I installed the new 2014.1 firmware on my 65” Q95T QLED television about a week ago.
Since then I’ve encountered a bug in Game Mode, subpar Local Dimming performance when watching HDR movies on the Apple TV 4K and an SDR Local Dimming bug.
Game Mode bug While using my PlayStation 5 at 60 Hz with HDR enabled (HGiG engaged), there seems to be a surge in brightness/contrast when opening a menu or entering a different environment. This surge in brightness/contrast lasts for one or two seconds before returning to what appears to be the intended picture - I presume that this is some sort of dynamic tone mapping bug. Thankfully, this bug is resolved by simply engaging and then immediately disabling Game Motion Plus. However, this has to be done every time I start playing a game. Could Samsung engineers please look into this? Game Mode is nearly perfect thanks to the Game Mode Local Dimming improvements that Samsung implemented in firmware 2014.1!
Standard/Movie Mode (HDR) subpar Local Dimming performance There seems to be significantly more blooming when watching HDR movies using Standard and Movie Modes. Bright objects, such as flames and lights bloom far more on 2014.1 than they did on the previous firmware (1462.1). There is also far more light bleed into letterbox bars. Interestingly, this bug can be somewhat mitigated in my case by changing the Apple TV 4K settings to always output at 4K HDR at 60 Hz. However, if I have the Apple TV 4K set to dynamically match frame rate there is a large amount of blooming. Again, this was not at all the case on the previous firmware and is a bug that was introduced with firmware 2014.1. If I had to guess it is a refresh rate bug that affects Local Dimming performance. There is also more blooming when watching 4K HDR YouTube videos using the built-in YouTube app on the Q95T.
Standard (SDR) Local Dimming bug When viewing a dark screen (eg. white text on a black background) the TV dims the image to hide blooming, which works quite well! However, the dimming persists when the scene changes and it takes one to two seconds before the ‘proper’ brightness returns i.e the dimming takes too long to resolve. This occurs when Local Dimming is set to Standard when watching SDR content. The Apple TV 4K preview of the movie ‘Dunkirk’ clearly demonstrates this bug.
I would very much appreciate it if a Samsung technician could look into these issues and get back to me. I’m more than willing to supply whatever additional information is necessary and I’m happy to liaise with Samsung engineers/customer service representatives further on these matters.
Hi @BlueSun88, thank you for taking your time to provide feedback in relation to these issues you're experiencing. I have raised this with our team and will get back to you once I have an update.
Those two settings you suggested were already disabled. Nevertheless, I switched them On and Off again just to be sure but it didn’t alleviate any of the above mentioned bugs.
Also, I forgot to mention in my main post, but I also have horizontal scan lines that slowly move up the screen while in Game Mode. However, engaging Game Motion Plus gets rid of these scan lines. Is there a fix planned for this issue too?
Hi @BlueSun88, would you be able to send us some videos or photos showing the fault to our email (members.au@samsung.com) so that our development team can take a further look into the issue? Thank you.
Sorry for the delayed reply. I’ll try to capture some videos of the issues tonight and send them through.
On the upside, it seems that hard rebooting my Q95T (holding the power button on the remote until the QLED logo appears) has corrected the odd blooming I was experiencing in HDR mode while watching movies.
Nevertheless, I’ll still send through videos of the other issues.
