Comment on Samsung UN55HU8550 55-Inch 4K Ultra HD 120Hz 3D Smart LED TV by FALCON.
Awesome TV you will love it but set it up!,
I am not affiliated with Samsung or CNET.
[Side Note: I believe Samsung should provide free 2014 One connect boxes to F9000 owners because of the H265 codec, Google’s superior VP9 codec, and HDMI 2.0 as a gesture of good faith toward early adopters.]
This review will help you get the most out of your HU8550. I won’t waste your time listing all the specs.
I am posting here because some people badmouthed and down rated the Samsung F9000 because they did not know how to use it. I do not want the same thing to happen to this excellent TV. I have last year’s top-of-the-line F9000 4K model which is virtually the exact same TV as this, released only 5 months earlier. Only the Smart Hub software and HDMI ports changed.
I cannot believe how absolutely amazing the picture is. It’s colors explode, it’s blacks are black, it’s whites are white, flesh tones are real, and all of it is super sharp. With newscasts or interviews, people look like they’re sitting right in front of you. It’s almost scarey. Aerial shots and night shots of cities will blow you away. You cannot ask for a better picture. And that’s not just my opinion, read all of the professional reviews. Every single one of them love this TV.
NOTICE: Do not worry about 4K content not being available. This TV upscales. It has to because the screen is made of 3840 X 2160 pixels. Go to [….] and check the US news section. I quote it in the comments section. The upscaling of Samsung’s Quadmatic Picture Engine works wonders, especially with anything in HD (1080P). It also works fine with SD material but not as well because upscaling works with the material it starts with. That’s what it scales up. I can honestly tell you that I do not want a sharper picture than this. You can see every facial feature including eyelashes. Blu Rays and 4K YouTube’s will make you cry. Pause the picture anywhere, even get close to it, and be amazed.
Any person giving this TV anything less than five stars reveals their own foolishness for not setting it up, or they got a weird factory defect. You have to set it up(calibrate it for your room). If you are a newbie to electronics you have three options.
1. Learn how to set it up and you’ll love it. It is very easy.(I will help you in this post).
2. If you’re too lazy, don’t buy a piece of high-quality electronic equipment like this. You don’t deserve it.
3. Pay someone to calibrate it for you. Actually that’s a waste of money because in 20 minutes you can easily do it yourself with this post. You can make this TV look anyway you want it to look. Which is why comparisons in stores are superfluous unless you make all settings equal between the TVs.
Out of the box the picture looks disappointing , that’s Samsung’s fault, although most manufacturers do the same thing for the retail store lighting. When I first turned on this TV it looked like a soap opera or documentary. I knew this was not right.
Because I researched the F9000 (same internals as Hu8550) I knew what to do. The first thing to do is go to the System menu, scroll to the Eco-Solution Submenu, and turn OFF the accursed eco-saving feature and eco-sensor.
CNET has evaluators that are among the best in the industry. A professional named Katzmaier uses $30,000 worth of equipment to calibrate these TVs. Don’t know if I can post links here, so search for CNET’s HDTV picture settings forum forUN65f9000 or HU8550-a bit early for this as of this date. (The 55 inch versions take the same calibrations.)
However, there’s one problem with their settings. They calibrate their TVs in a dark room. Therefore their brightness levels are way too low. They acknowledge this, but it is a necessary starting point and equalizer for the different models. No problem, use Samsung’s default settings for Movie and set Backlight to their setting(12). It worked great with gamma at +1. The first thing you want to do is set it to Movie mode, which is what CNET uses. Play with other modes later.
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The settings I’m about to list are based on Katzmaier’s from CNET(get them and print them out) with some tweaks of my own made by going between his and the Samsung defaults. Do that, that’s safe. If you set your TV to these, you will love the picture. If not, tweak it for yourself somewhere between his settings and the defaults.
It is very easy, so don’t freak out. If you can turn your volume control up and down you can change your settings. The settings have a combined effect, so do not just do one area.
HOW TO SET A FANTASTIC PICTURE AND REMOVE MOTION BLURR/Judder:
Picture menu – Use all Samsung’s defaults for Movie mode with a slight color tweak
mode: Movie – the most important change.
backlight: 12 – CNET’s setting of 7 is way too low unless you are in a really dark…
