Samsung service menus - be careful in there

Sons FC

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I don't if it is just me but I am becoming more and more concerned at the increasing numbers of people who are accessing, or being encouraged to access, the Samsung service menus for a variety of reasons.

I fully understand and I sympathise with those who have received (or perceive that they have received) the wrong panel or a different panel than was advertised.

Equally, I sympathise with those who cannot tolerate the dynamic dimming feature and wish to turn it off.

However, the rush to do something about this has seen a massive rise in the number of posts throughout the Samsung threads by people blundering into the service menu and making all sorts of changes that they should not be doing. It is also clear that most people who are being encouraged to do so have limited or no technical skills for what they are doing.

Let's be clear here - if you enter the service menu and make any changes you will invalidate your warranty.

If something goes wrong with your TV, either related to the changes you have made, or in some cases, if an unrelated fault occurs, your may have to bear the cost of any repairs yourself and with plasma and LCD TVs these costs could be substantial.

By all means go into the service menu, by all means make whatever changes you wish but be aware of the consequences of doing so.
 
I don't agree that people are blundering into the service menu, And you are taking most of the people here for idiots if you think they are just rushing in and changing things. People come to this forum and others like it for two reasons. One to buy the best product, so they come for advice on that, and then to get the best use of out whatever piece of equipment they are buying. In the case of the TV they want the best picture they can possibly get.

I can see that something might go wrong and you might not get a picture etc. etc. But, most of the people here that are entering the service menu have some tech ability and know how. Most of them have also upgraded the firmware themselves. I think the most that could go wrong is that you mess up your picture, and even if you get no picture, I am fairly sure that reapplying the firmware will restore the TV to normal.

It reminds me of overclocking your PC. At the start manufacturers were telling people about how dangerous it was and how it void warrenties etc. etc. if you made changes in the bios. Now manufacturers themselves are overclocking. You could of course fry your CPU if you overclocked to quickly, but I don't see anything in the service menu of the samsung TV's that would do anything like this.

Yes, you have to be careful making any changes, And you should write everything down that you change so you know to change it back. But, as I said most of the people here are fairly intelligent and know how to experiment safely.

If you want something to be concerned over, be worried about the people that own the sony W or X series with the cloudy issues. People have been taking TV's apart and hanging them upside down and more to try and get rid of the clouds. That, to me, sounds more dangerous.
 
I don't agree that people are blundering into the service menu, And you are taking most of the people here for idiots if you think they are just rushing in and changing things. People come to this forum and others like it for two reasons. One to buy the best product, so they come for advice on that, and then to get the best use of out whatever piece of equipment they are buying. In the case of the TV they want the best picture they can possibly get.

I can see that something might go wrong and you might not get a picture etc. etc. But, most of the people here that are entering the service menu have some tech ability and know how. Most of them have also upgraded the firmware themselves. I think the most that could go wrong is that you mess up your picture, and even if you get no picture, I am fairly sure that reapplying the firmware will restore the TV to normal.

It reminds me of overclocking your PC. At the start manufacturers were telling people about how dangerous it was and how it void warrenties etc. etc. if you made changes in the bios. Now manufacturers themselves are overclocking. You could of course fry your CPU if you overclocked to quickly, but I don't see anything in the service menu of the samsung TV's that would do anything like this.

Yes, you have to be careful making any changes, And you should write everything down that you change so you know to change it back. But, as I said most of the people here are fairly intelligent and know how to experiment safely.

If you want something to be concerned over, be worried about the people that own the sony W or X series with the cloudy issues. People have been taking TV's apart and hanging them upside down and more to try and get rid of the clouds. That, to me, sounds more dangerous.

Grateful for your comments Reaper but I don't agree.

Even a cursory glance at some of the Samsung threads show posts where people are asking what to do in the service menu and how, in some cases, they have screwed them up.

I don't take people for idiots but I suspect that most people on these boards are not technically minded and are being drawn into courses of action that invalidate their warranty.
 
How would Samsung Service know you had entered the service menu unless the fault developed as a result of changing some of the settings?
 
How would Samsung Service know you had entered the service menu unless the fault developed as a result of changing some of the settings?

They wouldn't unless you had altered any of the settings.

