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TV always automatically reduce its brightness whenever there's a dark scene?

W

warheat

Member
It's a Samsung J series model. I tried turning off everything with "Auto" word in it including eco sensor, dynamic contrast, motion lighting, and bunch of other crap.

I'm pretty satisfied with the TV but this auto dimming is pissing me off and making some games (as if Tombs of the Giant weren't dark enough) unplayable for me. If I set the TV in "Movie Mode", the auto dimming is gone. But the color in "Movie Mode" isn't that good for gaming and I can't turn on "Game Mode" in "Movie Mode".

Is my TV broken or it was made that way due to Energy Star standard or something like that? (the TV itself have Energy Star logo so..)

UPDATE :

I just read this explanation from www.rtings.com

o9kUT4a.png
Click to expand...

Guess I'll have to deal. Will never buy another Samsung TV in the future.

source : http://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/what-is-local-dimming
 
I had a Sony Bravia that did this. Found all kinds of suggestions online but nothing fixed it.

It sounds like that might just be something you'll have to learn to deal with
 
Set to like a standard mode, and dig around, there should be a setting along the lines of dynamic contrast or something like that. A lot of TVs will only let you fully tweak settings in a default mode.
 
This is called auto dimming iirc.

You need to set the picture to movie mode and then adjust. Take a look at Game Mode's settings and just repeat everything.

It worked for me (I also have a Samsung).
 
It sounds like dynamic contrast to me. Just go into the settings and turn off basically everything.

Edit: sorry, I see you did this. Is there a firmware update?
 
I have a Samsung j series 4k TV too and have the same problem. Even got into the dev menu and had a look around for any useful setting with no luck. Contacting Samsung was also pointless. Basically, I've learned to deal with it. It's a perfect TV other than that.

I read there were some methods involving increasing your brightness value enough so the setting doesn't automatically kick in and then offsetting the differences in the white balance menu, but I had no luck in that.
 
Most people here are wrong, this auto dimming can't be turned off on most Samsung models.
What you have to do is lower the RGB offset in White balance from 25 to 9 or 10, then increase the brightness to 54 from 45. This tricks the TV into not detecting dark enough regions so it doesn't dim anymore. Leave it on Game mode, too. Movie mode has a boatload of input lag.
 
Sounds like a Samsung TV would piss me off.

warheat said:
Do you know if going to dev menu is going to void the warranty?
Click to expand...
I don't see why it would if it's merely a software menu accessed through a cheat code. You might be able to screw something up horribly while you're there, but I've never been into one so I can't say.
 
I had a TV that did this. Made it impossible to watch some movies.. literally couldn't see some scenes in the Deathly Hallows, which came out right when I got the TV.

I bought a new TV.
 
My old Samsung plasma does the opposite of this so dark scenes can really look like crap sometimes. Thankfully if there's like a single pixel of white or another bright colour on screen it won't happen, so in most games with HUDs I'm safe; It happens a lot during movies though.

I think it was called rising or floating black levels.
 
It's an energy saving setting I've spent a while tinkering with settings and the dev menu but it was impossible to completely turn it off on my Samsung. At least it's not as bad as before. Still rather annoying there was no option to turn it off completely.
 
warheat said:
Any fix?
Click to expand...

Try changing the input name to PC and leave game mode alone.
This usually has Samsung TV's behave like PC monitors, reducing image processing to the minimum and also drastically reducing input lag, if present.
Also, in a few models, this enables full 4:4:4 support.
 
warheat said:
Do you know if going to dev menu is going to void the warranty?
Click to expand...
I read that there's a flag that can be seen by engineers to identify if someone's accessed it, so possibly. I was aware of the risks though. You just have to be sure not to turn a setting on/off when it shouldn't be. I'm saying that I went through this to no avail so you don't have to :)

I think it's called global dimming. I also read it's meant to trick you into believing the blacks are deeper than they are, but it's far too noticeable sometimes. Some TV's have local dimming, which I assume would give a better effect.

I've spent hours and hours trying to disable this, changing label to "PC", "Game", activating Game mode, disabling all effects does not work. If you can't get past it, I'd suggest you return it. (I stuck with the TV due to it's minimal input lag)
 
Watched a friends house a few weekends, could never figure out how to get rid of it on his Samsung TV. I spent hours messing around with settings before restoring them back to the way they were initially. Drove me nuts. Also made me realize I don't want a Samsung TV, despite them being really nice otherwise.
 
This is not Dynamic Contrast as a lot of people are suggesting. The feature OP is complaining about is the actual LED backlight being dimmed in darker scenes. Samsung do this to try and maintain good black levels and hide clouding but it can sometimes be quite jarring.

