2015 Samsung 4k TV as a Monitor Set Up Guide

Syphon Filter said:
Is that a US designation KS8000?

You need to go into the settings and enable HDMI UHD Colour I think. And also make sure that it's enabled in the PS4.
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Yes, it is the US model of this television.http://www.samsung.com/us/televisio...-series-4k-suhd-tv-2016-model-un65ks8000fxza/
HDR is definitely enabled on all inputs and working. The TV has the little "HDR Signal" message in the corner. The weird thing is that it's just so much darker than everything else. The only way to actually make anything look normal is via dynamic contrast, but I dunno if I'm actually ruining the supposed advantage of HDR by doing that.
 
Domingo said:
Anyone have much experience with HDR and the KS8000? On my setup, no matter what I do with the default settings, it looks washed out. Even the PS4's OS looks washed out. It's way too dark, blacks are grey, and everything looks cloudy when an HDR game is playing. It's just dark and the colors are all really dull.
Yet when I enable dynamic contrast, everything pops. It even makes the color scheme match the way things look without HDR enabled. Is HDR reliant on dynamic contrast or is it actually supposed to look extra dark with no color? Opinions online vary from "it's supposed to look dull and your normal color scheme is wrong" to "HDR relies on dynamic contrast over HDMI."
Any feedback?
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As far as I know...
HDR settings on TVs require more than an 8bit/colour signal. ie 10bit or 12bit per colour.
Games dont use more than 8bit/colour so enabling it on the TV will not look right.
So far only a few movies are higher bit HDR capable.

Games using "HDR" use a synthesized method.
This is designed for use within 8bit output and does not require HDR on a TV set.
This type of HDR has been used long before HDR TVs came out.

But I'm ready to be educated if 10bit+ HDR is new on the PS4 :)
Edit
It seems this is new with the PS4 Pro and some new games.
 
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Nenu said:
As far as I know...
HDR settings on TVs require more than an 8bit/colour signal. ie 10bit or 12bit per colour.
Games dont use more than 8bit/colour so enabling it on the TV will not look right.
So far only a few movies are higher bit HDR capable.

Games using "HDR" use a synthesized method.
This is designed for use within 8bit output and does not require HDR on a TV set.
This type of HDR has been used long before HDR TVs came out.

But I'm ready to be educated if 10bit+ HDR is new on the PS4 :)
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I don't think the games are the problem. Most consumer GPU's won't output anything above 8bit color if I am not mistaken.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I don't think the games are the problem. Most consumer GPU's won't output anything above 8bit color if I am not mistaken.
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My 290x, GTX980 and 980ti can all output 12 bits/colour.

The HDMI input of my Oppo 105D Blue Ray player is shown as 12bit capable.
Under change resolution I can select 12bpc on my 980ti.
They have been capable for years now.
 
Games are the only instances where I've ever seen the "HDR Video Playing" alert show up on the TV. It looks a bit similar to when 3D content is playing...right down to the settings being extra dark and wonky.
I've played Netflix and Amazon movies on the PS4 (and internal apps) that claim they use HDR, but I've never seen that alert for any of them.

I guess I’m more just curious about what HDR is technically supposed to be offering for games. In all of the demos you see (either the ones built into TVs or via YouTube), HDR looks like a bunch of extra bright and rich colors that highlight minute details and better contrast vs. dark areas. Yet I’m not seeing that via the PS4 Pro, at least in Uncharted or TLoU. Instead, triggering HDR makes the picture extra dark and unsaturated. Turning on/up dynamic contrast simply makes it look more or less just like the game did prior to HDR being patched in. I know it was added after the fact, but did it really not add anything at all/dull the colors? Is there a shot this TV is somehow affected by some of the launch woes for the PS4 pro? I’ve tried every input and with/without my AVR, which also supports HDCP 2.2/HDMI 2.0a. They all look the same.

Since HDR isn’t something screenshots can typically illustrate, it’s been a bear of a time figuring out what’s what.
 
Nenu said:
My 290x, GTX980 and 980ti can all output 12 bits/colour.

The HDMI input of my Oppo 105D Blue Ray player is shown as 12bit capable.
Under change resolution I can select 12bpc on my 980ti.
They have been capable for years now.
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Interesting.

My JS9000 is supposedly supposed to support HDR, but nothing but 8bit is selectable in the drivers, and I'd imagine that if the GPU's you mention support it, my Titan should too...
 
