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Have been told sparkles are inevitable for plasmas

post #1 of 16
8/31/10 at 7:45am
Thread Starter 
Both my sons and my plasma have colored speckles that show up on a fairly regular occasion. I can get rid of mine by turning off the set and then turning it back on. But the fact that they appear bothers me.
My son had a technician come out to his house to check out his set and was told that all plasmas will eventually have speckles; that it is the nature of the beast. Is this true? Has anyone else been told this, or has heard of this? Unfortunately, my set is out of warrenty, but my son can get his fixed under a service plan he has.

My set is six years old, while my sons is three years old. Seems like this technology ought to last better than this. Both sets are Toshiba, but according to this guy, all sets will suffer this malady eventually.
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post #2 of 16
8/31/10 at 8:12am
A lot of this has to do with your settings. Are your sets running with high Contrast? I still have a Zenith ED circa 2005 and I can deliberately make it speckle quite easily with the wrong settings. Keeping it calibrated I see no speckles whatsoever ... or floating blacks, etc.
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post #3 of 16
8/31/10 at 8:39am
Interesting. I get these when I use my PC connected to it. My old plasma and new G25 both have it. I don't notice it on regular viewing. HDMI cable is the same as other inputs, but I use a DVI-HDMI adapter. Might be my culprit.
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post #4 of 16
8/31/10 at 3:27pm
I had my Panasonic 50 inch plasma for 6 years without any sparkles before I replaced it. I have Pioneers 110 and 150FDs for 3 years now and never saw sparkles. Tech is BS. The first place to look are the cables and connectors. Oh, and make sure they are not running right next to something that generates a lot of RF noise like AC lines etc. The reason I mention cables is that the only time I saw sparkles was when I was testing something for a few minutes using a cheap HDMI cable that came free with something.
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post #5 of 16
8/31/10 at 3:49pm
I also have a Panny 50" plasma that is 6 1/2 years old and seen plenty of heavy use (currently moved to the family room since I have a new Pio plasma) with no sparkles. I also agree with mgavsf that sparkles are usually the result of a defective HDMI cable or using one that's too long (usually after 15-20 foot run you can sometimes start seeing this problem).

First time I ever heard of anyone saying ALL plasmas get this problem and I've read this plasma forum heavily since 2004.
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post #6 of 16
8/31/10 at 4:00pm
LG's were the worst but they had a fix. There is a procedure to change the way the logic/control board operates. The only way I know to have the upgrade performed is at an authorized service center. Only they will have the jig needed. I believe Toshiba's used LG panels and can be upgraded the same way. If you look in the LG Plasma threads you will find more about this but I don't recommend adjusting voltages out of spec to correct the sparkling (Mal-Discharge) as some have done in the past.
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post #7 of 16
8/31/10 at 4:12pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike52 View Post

Both my sons and my plasma have colored speckles that show up on a fairly regular occasion.

I don't know about the plasma, but your sons should see a doctor ASAP to see why they have colored speckles
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post #8 of 16
8/31/10 at 4:55pm
Thread Starter 
My son is fine thank you. My language skills sometimes trail the speed of my typing, but hey, thanks for pointing that out to me; everybody needs a hobby.

As to cables, I have used three different HDMI cables from different manufactures and of different lengths, all to no avail. So much for that argument. My sons setup is different from mine, enough so that any other possible causes would be highly unlikely; such as a particular interference. Third, the sparkles on my set appear whether I am using a BR player, or my cable box, both of which are connected to a different input on the plasma. Lastly, my settings on the plasma are conservative, and have been since 2004 when I bought it.

Don't know how much weight to put on that techs statement, but I am concerned about this problem with my (and my sons) plasma. As for having a tech center fix the problem, I will wait a bit until I find out more information that will lead me in the right direction.

Thanks for all the responses.

Mike
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post #9 of 16
8/31/10 at 5:18pm
I have a panny 54 inch s1 and I see it with over the air hd and blu ray content. It's definitely not an hdmi problem.
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post #10 of 16
8/31/10 at 5:24pm
I never noticed them with my 5020 Kuro.
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post #11 of 16
8/31/10 at 5:33pm
One other oddball occurrence I had in a store that just came to mind that may or may not be relevant. A Best Buy had a demo LCD playing something and it had sparkles all over it. I remember stopping and playing with the controls and someone had moved the sharpness setting to max. Once it was moved downward enough the sparkles disappeared. Probably not your problem tho.
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post #12 of 16
9/1/10 at 3:59am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by prpolo View Post

I have a panny 54 inch s1 and I see it with over the air hd and blu ray content. It's definitely not an hdmi problem.

I agree that it is probably not an HDMI problem. You bring up an interesting question; could it be connected to HD signals and the set? I don't recall whether watching my cable box and seeing the sparkles was with an HD channel or not. Nor do I recall if I ever saw them with my old DVD player. Will have to try a regular DVD player and some regular analog channels for the next couple of nights and see.

Mike
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post #13 of 16
9/1/10 at 4:02am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by IceTBC View Post

One other oddball occurrence I had in a store that just came to mind that may or may not be relevant. A Best Buy had a demo LCD playing something and it had sparkles all over it. I remember stopping and playing with the controls and someone had moved the sharpness setting to max. Once it was moved downward enough the sparkles disappeared. Probably not your problem tho.

This gives me some food for thought, although my sharpness settings are quite low. Have to check with my son to see what settings his plasma is set at.
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post #14 of 16
9/1/10 at 4:14am
The sparkles you're talking about are probably excessive dithering, and are a symptom of too high a brightness setting. It's confusing because "brightness" actually adjusts how bright dark picture elements are. "picture" or "contrast" adjusts how bright the brigher elements are.

Anyway, what are your brightness settings? Try backing them down until the sparkles disappear. Fiddle with it but don't increase it past where the sparkles appear.

Also dial the sharpness setting down.

jeff
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post #15 of 16
9/1/10 at 9:00am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by greenjp View Post

The sparkles you're talking about are probably excessive dithering, and are a symptom of too high a brightness setting. It's confusing because "brightness" actually adjusts how bright dark picture elements are. "picture" or "contrast" adjusts how bright the brigher elements are.

Anyway, what are your brightness settings? Try backing them down until the sparkles disappear. Fiddle with it but don't increase it past where the sparkles appear.

Also dial the sharpness setting down.

jeff

My setting are already quite low, but I will play with them some and see what happens.
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post #16 of 16
9/3/10 at 11:25pm
I have no Sparkles on my 2 year old Panasonic. It did have some issues at first that I thought something was wrong, but after adjusting the settings it all disappeared and the picture looks great. I would try going here:

http://www.tweaktv.com/tweak-my-tv/

See if they list your HDTV or something close like in a different SIZE screen and try those settings and see how your picture looks!!! The settings were pretty close for my HDTV to what I finally set it to using the DataColor Spyder3TV Calibration unit that I have.
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