My plasma TV is doing something strange. I getting verticle strips of random bright blue dots over one section. Its less than 25% of the screen. A few things I notce about it.
So any ideas?
I am not an expert but here is my guess.
If you are using component (The red, green and blue cables) it’s possible either the blue cable is damaged or something between the blue jack and the circutry is.
The only thing you could test yourself is use a known good cable. Take the cable you use for the red and switch it to the blue (on say a DVD player)
vertical strips are very strange. you can give it a shot and check avsforum, or maybe even call tech support.
Well, if it happens on all the inputs, it isn’t a component connection issue. The way you describe it, it sounds like bad pixels, except for the fact that you say it doesn’t show up on the menu graphics. There’s probably a bad circuit board somewhere related to the inputs. You should probably take it in to get it serviced. Hopefully you’re still under warranty and didn’t buy it online. :)
I’m away on travel this week and my wife called me today saying the TV is much worse. I got a warrenty from Sams club that says I can return it no questions asked and I’m probanly going to take them up on the offer. It appears that though the set has great specs, looks greeat and was a good price, its poorly designed with venting heat and the board that handles inputs then to get fried. Just an FYI, Daewoo apparently is pulling out of plasma TV market in the US and you can not get replacement parts.
So, I’m on the look out for a new TV. I’d like to get something similar but the odds are against it. It was a 46 inch TV that has 1024x768 resolution. So far, anything near its price range in plasma I’ve been able to find is 42 inch at 852 x 480.
Yes, but good ED plasmas won’t typically turn into large turds like your Daewoo has. :) We had a 37" Panasonic EDTV plasma at the store that was discontinued that sold for $788 earlier this week. I really wanted to buy it, but someone else beat me to it. Plus I’m broke.
Also, do you really need a plasma? I’d understand having one if you’re hanging it on the wall, but if you’re not, you could get a much higher quality DLP or LCDrp for around the same price or less than a plasma.
Get a real high-def DLP set.
Doesn’t have the “mount on the wall” cool factor, but it’ll be brighter and crisper.
RoboPants: DLP looks horrible to me. In fact if I have to watch a DLP set for to long, I start getting ill as if I’m having motion sickness. Also I don’t know if we are getting technologies confused but I’ve never seen a DLP brighter or chrisper that a Plasma. LCD is ok but too expensive and the colors look dull on sets that are in my price range. CRTs are the only thing “better” than plasmas but I haven’t found a unit i liked. The set isn’t a “turd.” Any set could fail with problems. Sort version of my TVs history that I’ve been able to dig up. Daewoo designed my TV to be a high end computer monitor for business. It takes every input you could imagine, does 1024x768, 480p, 720p, and 1080i. Its built like tank, and looks great. It also has advance burn in protection. They were planning on selling it for around $6000 a unit. Some where between the inital order and arrival to the warehouse Daewoo decide that there wasn’t a market for the unit and scrapped plans to sell it. At some point, they made a deal with Sams Club to take the entire inital lot of 3000 or so. Samsclub sold it for $1900. At that price, they sold out nation wide in a month. My problem comes in that Daewoo made no plans of supporting it. There are no extra parts, there are no service centers that I can take it too. To their credit, Sam Club’s warrenty company said they are trying to find me a: a replacement b: a repair place that might be willing to look at it and fix it if its something that can be adjusted, and c: take it back if I want to for full refund.
However my thing is, I love the TV and the closest thing that is its equal currently cost $4000 which I’m not spending. So I’m really hoping to get this one fixed. I imagine in a few years, I will be able to find what I want for around $2000 but now its not available. The cheapest 50 inch with similar specs is a Panasonic at Best buy for $3999. Out of my budget and the set doesn’t review well for some reason.
When I got back from my trip and the problem doesn’t appear to be worse. (Guess it just looks worse when my wife is watching Dr Phil.) I do have another piece of the puzzle. Turns out it only happens when it has to upscale the source. If I have a low resolution source, if I just set it to standard TV resolution in a tiny box, there are no lines, if I run HDTV source, no matter what mode, there is no lines. Use any mode to scale up for for lower resolution, especial for 4:3 for 16:9, I get the random blue lines and spots. Also the longer its on, the less noticable they become. After the system has been on for about 3 hours, they are all but gone.
Now that I think about it, is there anything out there “fairly cheap” that will upscale SD video to 720p or 1080i?
Like a DVD player?
Depends on your idea of “fairly cheap”. There are scalers you can buy to do that, but I’m not sure it would be worth it. SD looks like crap no matter what you do to it. An expensive scaler will make it look marginally better, but it’s like trying to improve a low res jpeg on a computer. There’s just not enough information there and any digital manipulation can only do so much. Key Digital makes some very good stuff, but it’s pretty pricey.
See my problem is that my TVs internal scaler is what appears to be going up. I doubt an external one will look any worse that my TVs internal when it was working.