My KS8000 supports 12bit color depth (I'm on a 1080GTX) , but only under very specific resolutions, color formats, and dynamic ranges.
 
See discussion on previous page between myself and Nenu.

It's not possible over HDMI 2.0, the bandwidth isn't there for anything other than 8-bit when running 4k @ 60Hz.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Interesting.

My JS9000 is supposedly supposed to support HDR, but nothing but 8bit is selectable in the drivers, and I'd imagine that if the GPU's you mention support it, my Titan should too...
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For sure.
It may be down to a setting on the TV or lower res or colour compression.
To get HDR from pc you will need 10 bit or higher.

Be sure to re-open Nvidia control panel after making a change on the TV.

edit
forgot to mention I am on 1080p, so while extended colour options are available for my res, they probably arent at 4K.
 
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Domingo said:
So, I just so happened to find this yesterday night: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-best-settings-for-hdr-on-samsung-4k-tvs

I've found that bumping the backlight to the max offers a similar visual to dynamic contrast, but less extreme with the colors. Either way, neither really seems that impressive with existing games that were patched for HDR.
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Yikes! If full light output on 2016 models is anything like my 2015 JS9000 that would be absolutely eye scorchingly bright.

My JS9000 never goes above a 7 brightness.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Yikes! If full light output on 2016 models is anything like my 2015 JS9000 that would be absolutely eye scorchingly bright.

My JS9000 never goes above a 7 brightness.
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Normally I'd agree (although I keep mine on 10-12 - I like bright), but the backlight in HDR mode seems like it's set way, way, way lower than every setting. When I bump it to 20, it's actually almost the exact same brightness as every other input. It almost feels like it might be a bug with HDR that they could resolve.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Yikes! If full light output on 2016 models is anything like my 2015 JS9000 that would be absolutely eye scorchingly bright.

My JS9000 never goes above a 7 brightness.
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Mine was at 12 for the longest time, but I've settled on 10. Lower settings are definitely easier on the eyes (esp. at night) but the colors really do pop more at higher brightness levels. I was playing Dying Light over the weekend and it looked significantly better when I cranked the brightness up, but when you exit the game and fire up a full screen white page like Google you better have sunglasses on! :cool:
 
Anyone ever found a way to consistently disable PC mode? I know it's at least possible (I've managed to run my PC in other modes temporarily), but I'd love to know a consistent way to do it. While there's nothing inherently wrong with it most of the time, I dislike how 3/4 of the display options are locked down.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Yikes! If full light output on 2016 models is anything like my 2015 JS9000 that would be absolutely eye scorchingly bright.

My JS9000 never goes above a 7 brightness.
Click to expand...

The KS8000 series is even brighter. I have to keep mine at a 7 as well or it feels like a portable sun is in my room.
 
I think I just like things bright. I keep my KS8000 backlight at 11 or 12 in my moderately-lit basement. I'm sure going under 10 would take me a while to adjust to.
Then again, I can't stand how red the warm settings are either. I think years of using smartphones and older TV's/monitors have me conditioned to prefer cooler (or in this case neutral) color profiles. I want white-whites instead of nicotine stained whites.

I'm still not really sure about HDR settings on this set. People have said to simply crank the backlight to the max, but that looks horrible in dark scenes. I'm convinced that dynamic contrast should be turned on/up. That does the best job of looking relatively similar to normal settings while still offering a little more "pop" to the color. Outside of an HDR signal I find that setting to look awful, though. Wouldn't shock me if that's what it was intended for, but I don't really know.
I'd love to know what Samsung actually intended people to use, though.
 
Godmachine said:
The KS8000 series is even brighter. I have to keep mine at a 7 as well or it feels like a portable sun is in my room.
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I picked up a KS8500 last night and the backlight looking like a solar event was the first thing I noticed about it.
 
Hi everyone,

I do not understand if you are in 4: 4: 4 or not. (UHD Color activate)

Changing sharpness, change the result

Sharpness 50 = 4:4:4 is visible

50 sharp.jpg


Sharpness 0 = 4:2:2 is visible

0 sharp.jpg
 
Since my Samsung KU6400 supports Game Mode only for 4:2:2 resolutions, I want to setup non-native res with reduced color palette. Unfortunatly CRU tool and stock nVidia tool does not provide this option, so is there any other way to do this?
 
I've been using a 6300 since 5/2015.
It did double duty as the livingroom TV.

