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General discussion

Green static snow appearing on my new 58" plasma

I bought my 58" Series 5 550 plasma on Boxing Day. About 2 weeks later I started noticing green static 'snow' appearing on the screen when plugged in to my PS3 via HDMI.

Sometimes wiggling the HDMI cable clears this up for a little while, but it comes back.

Any possible causes for this? Known issue with Samsung plasmas? HDMI cable? PS3 box ???

I'm going down to Future Shop (here in Canada) to get a new HDMI cable and will try that. If it still happens then it's down to either the PS3 box of the TV. I'm *really* hoping it's not the TV as I just paid $2800 for it (got $1000 off on boxing day) and it weights a gazillion pounds. Not to mention I know the horror stories of trying to return something after 30 days.

Is there any 'common problem' that this green static is associated witH?

Discussion is locked

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Static snow...
Mar 4, 2009 7:13AM PST

z0diacx,

Thanks for purchasing a Samsung product.

There are several reasons why "snow" could appear on the units, and there have been some "colored static" posts here on the thread. The best test is finding out if it's happening on every input, or just one. If it's happening on all of them it may be the board behind the plasma panel (and not the panel itself), which can most definitely be fixed.

If it's limited to just one input, it may be coming from the source.

Keep me posted.

--HDTech

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problem was HDMI cord

Wow, I'm very impressed by the timely response. I've read countless horror stories when trying to get support from manufacturers.

Well, I knew that static/snow had to be coming from one of 3 things: TV, HDMI cord, BD (PS3) player. I decided to eliminate the cheapest possibility first: the cord. VOILA! I replaced it with another, and no more static. Then I was able to test my old HDMI cord out on another HD tv today, and it also produced the same snow on the screen. A *huge* sigh of relief today as I was nervous all day that I'd have to somehow crate up the 200+lb TV and ship it off for half a year and have to deal with countless hundreds of hours of being on hold with different people trying to sort this mess out.

Instead of my $3500 TV it turned out to be a 25 dollar cord.

Thank you for your reply! You have no idea how appreciated it is to hear back from a company rep in person.

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Happy to help!
Mar 4, 2009 10:39AM PST

z0diacx,

I'm really happy to read the enthusiasm in your post, and I too, am glad that the problem was solved quickly and relatively painlessly.

Let me know if we can help further!

--HDTech