Panasonic 11G/12G/13G black levels have seemingly doubled overnight? - Page 102

A few more of the big tech sites and blogs have posted the story now, and by using language such as "Panasonic confesses" and "Panasonic cops to"... they are making the situation look even worse. This is not a good time to piss off consumers. The economy is bad, people are angry... Panasonic better do something soon or this could snowball out-of-control and get really ugly.

well i think panasonic is right my panasonic s14 after various hours of use the panel was increasing the black leves but with a lillte notice but when the tv hit 2,000 or more the tv was stable with deep blacks my g10 the only deference is the black level hit so aggressive that i notice so quick what that make me thinks is going to do the same thing after several hours it going to the normal level or close.

+1

Another voice of reason here. I'm glad you brought up viewing habits. Tonight, I'm getting my V10 calibrated. I asked asked the guy if I needed to break-in the set first. His answer was very direct. No calibrator worth their salt would ever tell someone to break-in their set. The only thing break-in proves is whether or not you got a lemon.

In the case of black levels rising, could it be that some people here are getting to these setpoints sooner than later because of the dogma of using break-in slides 24/7 for the first week versus actually just watching TV that first week? One just has to wonder...

Good man D-Nice. My comment about HDguru was intended as snark; that is why I mentioned that he had special access to Panasonic. Hell, they were even running his praise comments on the Panasonic website.

Question for you; do you have any idea about how may hours have to be logged on the Panasonic units, before the automatic level changes are ended? I am wondering if those people who have already seen their black levels cut in half, might expect to see them cut much more.

I was going to buy a G10 or V10, or potentially wait for the 2010 models. Because of issue, I will not buy any Panasonic plasma tv. Samsung plasmas get similar reviews, and other than the dreaded buzzing (which shows up early so problem TV's can can be RETURNED), I see no reason to either buy the 2009 or wait for the 2010 Panasonic. There are likely many other people like me out there. What store will recommend a Panasonic to a customer when an equally well-regarded Samsung option is less likely to prove problematic in the long run. BB can't afford to have customers come back 6 months after they dropped $2k on a TV, and complain that their TV stinks and Panasonic won't admit this is a problem. They'll just start pushing Samsung.

This is going to be a big problem for them.

Donny, This is unacceptable, call them and demand management, and have a tech come look at your tv, if they refuse ask for the next person above them. If they refuse to comply, as for a refund. I had Panny replace my first G10 because it buzzed , when my black levels rose, I didnt ask for a case #, I asked for a tech to fix the problem. When they got to my house, my black levels were a charcol greyish black, but image retention was bad, they said i have a bad panel, and relaced the panel. For the time being my set looks new again, if the blacks rise again, I will demand a refund. Remember, they work for you. You paid for a product/service.

Some Samsung owners posted that their sets did not start to buzz until they had them for a few months. I recall one guy writing about how his set was very quite, only to post months later, that the set has suddenly developed a very loud buzz.

donnymacs, yours is one of the FEW posts here that have ACTUAL METER measurements, so far from ranting, you are doing a valuable service by providing actual data, thanks.

I posted a few weeks ago about returning the G10. I'm in no way saying I was affected by this issue but I think it had problems straight out of the box.

My new set is a LCD LN-52B750. After going through the same movies, and playing through different settings. The blacks, for a LCD seem to be much better than the G10 I had. What really bugged me before was how grey the blacks looked, especially during movie watching with Bars.

I believe that set was faulty. The other G10 I exchanged it for (major buzzing, and dead HDMI input) definitely did not look as grey.

Oops. No Plasma for me. Time to buy an LCD, I think.

I have a G11-Panel (PX80) and i've the same problem.
The black levels are increasing over time.

I hope Panasonic will give us a fix as soon as possible, otherwise this was my last Panasonic Plasma.


It look like a obvious trick to force people buying a new hdtv.
Furthermore its nice to see that Pana started to cheat the paying customers their tvsets after pioneer was gone from the market.

I have to mention again:
I dont want to hear any excuses. I want a proper fix.

I don't have any experience in plasma manufacturing, but do have experience with firmware that has to compensate for changes in other types of computer systems. My personal opinion would place bets that it is the variations in the plasma manufacturing process causing this. I doubt the firmware is putting out "wrong" values. From my experience, the method used is that engineers estimate the variations, also do test runs on the actual process to come up with the expected range of how something will age over time. Then they select a "safe" value somewhere in the middle to target. Clearly the tighter the manufacturing tolerances, the closer to perfect they can get, but tighter tolerances cost a lot more money! (This may explain why there hasn't been any reported cases of this on the kuro sets, they may have kept manufacturing tolerances much tighter, which they could afford to do with the much higher price tag). Given the low black levels everyone expects, I expect that even very small variations can have a dramatic effect.

So the people that see no or little measured black level changes have a panel that matches the expected change. The people that are seeing the dramatic shift could be caused by several things. Either a) they are at the extreme end of the expected range, b) there was/is some change in the tolerance of panels coming off the line (either a post engineering sample process change or just a plane lapse in quality control) and hence the planned drive voltage change is way to high for these panels, or c) some combination of aging factors that were not considered when the compensation curve was designed.