I sprung for a Jarvis standing desk, and a Sony 43" 800 something or other bc I just felt like I wasn't working at home efficiently. Taking Skype calls laying on the couch with my gf's cat one me, cam off, just isn't professional.

I like the Sony when I have 2-4 AWS accounts open, PowerShell, putty, and eclipse.

I like the Samsung when I feel like playing Civ.

I can spend all day on either of them working from home.

Really just not feeling the couple super spendy ultrawide monitors have made cheap and dirty medium sized TV's worth the price premium for my use.
 
Question:

I have a Samsung UN40KU6290FXZA which is a 40" 4K UHD TV that has that simple remote with minimal buttons.
Normally, when I press the center button, I get a pop up on the top that tells me what mode I'm in. For instance, right now, I'm using it as a PC monitor at 1080p so when I press that center button I get: HD 1920x1080 / 60p HDMI UHD Color
However I notice that when I'm in various apps, like say the You Tube app or the Netflix app, that center button will prompt the app to do something. I don't know how to make that pop-up come up. So I cannot verify if I'm getting something in 4K or not.
Surely there must be a way to get that to pop up even when in one of the built-in apps??? Does anyone know?
 
FulciLives said:
Question:

I have a Samsung UN40KU6290FXZA which is a 40" 4K UHD TV that has that simple remote with minimal buttons.
Normally, when I press the center button, I get a pop up on the top that tells me what mode I'm in. For instance, right now, I'm using it as a PC monitor at 1080p so when I press that center button I get: HD 1920x1080 / 60p HDMI UHD Color
However I notice that when I'm in various apps, like say the You Tube app or the Netflix app, that center button will prompt the app to do something. I don't know how to make that pop-up come up. So I cannot verify if I'm getting something in 4K or not.
Surely there must be a way to get that to pop up even when in one of the built-in apps??? Does anyone know?
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Sorry, couldn't tell you. I've never actually used the apps built into the TV. I use it as a computer monitor only, and have all that stuff disabled. If I want to watch something on Netflix, I do via my computer.
 
FulciLives said:
Question:

I have a Samsung UN40KU6290FXZA which is a 40" 4K UHD TV that has that simple remote with minimal buttons.
Normally, when I press the center button, I get a pop up on the top that tells me what mode I'm in. For instance, right now, I'm using it as a PC monitor at 1080p so when I press that center button I get: HD 1920x1080 / 60p HDMI UHD Color
However I notice that when I'm in various apps, like say the You Tube app or the Netflix app, that center button will prompt the app to do something. I don't know how to make that pop-up come up. So I cannot verify if I'm getting something in 4K or not.
Surely there must be a way to get that to pop up even when in one of the built-in apps??? Does anyone know?
Click to expand...

In a word, no. When the TV is getting supplied by a source, such as your PC, it is telling you what is getting supplied to that input which remains consistent. When using the TV's built in apps, it is not getting supplied from an input, it is getting it from one of the apps, which is not consistent. Take Netflix for example, you could be getting any number of different bitstreams depending on what the stream is available in 1080 / 4K, or if it is dynamically downsampling your stream due to bandwidth limitations..

I use the TV's built in app for Netflix so I can get 4K. Works great.
 
While I love that the built-in apps for Netflix and YouTube can now do 4K (and very basic surround using the ARC channel), I've noticed that the actual visual settings are a crapshoot. Sometimes it'll be my normal backlight setting of 10-12 and other times it'll be something totally different. Ditto with things like brightness and contrast. Just when I think they're saved it'll randomly reset. Not 100% sure, but I think it could be that new firmware releases reset the built-in app settings?
 
Domingo said:
While I love that the built-in apps for Netflix and YouTube can now do 4K (and very basic surround using the ARC channel), I've noticed that the actual visual settings are a crapshoot. Sometimes it'll be my normal backlight setting of 10-12 and other times it'll be something totally different. Ditto with things like brightness and contrast. Just when I think they're saved it'll randomly reset. Not 100% sure, but I think it could be that new firmware releases reset the built-in app settings?
Click to expand...

Possibly, I noticed I had to re-do mine a few times before they finally stuck.
 
I'm having a similar issue. I keep having to set HDMI to "PC" as it keeps forgetting. Starting to do my head in.
 
