Due to the nature of the method used in this fix, please use caution and have patience while attempting. Take care not to use too much force or you may damage your screen.
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EDIT 1/17/13: If you are considering returning your set due to your unhappiness with backlight bleed, clouding, flashlighting, etc., please feel free to try the method I have listed. Keep reading for some success stories. Ignore the haters who claim to be know-it-alls. You can't argue with factual evidence of improvement, or success stories (with pics). I have had this set for FOUR YEARS now, did the 'fix' I listed in my OP the second week I had it, and the bleed has never returned - to this day my set still has nice uniform blacks. So feel free to attempt this method (esp. if you are going to return it anyhow), and don't let know-it-alls like Rogo, Stratosphere, and Extreme_Boky scare you away from attempting. Not believing in something is one thing, but calling people idiots and claiming their methods are garbage (especially when I have SEEN this work), is childish and their posts should be ignored. Knowing that there is potential for this method to fix your bleeding issues, please take care and have patience while doing this.
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So, after bringing my new Samsung LN40A630 LCD TV home a couple weeks ago, I immediately noticed backlight bleeding (a.k.a. flashlighting) from all four corners when my room was dark. It was bad enough to the point where I wanted to return it - however, it was the stores last one and the model has been discontinued, and I wanted to see what I could do to lessen/fix the problem.
Seeing nothing but complaints and no real solutions (outside of turn your backlight/brightness down) to minimize/eliminate the bleeding, I decided to take a more personal and direct approach.
Once it got dark outside (big window in my room), I turned out all the lights in my room and fired the TV up. I have it hooked to my PC so I can show a pure black background (this can be achieved other ways). Now I could see the 4 corners with all their bleeding glory.
I proceeded to do a combination of light tapping/finger massaging around the areas where the bleed was, slowly moving towards the bleeding areas, and applying varying amounts of pressure. I never actually pressed or tapped hard, but hard enough to see the panel change from black to white (possibly the backlight shining through?) where I was pressing/tapping. After some time, the backlight bleed seemed to diminish to the point where I could say it's completely gone.
Now, I didn't find any definitive methods like this anywhere online before I tried it on my own TV. I was talking about it with a friend earlier, and searched around again to find a post on NCIX Forums (quoted at the bottom) that contained almost the EXACT same information and results that I achieved by doing this. I also read somewhere that a guy with a new Sony LCD TV had a huge cloud on the screen, and firmly pushing on it made it go away, and it never came back.
I encourage those that seek a fix for their backlight bleeding problems to try this! As long as you don't press too hard, the worst case scenario is you have some fingerprint smudges on your screen and it didn't help. 
Remember, be firm, but don't bruise your screen from excessive force. You need to be able to see the color shift when you press/tap.
I'd like everyone that attempts this fix to post back in this thread with your results. Before/after pictures would be great too! Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of how bad it was when I brought it home, but I'll try to get a good picture tonight of how good it looks now (if my camera is up to par, that is).
I also realize that there could be multiple reasons for backlight bleed, and this fix may not work for those cases where it's due to other variables (such as heat, etc.)
I got a new Acer AL2616WD (manufacture date 02/2007), and it had a very noticeable area of backlight bleed at the top of the screen, roughly 1/3rd of the way in from the left. Watching a movie, it was quite distracting. But I fixed it, and now it's virtually unnoticeable.
As everyone probably knows, the LCD panel is flexible, and quite sensitive to pressure. If you touch your finger to the screen lightly, you'll see the colours distort. For this reason, it has to be very "delicately" mounted in its frame.
If you press lightly along the edges of this Acer monitor, you'll see backlight shine around, more in some areas where there's no support behind, and less where I presume the screen is clamped/pressed into place against the frame. You only need the tiniest warp in how it's mounted, and backlight can shine around. I'm sure that shipping could very well cause such a tiny warp, just due to shifting.
The area of backlight bleed on my monitor was in a place where the panel was more flexible (i.e. a point where it wasn't fixed to the frame), so I tried tapping my finger lightly just to the left and to the right of the area, to see if it wouldn't adjust itself in its frame. After all,
Lo and behold, the tapping worked. I only had to tap very lightly, starting close to the bleed area and ending about 10 cm away, and now the backlight bleed is virtually non-existant.
So, before you send your monitor back due to a "manufacturing default", when, in fact, it may only have shifted slightly during shipping, you might want to just try this.
I hope this helps!
Scott.
Scott's original thread over at NCIX Forums can be found here.
Edited by id0l - 1/20/13 at 10:13am
