Why buy LCD if there is a strong chance you'll get dead pixels?

Snake Plisken

Speaking from personal experience I bought a Tosh 32" earlier this year and it had a dead pixel on the right of the screen, after taking back to Dixons and running into a decent manager he took it back and luckily the replacement did not have dead pixels. Bought a 22" LCD in Tesco's yesterday and it has 2 dead pixels. Was in Xtravision today and saw a 42" LCD on Display and spoted a dead pixel near the centre. Now who can tell me they would be happy lashing out 1500+Euros on a TV who's screen has obvious flaws. I just couldn't do it. The manufacturers should have a a tier system where they check and rate panels as they come off the production line, a bit like ATI/Nvidia do with their graphics chips, I would'nt mind paying a small bit extra if I was guaranteed that my set had no dead pixels, I think Samsung did something like that before with PC monitors.

So until they sort out the manufacturing process or guarentee no dead pixels, I'm staying well away.

Snake

Prescient

Snake, youve just scared the bejaysus out of me. I'm about to shell out about 3grand for an LCD TV....and I've never heard of 'dead pixels' or worse, the general acceptance of these dead pixels.

kippy

http://tomshardware.co.uk/2003/03/19/penalty/index.html
Think it may be US based information but its a start.

Dead pixels are a fault with the monitor in which on pixel doest react to anything and remains one colour only.
Personally, I believe flat screen technology is way overpriced for the quality you are getting-especially the "larger models".
It will be at least another year before I go near any of them, if not more.
Kippy

Snake Plisken

Hey Prescient, don't know if your going to buy from a bricks and mortor store or off the net, if from a store like DID/Currys get them to take the set your buying out of the box and check it against a black screen for examle one of the AV channels, problem is you really need to see it against a white/grey background to spot a dead or black one, and even then you mightn't spot any and a day after you get it home you might spot one or one might develop. It really is scary, now some people might say ah you won't see it when your watching normal TV or DVD, but it depends how far from the set you are, no point either taking out extended warrenty as I found out it doesn't cover dead pixels. But if your going to lash out 3K for an LCD I would be very upset if I got even one dead pixel. I always use the analogy of buying a new car, if you spotted a dent in it before you bought it, you wouldn't accept it.
Its scary stuff but not much you can do about it at the moment as Kippy says hopefully in a year or so they will be able to manufacture them without this issue.
If you do buy I hope your lucky and get a perfect set.

Snake

mukki

can you get hi-def crt screens, bet they would look much nicer, and last longer (you might need a crane if you go over 32inch though)

Prescient

Thanks Snake. I'm buying from a bricks and mortar store. I am now going to ask about dead pixels (funny how sales-people never think to mention these things)
Its a Sony Bravia KDL-40X2000

Paulw

I have a Sony KLV-W40A10E flat screen LCD.

When I bought it, I found 4 dead pixels over the screen, all well spread out. From 2 inches away you can find these pixels. From the normal viewing distance (5-6ft) you can't spot a thing wrong, no matter how hard you stare at the areas you know the dead pixels are in.

If there are a bunch of dead pixels together, then you may notice it. I think if you have 4 contiguous ones then Sony will replace the unit. The vast majority of LCD screens produced have at least 1 dead pixel.

After 6 months of using my TV, I now only have 2 dead pixels. The other two have obviously warmed up and started to work.

One thing I did find, is that after a week of usage, the screen looks a lot better than it did out of the box. Many sites will say that your unit needs to warm up and become used to it's new environment since it's been sitting in a box since it was made, and may never have been powered on before.

Owen

Just bought a 30 inch Dell Monitor, and not a dead pixel in sight.

Ciaran500

I think I must be the luckiest consumer ever between 3 monitors, 2 phones, a PSP, a DS, 26" TV and a projector(all LCD) I haven't had a single dead or stuck pixel and on top of that I don't even know anyone who has had problems with dead pixels.

Snake Plisken

Ciaran don't tempt faith

Prescient, just don't get conned by sales people do your research and don't let them fob you off with stuff off the top of their head, which is usually wrong.

Paul W some people mightn't be to bothered about them but I'm sure your heart sank when u found them, I am one of those people that when something catches my eye I can't forget about it if I watch the screen playing the 360 by TV is only 4ft in front of me so my eye would be drawn to it.


