Samsung caught cheating in TV benchmarks, promises software update

[Nod]

Source: https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1654235588

Samsung has been caught cheating by designing its TVs to recognize and react to test patterns used by reviewers. The company promises to provide software updates to address the situation.

Reviewers, calibrators and certification bodies typically use a 10% window for HDR testing, which simply means that it takes up 10% of the screen. In this window multiple steps from black to white as well as a set of colors are measured. Samsung has designed its TVs to recognize this and other commonly used window sizes, after which the TV adjusts its picture output to make measurements appear more accurate than the picture really is. When using a non-standard window such as 9% (everything else equal), the cheating algorithm can be bypassed so the TV reveals its true colors.

This is deliberate cheating, an orchestrated effort to mislead reviewers.

Vincent Teoh of HDTVTest first identified and documented the issue on Samsung's S95B QD-OLED TV. FlatpanelsHD has since identified and documented the issue on Samsung's QN95B 'Neo QLED' LCD TV where it gets even worse.

FlatpanelsHD asked Samsung Korea to comment on our findings and here is what the company said.

- "Samsung remains committed to relentless innovation to provide the best picture quality to our consumers," Samsung HQ wrote in a statement to FlatpanelsHD. "To provide a more dynamic viewing experience for the consumers, Samsung will provide a software update that ensures consistent brightness of HDR contents across a wider range of window size beyond the industry standard."

The statement makes it sound almost as if Samsung will expand its cheating algorithm to cover more window sizes, but this is obviously something we will examine again in future reviews.

The company promised that a software update will be provided for QN95B "soon". It did not comment on other TV models that we can only assume have the same cheating algorithm built-in.

 

[Lupus]

So like they do one the cellphone market?

 

[Azbubu]

Smart TV indeed.

 

[CaneMan]

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