Conclusion: Samsung has found a way to comply with new European power consumption regulations that will allow the Korean electronics giant to continue selling 8K TVs in the European Union. The workaround highlights the bureaucratic stupidity that often occurs in regulatory space.
Samsung has been pushing for the EU to reconsider its stance on 8K TVs. According to the Energy Efficiency Index (EEI), 8K displays and devices with microLEDs sold from March 1, 2023 must have the same EEI as 4K displays.
8K sets have four times as many pixels as 4K models of the same size. Additionally, they require more powerful processors to upscale images to 8K quality from their native resolutions. Limiting an 8K set to 4K power consumption levels seems unreasonable, but the EU refused to play ball. This left Samsung with no choice but to pull its entire line of 2023 8K TVs from the region or come up with a workaround.
To comply with the regulations, Samsung will ship 2023 8K TVs in the EU with their brightness set to a very low level by default. Also, the brightness setting for the low power preset is locked and cannot be changed by the user.
A complete disaster, you say? Not quite because the devil is in the details. As Forbes points out, Samsung ships sets running in Low Power Mode by default. Apparently the UE is perfectly fine with users switching to another preset picture mode that isn’t bound by brightness limitations. Additionally, the brightness setting on non-eco modes is fully adjustable.
In the end, this whole fiasco is much ado about nothing. Samsung just has to ship sets that work in eco mode out of the box. That’s it. Buyers are free to exit eco mode and adjust the brightness of the set as they see fit. Samsung said it will even include a section on picture presets during the initial setup process to raise awareness of the eco mode situation. This should ensure that even those with no technical prowess will know how to switch picture modes to unlock the full set abilities.
Discover the report of the month (subtitled in French), will the AI win against the world champions of the game of Go? :