Watching Batman begins and superman 4 on HD DVD on a 32" Toshiba tells me that to get the real benifits of the format I will have to buy LCD at some stage to get native resolution as Plasma cannot provide that, so I'll play the waiting game for the moment.

Snake

delly

Paulw wrote:

I have a Sony KLV-W40A10E flat screen LCD.

When I bought it, I found 4 dead pixels over the screen, all well spread out. From 2 inches away you can find these pixels. From the normal viewing distance (5-6ft) you can't spot a thing wrong, no matter how hard you stare at the areas you know the dead pixels are in.

If there are a bunch of dead pixels together, then you may notice it. I think if you have 4 contiguous ones then Sony will replace the unit. The vast majority of LCD screens produced have at least 1 dead pixel.

My story is pretty much the same with a Philips 42" LCD. Checked it at close range when I first got it and noticed 3 dead pixels, but anything more than a foot away and you can't see it.

I understand what your saying Snake about still being pissed off, but tbh i'm the most annoying person when it comes to finding flaws in something I have bought. So much so that my wife always expects my purchases to go back to the shop a couple of times before they are right, but I can honestly 100% say that they have no effect on watching the screen.

Paulw

Snake Plisken wrote:

Paul W some people mightn't be to bothered about them but I'm sure your heart sank when u found them, I am one of those people that when something catches my eye I can't forget about it if I watch the screen playing the 360 by TV is only 4ft in front of me so my eye would be drawn to it.

I did plenty of research online about dead pixels and such. I expected to find one or two. Finding 4 was unusual, but again, it's a 40" screen. I've no idea of how many pixels per row (someone can do the maths), but there are hundreds. No matter how hard you stare, from sitting on my sofa, I'll bet anyone €100 to find a dead pixel.

Even though I know where the pixels are, it still takes a few moments to find them from being inches from the screen. You almost have to scan the screen row by row.

Best advice - research. Read and read and read - but I bet you'll find that the vast majority of people will say that when viewing the screen from "normal" distance, you will do well to spot any single dead pixels.

For good info -
http://www.myhometheater.homestead.com/viewingdistancecalculator.html
http://ezinearticles.com/?TV-Viewing-Distance-and-Screen-Placement-in-the-Home-Theater&id=37449

Ice_Box

Our company got 40 new LCD displays from HP recently and not a single one had dead pixels.

ZENER

I recently returned a Samsung 32" LCD TV after some artifacts showed up on the picture. There were also 2 dead (black) pixels close together near the center of the screen. They replaced the panel and now I have no dead or stuck pixels at all.

The saying; you get what you pay for, applies here. LCD panels come in different grades set down by the ISO 13406-2 standard for LCD screens which can be seen here (.pdf). Higher grade panels cost more thus any device using them will be more expensive I guess.

ZEN

JM MARCONI

Hi Zener, i sent u a PM

Blaster99

Do bricks & mortars have better return policies than online shops when it comes to dead pixels, or is it all the same? I bought a Samsung LCD TV from Komplett about a year ago and it had a very noticable dead pixel (possibly more than one). Komplett gave me the usual copy/paste runaround that their support dept excels at. I called up Samsung support who told me that during the 30 days I should be able to return the unit no-questions asked. Told this to Komplett who then funnily enough accepted my return and sent me back a fault-free TV. I'm not sure I would spend serious money on an LCD TV with Komplett after that experience.

JDxtra

I wouldn't be happy with dead pixels on a PC monitor - but my 32" LCD in the living room has two dead pixels. Doesn't bother me at all as you can only see them when there is nothing on screen (i.e. all black) and you are no more than 2 foot away (and even then you would have to look pretty hard!).

RRoger

there's at least one program-video animation that eventually helps with bright pixels (when one of 3 subpixels is stuck), you run it for a couple of hours and it plays some yolk image in an area where a pixel was spot and warms it up or smth

no solution for dead pixels has been found yet, however if there would be a way of running the program to broke another pixel or two in the same way (ie. playing some very bright dot for a couple of hours) you'd be entiled to replacement (eg. 4 dead pixels aren't taken as faulty, but 5 or 6 are)

not sure if it's cheating but sorry, if you have few bright ones in wrong place it can really piss you off, esp. when the whole thing is worth several grands and you're supposed to be 100% satisfied