Don't worry. It will work just fine. Get the adapter, plug it in. Your Mac will register the additional screen, and send a signal to it. From System Preferences > Display, you can choose how to set it up. The display icon in the menu bar is not guaranteed to show up. And nothing in the Preference panel will change, until another display is connected.
Here are a few pointers, that might help making it work every time.
- Turn on the TV on HDMI channel (Input, Source or whatever it is called), if possible (some Samsungs won't open HDMI signals that are not active)
- Connect the adapter to HDMI cable
- Connect the adapter to the Mac
Can't explain why, but sometimes it needs something in the other end, to figure out what signal to send, if it can't figure it out, it might not send something at all. At which point unplugging and then plugging the adapter back in, should resolve the issue.