My own personal opinion is that it is either b or c, and probably more likely b. Either of these precludes an easy firmware fix as some folks are asking for. They can't just arbitrarily change the drive voltage for all panels as it would possibly cause much worse effects (no pixel firings, as you noted in your excellent post). So the notes about having panels with the known problems being sent back to Japan for analysis makes perfect sense, as the engineers would need to see what it was the caused the problem (e.g. where it was off spec), and to see if they can compensate.

Fortunately, unlike some posters that are predicting doom and gloom, I can see that all of these problems have some solutions (compensate for previously unkown factors, tighten manufacturing tolerances, improve QA), although they probably won't come as fast as many would like. Unfortunately problems related to aging systems are notoriously long to debug and implement solutions for. Especially if you want to test that the solution works

---Andrew

In actuality, retailers/manufacturers don't have any real LAWFUL obligation to refund or replace anything. It is actually more of a customer service courtesy than anything else. The best we can do is exactly what is happening, force their customer service to go above and beyond by calling them, contacting news agencies, blogs, etc. only then will they be forced to fix anything as it will likely affect future sales down the road. If they do issue a fix, the tune will change here and everyone will praise them, even if it did take a ton of PR backlash to make it happen.

The Toyota situation is completely different as it pertains to the potential endangering of lives. I don't think anyone's Panny has exploded and left you blinded...though if the black levels to rise high enough perhaps they'll burn everyone's retinas and then we'll have a case.

Eric

I hear what your saying, but in dealing with customer service, if somebody doesnt want to help you out, you ask for somebody that can help you out, and proceed up the ladder. Make sure you you are always polite, and demand that your issue is resolved. I always make mention that "this is why I purchased a Panasonic in the first place", and also "mention this is my 4th panasonic plasma". They work for you, you purchase a product, and a service. If the product isnt a shadow of what it originally was, they have a legal liability to resolve the issue . I just remain kind but persistiant, that I will not accept anything other than my issue resolved.

There is a strong chance that the 2010 models, or at least the top of the line models, with the new rapid shut off Phosphors, and " Kuro" deep black levels, with black areas energy idle, will not cause the same black levels rapid deterioration rate, that is happening in 2009 sets.

Does anyone know if the new phosphors are only going to be in the 3D models, or are they going to be in all the models from S2 on up?

Here is a video interview with the Panny Rep, at CES, where he talks about the changes, and pretty much admits that the new panel is "Kuro" technology.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-6p0...layer_embedded

It would help others if you wrote Panasonic and said that the reason you returned their TV was because of the lack of statement by them saying they will come out with a fix for this problem.

I got two Panasonic's plasma hanging that are very low on hours and just saw this thanks to CNET so a bit ticked off at the moment

They sell product A and show it to you. The product has significant changes within a short time frame and I am pretty sure that most court rooms in America would disagree with you.

People are going to argue significant, but Panasonic knows that this kind of issues bring on class-action lawsuits. They don't want to go there.

Now I am wondering if we have any European examples of this. The EU law in regards to performance (reasonable life-time) is to me significantly stricter and it would be interesting to see what Customer Service complaint in Europe led too.....

Note my below comments are not intended to invalidate any observations and definitely have no impact on measurements. It appears that the most common way viewers notice the black level changes is via comparison of letter/pillar box bars to the black bezel. I have observed two effects that make this more difficult to observe and determine if there is a problem:

I regularly see variation in the darkness of letter/pillar box bars. It appears to be content and source dependent. This could be a perception issue; however, I do not notice variation during the viewing of a film or show, but do notice variation from film to film.
I also notice that in some instances the darkest black in a scene appears darker than the letter/pillar box bars. This may also be a perception issue, but does make me wonder, except when there is a gross issue, if we can completely trust our vision, or at least my vision.

The only absolute is likely to be before and after measurements.

Note I am viewing a 65v10 in a light controlled room. All of the lights are out, except for a 6500k bias light, behind the panel.

And that is exactly what it takes. I just wanted to simply point out that there is no law requiring companies to do this. Hence, when you politely demand customer service the majority will comply because they became successful due to customer base built on respect, great products and service. People are taking the Panasonic statement WAY to literally here and in all of the comments on the various blogs. Every corporation, government, person will always spindoctor something to buy a bit of time.

Going back to the Toyota situation...They said it was faulty floor mats before admitting any sort of electronic or mechanical fault in their engineering. It wasn't until real incidents started happening that were endangering lives did they start doing something about it. Now they'll be in PR mode for a few years to win back customer confidence.

I do want to see this situation resolved because even after seeing this thread, I still bought a 54V10 which was delivered beginning of January. I have a full one year manufacturers warranty + an extended warranty so I hope I have myself covered if it all goes to crap down the road. Thing is, my viewing habits work out to about 2-4 hours a day max. so it'll take me a while to hit some of those milestones that people have been talking about here. Thankfully, I do have an ISF calibrator coming tonight so I'll have some early meter measurements and he guarantees his work for a year. I'll probably have him come back in six months time to do small adjustments and get another reading. This will arm me with concrete values to present to Panasonic if any of these issues arise on my set.

