I’m posting this as a warning to others not to do what I did (why can’t I leave things alone?!)
My Samsung UE55HU8200 was working perfectly until yesterday, when Netflix, Amazon Instant Video and Blinkbox Movies all failed. The apps would load but trying to play a movie resulted in an error, in the case of Netflix the movie would load to 99% then stall, followed by an error message saying it couldn’t play. Similar results with Amazon and Blinkbox. However, all the UK catch-up services including BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, 4OD and Demand 5 were fine. There was certainly nothing wrong with my Internet connection.
I found the 8888 suggestion on this forum (thank you!) and it restored all services. I think the problem coincided with a Samsung software update. Although it’s obviously great that the 8888 fix worked, I don’t think the end user should have to make such adjustments, and non-technical people who don’t use forums would be stuck. However, for me that should have been a happy ending.
And it would have been if only I could keep my meddling, geekish fingers to myself. But no. I just had to see what ‘Service Mode’ was. I tried mute-1-8-2-power but that didn’t work, so I moved on to info-menu-mute-power. Immediately all my picture settings went up to their maximum or somewhere near it and the service menu appeared. I tried to exit it with the return and exit keys, but it would not go away and the picture remained dreadful.
I turned the TV off, removed power, restored power, and switched back on. Service menu gone but picture absolutely horrible. All the settings that I had spent weeks honing had been lost. Fortunately I had taken screenshots so was able to restore them. But the picture wouldn’t retain its image level if I used Smart Hub. The brightness would plunge to almost black, and would stay like that after returning to normal TV viewing. However, entering the picture menu showed that my custom settings were still in place, and immediately on entering the menu the picture restored itself.
The problem hasn’t happened again for an hour of testing, so I hope it was a temporary glitch. But if you fancy looking at the oh-so-tempting service menu, please be warned!
As for Samsung’s latest update, my set now behaves strangely after switching on. The voice command icon appears for a few seconds, then the TV turns itself off then on again, after which it works normally. This has nothing to do with my accessing the service menu, as the odd behavior came before. I don’t use voice command mode and would like to disable it but can’t find a disable option.