Panasonic CT - 32HXC43G HDTV

[The Watchman]

I did a bunch of searching through the forums, and after finally exhausting my eyes found nothing specifically helpful, so here I am.

I feel like maybe I'm crazy. The set is a Panasonic Tau CT - 32HXC43G HDTV 1080i (Bought in Jan '04), and it just seems too dark despite my fiddling with the menu settings and adjusting the brightness and all that jazz. The dark areas all bleed together and there is no distinuishing between dark areas. Blacks all seem muddled, the dark areas are just too dark, it is still watchable but it certainly ruins certain tv shows like CSI that are already dark and it's very noticable when watching movies where I know what the picture should look like such as Spider-man, yet here it's simply horrible. I'm not sure if this is something fixable or a problem with the HDTV comcast cable box, or some other problem but I'm seriously peeved by this thing. I suppose I'm just asking advice, whether it's something I could do myself, or if I should call someone to come look at it (hoping they don't laugh at me) or if I should just give up and get a new TV. Any suggestions would be welcome and greatly appreciated.

[The Watchman]

nothing?

[davexnet]

How is the TV connected to the HD source?
HDMI/DVI/Component?

Does the problem occur with SD material?

[The Watchman]

It's connected with component cables (I believe) 5 of them. It occurs with both SD and HD programming. The brightness has to be turned almost all the way up to even get a watchable picture, when I use the default settings it gets so dark it's absurd. Perhaps a bulb is out, I just want to know a bit about this before I call someone to come out and service it (or if I'm making mountains out of molehills)

[davexnet]

Has it always been this way, or is it a new thing?

If its a new symptom, I'd seek professional advice.
Otherwise, I'd start by getting a copy of one of the test DVD's -
Avia, or DVE are the popular one's. Something to really check your set for
the full brightness range.

On my 27 inch Panasonic direct view, to properly display the test disk's
black level image, my brightness was also at, or very near its maximum.

If you want to venture into the service menu, there's an internal brightness
that you can adjust up 1 or 2 settings. I did it with mine.

[The Watchman]

I'm not very familiar with service menus, but if you could tell me how to do I may want to give it a try.

[davexnet]

I have a PDF copy of the service manual of this set.
Would you like a copy? I'll send it to you if you provide an email address.
Cheers,
Dave

[The Watchman]

Yeah, I appreciate it Dave, my email is dcd148@psu.edu.

will increasing the brightness make the dark areas more distinguishable, for example when someone is wearing a dark suit, as the set is now I wouldn't be able to see detail like buttons pockets etc.

[davexnet]

Yes it should do. The real purpose of the "brightness control" is to set the cut off point of
the darkest part of the picture. Most test disks give a band of grey shades, dark to
light. The brightness is set by adjusting the control so that you can just see a difference
between the darkest and the one next to it. brightness and contrast do affect each other.
On mine, both have a range of 0 - 63. If I set the contrast at 32, the brightness control
looks right at 52. On the otherhand if I turn up the picture control to say, 50, the brightness
should be set about 40. The test disk is the key.
Dave

[davexnet]

unable to send it because of it's size - 17MB,
however, this is where I found it:
http://www.schematicsforfree.com/archive/dir/_newly_uploaded

Check it out!
Dave

[The Watchman]

Thanks for all your help Dave, hopefully I can get everything worked out.

[sfitch]

Did you ever get the problem resolved?

[sfitch]

No, the problem has not been resolved. The repairman is trying to save me money by not ordering and replacing the wrong part (i.e. the yolk or the board). It's been over 4 months and I'm very frustrated. We are looking for another TV just like it in order to determine the problem.
I appreciate your asking. Scott

[JHoback]

have you tried DVI cables? that is how i have mine connected.

i cannot remember since it was 3 years ago when i got it, whether it was too dark with component or composite intially. once i made the change to DVI, it was fine.

[sfitch]

I finally got my TV back in January. However, it had another problem when I got it back. It's back in the shop again, is supposedly fixed and waiting to be picked up. My car has been broken down for 4 weeks now, so I haven't been able to pick it up yet.
The original problem was fixed by replacing the capaciter part number C521. I hope this helps someone else with the same problem, but I wouldn't be surprised to find out that this is the first time this part has ever gone out on any TV ever. That kind of stuff happens to me all the time.