I didn't know they were still doing this as I don't remember seeing it since the B series. I've since had a D7000 and now a H7000 and not noticed it on either of those so I think this only affects certain models. I'm also surprised the feature remains active when Game Mode is enabled as that typically defeats most of these things.

If you've really tried all the available options in the standard menus, you're going to need to access the Service Menu and disable "CE Dimming". Be aware than simply accessing the Service Menu will reset everything to defaults.
 
As someone who's owned both a JS7000 and 9000 It has to be one of two options.

One of the Eco settings under System, or you're noticing the local dimming in effect and it's bothering you.
 
My shitty lg monitor/tc did that and there was no explicit way to disable that.

After trying all the settings out I was able to found a way to disable that extremely annoying and unnecessary bug, just change picture profile to rgb and it should work.

Picture profiles are named normally different (something like movie, normal and more) and I'm so glad to disable this, playing the Walking dead season 1 with the dark parts was unplayable.
 
Set the Smart LED option to off in one of the advanced picture menu settings. I turned this on recently on my 2014-model 4K Samsung and noticed it started doing that. You can also change it to Low, so it does it only a very few times in really dark scenes.
 
MauroNL said:
Set the Smart LED option to off in one of the advanced picture menu settings. I turned this on recently on my 2014-model 4K Samsung and noticed it started doing that. You can also change it to Low, so it does it only a very few times in really dark scenes.
Click to expand...

Thats the local dimming you're turning off with Smart LED btw.
 
I have the same problem, too, with my 2014 somethingsomething model. Dynamic contrast and brightness and everything else that's automatic is turned of and game mode turned on. The only way to fix this is to turn of deep color HDMI output in the PS4 settings, which looks horribly washed out at first. You can deal with this by adjusting the tv settings, but deep color still looks better imo.
 
I'm so glad that this isn't an isolated issue - my samsung does it as well (model T27D390S) and it made playing some bits of Dishonored absolutely torturous. I always just assumed it was a bug with this model, but for it to be in most models baffles me. It's so jarring to look at!
 
Samsung does this to hide the poor uniformity and clouding on their TVs, which are more obvious in dark scenes unless the LED backlight is dimmed. LCD tech sucks.
 
My Samsung H6410 does this in game mode as well & it's really irritating but I've never figured out how to stop it. Will try setting it to PC when I get a chance.
 
I was going to mention the Eco Sensor, but you already said you turned it off.
I assume your "Motion Lighting" under Picture > Advanced Settings and LED Clear Motion options are also off?

I use Standard picture mode on mine though.
 
My new 4K Samsung doesn't do this unless I have Smart LED active (local dimming). The crowd over on AVS tells me it's stupid not to have local dimming active, it's apparently some godly feature, but I just don't like what it does.

What my TV does do that can't seem to be turned off is if the screen is pitch black, like during a scene transition, you see the backlight turn off which annoys me. Someone on AVS informed me to test pure black scenes and raise my brightness setting till I no longer see the backlight go out, then go into your White Balance and change the amount you adjusted your brightness and take that total out of each RGB Offsets so to keep your proper brightness.

So say your calibrated Brightness is 45, but you find setting your brightness to 49 stops your backlight from going out. That's a 4 point change. So you would then go into your White Balance and take each of the three Offsets down 4 points. So if your R-Offset was 8, you'd change it to 4. If your G-Offset was 3, you'd make it -1. Do the same for B-Offset.

I don't know if this will fix your problem, because your backlight is just dimming, not turning off. I'd double check and make sure you don't have any special thing on.
 
For a TV with no local dimming (like my Samsung H series) this is an excellent feature to have because when you turn off the lights, the backlight is too bright and it tones down the black levels quite a bit.
 
I was able to disable the auto dimming in the hidden service menu. Of course that voids the guarantee ... and I was able to break my TV by being in there. At least when I got it back from repairs the auto dimming was still disabled, so I kinda was successful :D
 
Aztechnology said:
As someone who's owned both a JS7000 and 9000 It has to be one of two options.

One of the Eco settings under System, or you're noticing the local dimming in effect and it's bothering you.
Click to expand...

I have a few year older model of Samsung that did this, it is from Eco mode. When the scene went darker they dimmed the set to save power. White text on a black background was hard to read. Once disabled it's stopped.
 
The panasonic of my parents has this shit. It drives me crazy, but I'm the only one noticing it- which I really don't understand, because it adjusts only after the first few frames. There is also no option to turn it off (even in movie mode, I tried), so I just decided to never mention it again and let them keep their blissful ignorance.
 
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