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General discussion

LN46A650 Purple Haze

Dec 8, 2008 6:30AM PST

Has anyone ever heard of, or seen a purple haze on the screen of a LN46A650 when when viewing very slightly off centre. Its gets worse as you get closer to 180 degrees. I know LCD will lose some picutre quality when viewing off angle but I really don't think a purple haze should happen. Is there any fix, or maybe a new bezel is needed?

Discussion is locked

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Clouding?
Dec 8, 2008 7:22AM PST

ln46A6502008,

If you believe that the panel is showing an issue with discoloring, clouding or "haze", I would suggest you call 800-SAMSUNG and open a service ticket to have a technician take a look.

There's no fix to that issue that I'm aware of from a firmware standpoint, and likely involves the panel itself.

Keep me posted!

--HDTech

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Is "clouding" a technical term?
Dec 9, 2008 6:51AM PST

I ask, and not to hijack the thread, because I have a similar issue to this one. I just got my ln46a650 a couple weeks ago. Blacks/shadows didn't seem quite right to me watching Spiderman 3 blu-ray through a PS3. It was awhile later that I finally saw an all black screen when switching sources. Instead of uniform black, it looked...mottled? "Cloudy" is a perfect term, though, and I'm wondering if this is something that is sometimes found in LCDs. Portions of the screen are a very noticeable lighter tone. I'm not sure if it is getting worse, but I've begun to notice that the lighter parts actually form almost an "X" that spans the whole screen. I've begun to wonder if I'm suddenly going to feel Agent Skinner's hand on my shoulder. Heh.

My set also won't hold any of my picture settings, suddenly reverting to default right in the middle of a TV show (through a Tivo HD) or game, but the spontaneous powering off/on was fixed by the firmware update.

I'm going to open a case with Samsung, but I just wanted to relay a similar cloudy/haze experience and see if there are others seeing the same thing.

This is viewing straight on, to note.

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A few thoughts...
Dec 9, 2008 7:02AM PST

Logik2000,

"Clouding" is not an official term, but more of an understood symptom description.

I might suggest getting your panel looked at by a technician for the pattern you see.

As far as your picture settings changing back, your television is in "shop" mode. This is a demo mode so that when customers play around with settings in a store, they will default back to Dynamic. There are two ways to get out of that mode on Samsung televisions.

1. Hold down the MENU button on the television for 15 seconds.
2. Press volume up for a second, and then hold down MENU for 15 seconds.

So we knocked down one problem, and the tech call for your screen will hopefully resolve all of your issues.

--HDTech

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I love easy fixes
Dec 9, 2008 10:29PM PST

The "shop mode" thing is great news. I tried last night, and it didn't work, but I must have missed something. Just 2 questions on that:

1) Is there any sort of indicator when you've switched shop mode on or off? A beep, message, or whatnot?

2) "Press volume up for a second, and then hold down MENU for 15 seconds." Does this mean to continue holding the volume button with the menu button or just a quick blip, release, and then hold he menu button?

A little more on topic: I had my wife look at the TV and she didn't see the cloudiness I'm seeing. Shockingly, I wasn't seeing it either. I used the TV for a couple hours. When I shut off the sources and had just a black screen again, what I originally saw was back and quite noticeable. To me, at least. She was in bed. Again, I know we can't fix that here. Just relaying my experience.

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Questions....
Dec 10, 2008 8:11AM PST

Logik2000,

1. If you hold down the menu button, there should be a short quick flash in the middle of the screen (near the bottom) that tells you what mode you're in. If you hold down the button, and 15 seconds later, it says "Shop Mode", you are NOW in shop mode. If it says Dynamic Mode, then you are NOW in Dynamic.

2. Do not hold down the volume button. Press it, lift off, and then press the menu button and hold THAT in for 15 seconds.

Keep me posted.

--HDTech

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Got it working
Dec 12, 2008 1:34AM PST

Consider yourself posted kept. Heh.

To finally end this threadjack, I found the issue with setting the shop mode. I'm running through an AV receiver. As such, I have the sound on the TV turned off. I turned sound on temporarily, did the volume + click then hold menu and it worked. Thank you!

As for the clouding, I forgot friend at work bought a Samsung LCD earlier in the year. He sees the same type of thing. This is actually my first time with an LCD TV, so my expectations for shadow/black may have been a little higher than they should. I mean like the blackness of space black. Heh. Guess that's a little unrealistic.

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If you still have concerns...
Dec 12, 2008 4:47AM PST

Logik2000,

The LNxxA650 should still get pretty dark.

If you still have concerns with the picture quality, please don't hesitate to call and have a service tech take a look at it, especially since you're still in warranty. I want you to be happy with your purchase.

That's not unrealistic at all. Happy

--HDTech

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Purple Haze
Dec 10, 2008 12:00AM PST

Thanks for the suggestion Happy. However, after playing with some settings the only thing I have found to really reduce this is to put my dynamic contrast setting to low and backlight setting to 3 to kinda counter the dynamic contrast. It seemed to kind of reduce flashlights/clouding as well but that is just my opinion. I will still call samsung though to have someone take a look.