So, even if you only alter the settings on say, dynamic dimming and a fault occurs on the TV, as soon as the service engineers discover you have changed service menu settings, they could void your warranty.

This from Samsung:

"With regards your e-mail concerning the dynamic dimming feature. This
can be switched off butit would have to be done by an authorised
engineer, so it does not invalidate your warranty. Please contact our Customer Service Centre so we can arrange this."
 
"With regards your e-mail concerning the dynamic dimming feature. This
can be switched off butit would have to be done by an authorised
engineer, so it does not invalidate your warranty.

Why there is settings like that if those are not supposed to be used?

I dont know what that setting means/does, but there must be reason that it is there. I can understand ´fine tuning´ settings ar service menu where you add + or - some value, but why setting turn something like that off. And I am sure its not only thing you can turn on/off.

I think your posting was very good. People shouldnt mess up with menus like that if they dont know what they are doing. I dont know if those service settings can be reset or just set values back or can they do permanent damage.

I am still waiting my 52" M86 and radio/tvstore at Finland still dont know when it is coming, it was promised for me at week 14-15.. ;)
 
I have a samsung TV. And I have read all the pages on the Samsung F71 series thread, and I havent seen any posts about people ruining their TV by using the service menu. I haven't seen anyone who "screwed up" their service menu either. The only problem people have been having is when they went into the calibration menu and tried to calibrate their TV their and then instead of calibration success, their is a calibration failed. The TV still works, the picture is still great. and it is easily solved by displaying a black and white checkerboard picture and running the calibration again.

As for the warrenty issue, Well, I don't think you will invalidate it anyway, because, aren't samsung themselves sending out firmware upgrades and cables to people to update their TV's. And upgrading the firmware has the potential to be much worse than changing anything in the service menu. That response by Samsung for the dynamic dimming was also a response for the firmware upgrade at the start, but, that soon changed when they saw how many people were looking for the upgrade. Of course Samsung want to send an engineer around, they are out to make money.

People have been going into the service menu's of TV's for years and years. I haven't seen anything inside any service menu that would cause a TV to break. Yeah you can completely **** up your picture, but that's a risk you take going into the service menu.

I know this, because I have changed nearly every thing in the Samsung service menu, just to see what effect it would have on the picture. Also there is a reset option in the menu as well.
 
Why there is settings like that if those are not supposed to be used?

I dont know what that setting means/does, but there must be reason that it is there. I can understand ´fine tuning´ settings ar service menu where you add + or - some value, but why setting turn something like that off. And I am sure its not only thing you can turn on/off.

I think your posting was very good. People shouldnt mess up with menus like that if they dont know what they are doing. I dont know if those service settings can be reset or just set values back or can they do permanent damage.

I am still waiting my 52" M86 and radio/tvstore at Finland still dont know when it is coming, it was promised for me at week 14-15.. ;)

Mika I presume you want the best picture? Well I don't know about the M86 series, but, for the F71 series, the picture on the TV is way better with dynamic Dimming turned off. Also dynamic dimming caused really annoying flickering for a lot of people. It's a 20 second job to turn it off. Would you pay a Samsung Engineer to come out and do that? Or would you go look up forums and ask questions to see how to do it?
 
reaper12 said:
and I havent seen any posts about people ruining their TV by using the service menu. I haven't seen anyone who "screwed up" their service menu either.

me either

a quick search revealed nothing

btw to the OP, you're not a Health And Safety Officer by Trade are you ? your post is very patronising.
 
Having just come accross this post i have read it with alot of interest and yes while i agree changing the very technical settings can be dangerous, are you telling me if i adjust my brightness and picture settings that will void my warrenty??

So why are these settings here? are we supposed to do nothing and not adjust even the basic settings for fear of voiding our warrenties and sit there with a poor image, i dont think so?

Oh and with regard to service engineers the last engineer i had out, (from a different manufacturer) i knew more about the tv than he did and was telling him how the bloody thing worked! :D
 
Nice thoughts guys.

I am not a health and safety officer nor am I a Samsung field engineer - made me laugh though.

The original post was not intended to be patronising. Rather it was in response to the blind groping that some people are carrying out in the service menus.

Mr LOl - "a quick search revealed nothing"?? are you kidding?