I wish my TV would stop switching to the PC input constantly. Like 2/3 of the visual settings are locked down in PC mode and input latency isn't quite as low as it is with Game mode.
PC mode is great as an option, but it auto-switches to it and won't let me choose anything else.
 
Is there a feature within samsungs KS8000 to partition the screen in to multiple sectors when you're running it as a PC so there is multiple windows with quick "snap-to" feature?
 
thegreywizard said:
Is there a feature within samsungs KS8000 to partition the screen to multiple sectors when you're running it as a PC so there is quick "snap-to" feature?
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That wouldn't be a function of the TV, but software solutions exist. Try one of these to see if they'll work for you:

WinSplit Revolution

KDE Mover-Sizer

I used WinSplit Revolution and liked it a lot, but try both to see which you prefer. I know some others exist as well; some of them aren't free though.
 
Guys, is it just me or is there a "bulging" (convex) effect on a flat version? (49KS8000)

What i mean is it seems that the center of the screen slightly (but noticeably) bulges out and the sides dip away (i guess because of sitting close to such a big screen). What i mean is that it's the opposite effect of the curve version.

Or is just it not set up correctly?

I wonder if I should have gotten 8500 (curved). Please let me know your opinion while it's not too late to exchange.
 
Lateralus said:
That wouldn't be a function of the TV, but software solutions exist. Try one of these to see if they'll work for you:

WinSplit Revolution

KDE Mover-Sizer

I used WinSplit Revolution and liked it a lot, but try both to see which you prefer. I know some others exist as well; some of them aren't free though.
Click to expand...


Win 7 allowed you to just snap to the left or right half, but doesn't Win 10 - by itself - allow you to snap to screen quadrants?

I can do this easily in Linux Mint Cinnamon edition, but I mostly use Windows for games so I can't remember.

 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Win 7 allowed you to just snap to the left or right half, but doesn't Win 10 - by itself - allow you to snap to screen quadrants?

I can do this easily in Linux Mint Cinnamon edition, but I mostly use Windows for games so I can't remember.
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Win 10 does, yeah. But although better than 7, it's still rather limited. Those programs let you set up custom window sizes that you can easily restore, etc. I used WinSplit Revolution to overcome the aggravating problem I was having where my windows would get resized and repositioned to the upper left quadrant of the screen every time I'd power on the TV. The problem went away when I built a new rig and installed Windows 10, so I've been content since then. :)
 
Just got a new Precision M3510 with i5-6440HQ and Win10. Have it in a Dell E-dock with a display port going through an active DP -> HDMI adapter (that supposedly does 4k @ 60hz over DP 1.2 to HDMI 2.0) to a new Samsung UN40KU6290 in HDMI port 1. Everyone else is getting 4k @ 60 on this TV as a monitor but I'm only getting 30hz. I'm using the Intel integrated graphics (the system also has a AMD W5130M 2GB DDR5).

I go into the intel HD graphics control panel, change it from 30hz to 60hz, the screen flashes a couple of times, but then after ~10 seconds it just comes back to 30hz. 1080p at 60hz works fine but looks like crap.

Any ideas?
 
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For the life of me I can't find how to manually turn on my 2016 KS8000

Does anyone know where the power sensor is on the tv itself to manually turn it on/off?

Thanks.
 
Has anyone tried any of the two recent updates to the JS9000? They don't say what has changed, and everything is so perfect I'm afraid to try since I don't think you can revert (or can you), but on the other hand I'm thinking I may be missing something good...
 
randyest said:
Has anyone tried any of the two recent updates to the JS9000? They don't say what has changed, and everything is so perfect I'm afraid to try since I don't think you can revert (or can you), but on the other hand I'm thinking I may be missing something good...
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I don't blame you, I've been apprehensive as well.

I installed the latest update a few days ago, and honestly I haven't noticed anything different. I've heard the update adds HDR for the Netflix app, but I don't use any of the smart TV functions so I haven't even tested it.

Mine is strictly a monitor.
 
I went ahead and updated too. Everything seems the same as I am all monitor / PC mode too. I did check out netflix and even the regular HD shows (I don't pay for netflix 4k) look fantastic compared to my 70" 1080p Sharp. Maybe it's the size and/or distance but I had to turn it off to resist buying a new 4k set for the theater room. Game lag (in PC mode) seems the same or maybe slightly better -- I can't measure it.

Good news is nothing broke. I haven't gone through all the menus completely, but it seems to have kept my custom calibration, which is nice and unexpected.
 
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