Whew...'nuff said for now :P

Eric

Spare me the class action lawsuit propaganda. We all know if this goes to that level and the consumer wins, I'm sure you'll be happy with your 81 cent check after it's all said and done. The company will move on and simply say, we'll make sure it doesn't happen with any of our future products. Case closed.

Eric

+100

ppl here (especially us americans) react too emotionally and without rational thought. patience and time will let us know the resolution to this problem, unlike toyota this is not a life threatening situation so the urgency is not the same!

PS: the # of posts here spiked after the panasonic reply to the cnet article. Again, my opinion is that the article read like a standard CS/marketing dept reply by a company while it investigates/research a solution behind the scenes.

That is a BS way of looking at it. It is about getting Panasonic to FIX this and not do it again. A larger number of consumers specifically bought this set because of its black level, and because Pioneer is out of the market. I nearly bought a Panasonic V10 but chose a KPR 600 instead.

I equate this to buying a car for its performance, only to find out after 2000 miles that it only goes 1/2 the speed it was advertised. Broad generalization? Yes, but it gets the point across. Just look how everyone is reacting? Geeks don't handle stuff like this well, and if the geeks can do one thing good, is to argue their point until the enemy goes into submission.

Good luck Panasonic, you'll need it.

RE: BREAKIN SLIDES : these users are simply going to see the problem sooner ... for example after 50 calendar days versus 150 calendar days , since they've run up their "on" hours artificially (but running the slides 24/7 for the breakin period)

NOTE: Now that we have a pretty good feel for the bug/design ...

Recall that some users who have had boards replaced saw the blacks go back (to decent deep black) ...

So doesn't this suggest that a firmware fix could simply reset the voltage back to day one - ie. simulating a new board install ??

The proposed solution could also offer via the menu a means of jumping the voltage up manually if the user saw cells were misfiring - ie. jump 500 hrs ... jump 800 hrs ... jump 1000 hrs ... ect ect ect. This potentially gets around the problem that all panels are unique in a sense. AND gives the user some level of control.

This fix would be simple and EASY to code.

I suspect alot of pissed users would accept that ... and even act as guinea pigs (-;

I must have had my head in the sand when I was making my purchase last Saturday. Please someone educate me about this. To my understanding the phosphers in plasma display panels do lower in their ability to light up and produce a high quality picture and that is around 50,000 hours in their 100,000 hr life? So if people are experiencing doubling blacks in 500 hours, a couple months to 8 months or however long it was, this means that the display has pulled back on it's voltage to extend it's panel life, at the expense of black levels, and no amount of calibrating is going to change image retention or getting reasonable black levels. This isn't a correlation to the phospher life, but a voltage issue? Would a company make a panel knowing that it would look great for about a year, only to peter out and look average in order to get a quick sale?

I'm still within my 30 days, but there really isn't another TV that I want. I also didn't buy a warranty thinking "Panasonic is reliable"
Talk about a buzzkill. There has to be some electrical engineers on here that could shed some light on this problem.

http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_1...arranty+for+tv

What do you guys think, should I do it?(Hell of deal, especially considering).

May I give another +100 ?

I completely agree. Being from Canada, the whole idea of litigating everyone to death because of an emotional and irrational reaction is almost beyond comprehension. Panasonic has produced very good products and I'm sure they will stand behind their product in the end. Remember, if they really didn't care, you wouldn't get a warranty, you wouldn't have an email address or phone number to contact customer service. The fact that people here have been able to get the ball rolling with a multinational company like Panasonic goes to show that eventually they listen.

I said "Panasonic knows that this kind of issues bring on class-action lawsuits. They don't want to go there."

A $50 million lawsuit still costs Panasonic $50 million + even if you only get 81 cent. The point being is that they want to avoid it so they will try to fix it

EDIT: and to others saying Americans sue to fast - I am not american despite living in the US. While there is dumb lawsuits there are also great lawsuits. My main point is that the threat of lawsuits makes manufacturers concerned and they try to please customers because of it. Look at EU penalties against Microsoft the last few years, EU laws for consumer protection when buying goods and you see that the only difference is in the approach. One country where people sue to get the right stuff and another region where politicians make those decisions. They all drive to make manufacturer's stand behind their product.

A product that is significantly altered after a few months worth of use is deceiving the consumer - no way to argue otherwise

Xbox 360 has a class-action lawsuit heading their way due to all of the RROD.

if Panasonic had replied to CNET stating that they were researching the issue, this would never have even been picked up by engadget, gizmodo, etc. Simply because they would be doing the right thing by customers and looking into it. Instead they give a reply to CNET stating it's normal.

How exactly are they are buying time for their engineers when in fact they increased the scrutiny on the issue 10 times higher?

i agree that the statement wasnt a very wise one on panasonic's part. however i still keep faith that they are in fact working on this issue, based on credible reports in this thread that they shipped two tvs back to japan with the black problem. most likely the statement to cnet will be clarified, the reply was probably a case of left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, a communications problem that happens very often btw marketing and engineers, in my experience!