Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

pn50a450 service menu problem

Mar 14, 2009 7:47PM PDT

i was checking the hours of usage of my pn50a450 through service menu for the first time. then somehow i made mistake to press ADC then HDMI calibration.
av components pc were success. but hdmi was like "wait" and then it made screen glows bright and dark back and forth. it kept doing it for more than 20 mins.
so i turned off the tv and turned it back on. nothing changed but my setting was reset. so i checked the service menu again and it was showing hdmi calibration was failed. right now i am using hdmi2 connected with pc. what should i do to make that hdmi calibration success? should i keep in on more than 20 mins? when i got into service menu my tv was reset it and left IR after that 20mins. i ran scroll and it almost got rid of it thogh. please help!!!

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
pn50a450 service menu problem
Mar 16, 2009 8:42AM PDT

jaebi74,

Unfortunately, I'm not sure what happened, and I really can't be much help when it comes to service menu issues. I'm not quite sure what you mean by "it left IR after that 20 mins". Did you have some sort of image retention left on the screen?

I always recommend not going into the service menu unless you're an authorized technician.

--HDTech

- Collapse -
thank you
Mar 16, 2009 9:37AM PDT

yeah IR meant image retention.so what should i do? do i need to call samsung about this?

- Collapse -
thanks
Mar 16, 2009 9:39AM PDT

no IR meant burn-in image. images were there.

- Collapse -
thanks
Mar 16, 2009 11:48AM PDT

jaebi74,

In most cases, unless the image is *really* burned into the screen, a combination of normal viewing and Screen Wipe (bleach to black in the Screen Burn Protections menu) will even it out with a little time. Hopefully those images weren't there long enough to cause any permanent damage. In most cases, even with some burn-in, it doesn't affect the active picture until dark scenes.

There was a good suggestion here, but unfortunately, I just can't talk about service menu related issues here. Sorry.

But keep me posted.

--HDTech

- Collapse -
You need to have a special image for HDMI calibration.
Mar 16, 2009 11:21AM PDT
- Collapse -
thanks but it didnot workd
Mar 16, 2009 6:55PM PDT

thank you for your tip. but it didnot work. i tried on hdmi1 and 2 and exactly what they said on the site. urgh...
what should i do now? tv still works fine.. but maybe becuz i know i messed the calibration of hdmi, it keep making me think that it is not right. urgh...
do you have any other idea?

- Collapse -
Maby source is not correct?
Mar 17, 2009 11:41AM PDT

My guess is that if the procedure on that site is correct, that the TV is not seeing the pattern correctly. With my computer, if I do not have the TV on before turning on my computer, it does not always show the computer output and I have to reboot to get it to work.

You might try getting that image into another source that can output to HDMI. Do you have a Blu-ray that can display picture discs (or that has a card reader)? Or some other type of set top box that can show pictures?

You also said you ran "ADC" calibration. Not sure what that did, or, if that is causing problems now.

As I am not a TV technician, I am not sure what all the TV is doing during that calibration. Something to keep in mind though, is that Samsung probably specifies that the image is to be produced by a "reference" signal generator. If you do decide to try again, I would make sure that the image is shown as close to original as possible (meaning the device showing the image is not trying to "enhance" the image).

You might try Googling around some more, and might find some other web sites with better or more complete instructions. But, you might just have to bite the bullet, call a TV repair shop, tell them what you did, and get it repaired. Because, even if you do get it "working", it might not be working as well as it should if the source displaying that image is not what Samsung expected it to be.

- Collapse -
thank you for your tips
Mar 17, 2009 6:15PM PDT

thank you. i was thinking about same thing too.
i am using computer dvi to hdmi right now. and when i tried to recalibrate i just hooked the computer to hdmi1 and used that image then didnot do anything.
when i googled about the issue and i found there are lots ppl who made same mistake. some of them were saying their cases wrose than mine. mine is at least working. but theirs is not at all. colors or contrat were all messed up.
anyway i also found out that i have to use 720p image to recalibrate.
i thought my MB-built-in video chip which is radeon HD3300 is supporting up tp 1080p. and i am still not so sure about that since it didnot work. so i was thining about using blu-ray player but i donot have one yet.
so i probably keep using the tv like this or maybe i switch the dvi-hdmi to vga cable.

- Collapse -
i got it!!!
Mar 18, 2009 1:23AM PDT

ok i finally got it success. i am gonna explain how i did from now for the ppl who have made same mistake as i did. and i found out there were alot of ppl who did it. first of all, download checkboard pattern from the reply above this. then don't use microsoft image viewer. use irfanview. you can download it from googling. connect pc to hdmi port that you were making mistake. if you made a change of hdmi calibration when you were hdmi 1 then connect pc to 1, if it was 2 then use 2. then change resolution to 1980*1080. if your computer dosen't support that, then you can try 1360*768. but i think 1080 makes calib up to 1080i and 768 makes calib up to 720p. (again i think) so hopefully your computer can go up to 1080. then go to service menu by press mute 182 power.
go to adc which is secocnd from the top. do the calib of hdmi. it took less than 10 seconds. for ppl who tried this and didnot workd, make sure you connect the pc to the hdmi port where you made a change. in my case, i made a mistake on hdmi 2. then i tried to recalib at hdmi 1 with 1080 and it didnot work. and i tried 768 at hdmi1 and didnot work. i also tried 768 and 1080 on hdmi 2 and didnot work. at those cases i used microsoft viewer. then i tried irfanview it worked right away.
one more thing for ppl who connec pc to pn50a450 by using dvi-hdmi or hdmi-hdmi, make sure you connect the pc to hdmi 2 not 1 or 3 and i think that where samsung recommends. if you connect it to 1 or 3 then you will lose half to one inch on each side of panel. that is why i had been using vga cable. but i tried it to hdmi 2 then the whole panel got covered. i saw many ppl were asking about this issue too. i am explaining here.
great tv. if you wanna get a tv less than 1k, then get this.

- Collapse -
Force 720p resolution
Mar 18, 2009 1:26AM PDT

You should be able to "force" your PC resolution to 720p. If not, you can buy a "cheap" upscaling dvd with hdmi for under $50 these days.

But, you may want to find out how much it will cost to be repaird before messing with it any more. You might be able to get it working agian, but, from what you said about color/contrast being messed up, it soulds like that image needs to be from a reference source. That said, you may have to have it serviced to be back to normal.