if you play the movie you will have 0.10 blacks many times (because it's not too hard to trigger and once it's that high, then it possibly remains there until you hit a significantly lower APL scene...).


And there is some connection between the APL and the black luminance, but it's far form linear. Sometimes I could produce high black levels with relatively low APL but keep low blacks with relatively high APL.
But I guess it's a factor of the above mentioned thresholds (once it went up, it waits up there until it "feels safe" to get lower again...).


This is crazy! I effectively have a display with 0.10 cd/m^2 black level + some stupid "black level extender adjustment" like the back-light control of the LCDs.
I always turned it off on LCDs because it's easier for me to tolerate the high black levels than got mad about the fluctuations.


And you know, an LCD doesn't have ABL. So, if you count that too, then the worst-case contrast ratio of this plasma (with a very high APL scene) is something about 600:1 (~0.1 black and ~60 white).
My old LCD had a stable contrast ratio of ~900:1 (WP calibrated to D65 - this PDP can't even be really calibrated anymore...)
I am proud of myself that I upgraded (ok, there were some other reasons to change - but also other PDP manufacturers for that matter...).



One thing I am not sure about:
- Is this some new "rising black" (where the MLL remains low but the peak black level rises with the panel's age)?
- Did blacks got worse with the last firmware update? (Is it easier to trigger the high black levels?)
- Was it always like this and I just didn't notice it back when the grays also fluctuated (and the old "floating gamma" covered the "floating blacks")?


-------------------------------------------


Color accuracy problems

I measured this on my lower tier Samsung D-series PDP which is based on an MStar chipset (the D8000 uses an ARM CPU and Samsung's own video processor, but lower tier models are built around MStar chips...).

The gray lines are the CIE x,y reference coordinates of the Rec709 color space.
The continuous colored lines are the readings of the primary colors with Native color space settings.
The ragged colored lines are the readings of the primary colors with Auto color space settings (and any non-default Custom color space setup show a similar nonlinearity...).

[URL=http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg443/scaled.php?server=443&filename=d550cmsbenchmarkg0.png&res=medium]image
[/URL] [URL=http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg851/scaled.php?server=851&filename=d550cmsbenchmarkg1.png&res=medium]image
[/URL]
[URL=http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg694/scaled.php?server=694&filename=d550cmsbenchmarkg0gray.png&res=medium]image
[/URL] [URL=http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg802/scaled.php?server=802&filename=d550cmsbenchmarkg1gray.png&res=medium]image
[/URL]

Note that the magnitude of the problem greatly depends on the Gamma settings. I prefer gamma ~2.4, which requires Gamma = -2 which is even worse than the above +1, regarding the gamut emulation.
(But the white balance is surprisingly good if you consider that it's a default Warm2 setting without any fine-tuning: every RGB Gains/Offsets are at their defaults...)

Other than that, I think the color accuracy of my TV got significantly worse overall. I don't know the cause of this, but it could be one of these:
- A technician swapped my main-borad (not a long time ago) to solve a problem with remote controlling. May be I got a faulty main-board (may be with this color decoding issue...)?
- The last firmware updates for the EU models doubtfully changed the behavior of the device, so may be the color accuracy got worse with the new software...?
- May be aging of the plasma panel? (I think it would be too early, but who knows...?)

Unfortunately I didn't have either the time or the willingness to test everything in details after every changes. But I know that I would have sent this TV right back to the shop if I had the same color accuracy at the first weeks which I have now. (And chose the better contrast of the Panasonics if the colors aren't accurate on any sides...) And unfortunately I didn't make nice graphs like this, nor I archived my measurement data which I took right after the break-in to test the TV. But I tell you, it was way better than it's now.
And it's not only the internal CMS. I tried to move back to external CMS when I noticed this big change in the color accuracy. I have significantly worse dE2000 values if I evaluate an ICC profile now than I initially had in the first weeks.

And about color precision outside of primaries, secondaries and grays, this is the closest accuracy I could get by profiling the Movie mode with Native color space and Gamma=0 settings:

[URL=http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg560/scaled.php?server=560&filename=d550coloraccuracybenchm.png&res=medium]image
[/URL]

And here comes one with Auto color space:

[URL=http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg580/scaled.php?server=580&filename=d550moviewarm2auto.png&res=medium]image
[/URL]

But I found an older report where I tried to evaluate the internal CMS this way (I profiled the hardware-calibrated display with a simple matrix+gamma profile and validate it with ArgyllCMS+dispcal):

[URL=http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg717/scaled.php?server=717&filename=d550calreport.png&res=medium]image
[/URL]

Just as I remembered, 100% cyan had a relatively big peak error but the dE values were significantly lower otherwise. And this was after the hardware calibration (10p gray and 6p gamut in the user menu...). When I tried to evaluate the hardware calibration this way (with my current main-board + v1026 firmware) yesterday, I got horrible results (average dE above 5.0, peak around 7, etc). And the same thing applies to the Auto color space now. It's unusable.


By the way, I sent these charts along with the raw excel spreadsheet and some additional reports to Samsung.
I can't wait for their answer but I think they wouldn't even understand my problem (well, at least the first few people who take a look at it but somehow I doubt they will forward it high enough instead of treating me like an idiot until I stop emailing/calling them about this) and somehow I doubt this counts as a warranty issue, so... hahh... I bet on the wrong horse this time, I guess.


/// Sorry that I copied many parts of this post from my older posts on various forums (this is the reason if you find some strange things in some sentences + English is not my native language...) I wrote those as I discovered the problems, one at a time. This is a summary of my findings.

So in short if your were a reviewer and this was a second review after Samsung had issued a firmware update, your verdict would probably be that Samsung had made a good TV inferior and not worth buying?
 
Woo, this thread should be renamed Samsung D series negativity....
 
Woo, this thread should be renamed Samsung D series negativity....

HeHe, yeah I know what you mean, I've got a 51D8000 and think its amazing, people keep going on about the black levels on this set as if they are grey, the black level on mine looks incredible, black when it needs to be with loads of background detail.

I think lots of people are getting put off this set by talk of poor black levels and fluctuating brightness. I really don't think these are issues on the D8000, buy a Panny with a green blob on it if you really want an issue to talk about.
 
Would have to agree with the previous posts. I have noticed a slight change in the colours as well as the drop in luminance. Not something I have the equipment or eyes to describe but as mine was calibrated prior to 1018/9 I have an idea what the colours should look like and at the moment they are not quite right.

Seems a while since the firmware so maybe a new one isn't too far away.

To add a positive though I haven't noticed a brightness pop for ages and I still think the picture overall is great.
 
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