The briefest of brief searches has turned up:

Can someone help with the service menu I have been into it and pressed calibrate by accident and now av and hdmi is showing as fail

does anyone know what this does and how i can get it back to success?

Also what is the default setting for spread spectrum is

I know I should learn not to press left or right to move to a different menu option!!

So I did the trick posted by Purple Snakes ! I turned OFF "Dynamic Dimming". It works very well... No more change in the color of the subtitles ! Thank you very much Purple Snakes.

But I have a question :

But I noticed there are 2 other "dynamic" settings :

1. Dynamic CE : ON
2. Dynamic Contrast : OFF

Is it normal that Dynamic Contrast is switched OFF by default ?
I would like to be sure I didn't change the "Dynamic CE" and "Dynamic Contrast" settings.

So, could you confirm that the default settings are :

1. Dynamic CE : ON
2. Dynamic Contrast : OFF
3. Dynamic Dimming : ON (which I turned to OFF).

I think that since I've turned off Dynamic Dimming, the contrast (that is off, too, by default) seems that isn't working at all. I've lost too much contrast in black areas...

Well I turned off auto dimming last week and not sure if its me, but everythign seems a little more pixelated and the motion blurring looks worse..........???

I’ve detected the same on mine. When I went to the service menu to set the Dynamic Dimming to OFF, the Dynamic Constrast was set to “OFF” and now, I don’t know if I have to turn it ON...

Can someone here tell us what are the diferences between Dynamic Dimming and Dynamic Contrast?

These don't strike me as the kind of guys who know what they are doing, or are technically minded.

daz_man - we are only talking about the service menus here - not the normal settings available to anyone.
 
Maybe if samsung stopped forcing technology on the consumer we wouldnt have to go fiddling.

WHy they cant have a dynamic dimming option off section on the menu for example is beyond me.
 
You still haven't posted anyone that has messed up their service menu or their TV by changing anything in the service menu.

Going down through the things you did quote from top to bottom.

the first guy, that problem is easy fixed, and it doesn't detract from the TV picture or the workings of the TV at all.

The second guy went into the service setting to turn off Dynamic Dimming and is inquiring what the other Dynamic settings are. And he posts that he finds the picture worse with Dimming off. Again No problems, just a guy asking questions about the other menus.

The third guy, is just telling his results with turning dynamic dimming off.

The forth guy is a little confused, but, he didn't change what he didn't know, he came back to the forums to ask and the same with the last guy, He just wants to know what these things are.

So from what I can see, these guys are inquiring about what the other menu options are and what they do. Some guys didn't like the changes dynamic dimming off made, but, picture is subjective, so some people like it off, some like it on.

and I don't agree with you, these guys were been careful and asking questions before making changes, it doesn't mean they aren't technically minded or that they don't know what they are doing.
 
Still can't agree with you Reaper.

The first guy - the problem may be easily fixed - this doesn't detract from the fact that he messed it up in first place and clearly doesn't realise that it can be easily fixed. He is pushing buttons in the service menu when he doesn't have any idea what they will do.

The second guy, by the very fact that he is asking the question indicates that he doesn't know what he is doing.

The third person - if that is the case, why doesn't he simply switch everything back and then report back what he has done?

The fourth chap at least you concede that he is confused.

I don't agree that they are simply enquiring about the options - they have gone into the service menu, made changes and either don't know what to do now or are (by your own admission) confused.

Reaper and Mr Lol - if you know your way around the service menus, then good for you. If you think this thread is too below then it is not intended for you. It is intended for people like me - no more than enthusiastic amateurs blundering about, to remind people that they risk invalidating their warranty if they mess around with the service menus.
 
Mika I presume you want the best picture? It's a 20 second job to turn it off. Would you pay a Samsung Engineer to come out and do that? Or would you go look up forums and ask questions to see how to do it?

Yes. Ofcourse. Everybody does. :)

But if turning off that setting makes picture lot better, I dont understand why that setting is not turned off already when you buy tv from Samsung. :confused:
 
… And this fifth Guy doesn't mind what you do as long as you don't mess about with the X-RAY ON . :devil:

The service modes are designed to alter TV settings in the EEPROM for different models and country standards and for Engineers to access them to make the relevant changes.
That is why they are hidden.
So that the customer does not mess about with them.
If you know what you are doing then good Luck to you.
 

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