Official Pioneer Kuro Reddish Tint Problem Thread - Page 15

I though I replied to your email. I apologize if I did not. LA is on hold for next week. I will shoot you an email on Monday with updated tour dates.

D Nice

Sounds like a plan. Happy holidays.

Changes made

D-Nice, here is my info:

What is the model number of your display?
PDP-5020FD


What is the assembly date of your display? If you do not know the assembly date, provide the first two characters of the serial number located on the sticker at the top right of the display.
3/2009

What is the build date and serial number of your PDP module? 50" owners, look through the vent holes on the back and it be at the top right hand corner. 60" owners, look through the bottom center vent holes to find it.
10/2008 PDU-PC50F09R4

Did you purchase the display new or used?
New

How many hours do you currently have?
~3400

When did notice the red tint? Please provide the hours of use when you first noticed the tint if you can.
Two months ago, ~3000hrs. I actually started noticing it more after reading this thread.

How many hours per day is the display powered ON and in use?
Avg. 3hrs

What is the average temperature of the room the display has been operating in?
70-75f

Have you had your display calibrated?
No

Have you been using my reference settings?
Yes

Did you perform the 150 hour panel aging procedure I recommend with my settings?
Yes

What video mode and settings have you used with your display throughout its lifespan. Please be a thorough as possible and provide the video mode and settings that you have been using the most.
At first mostly used "Standard" and "Movie", Sometimes "Optimum". After doing the Elite board swap, almost always used "ISF Night" and "ISF Auto".

Have you ever been in the SM? If so, please detail any modifications you performed.
Yes. Did D-Nice' recommended offsets using ControlCal ahortly after purchasing the panel.. After I did the Elite board swap, I put the offsets back to the original settings and enabled the ISF modes with D-Nice recommended settings for PRO-111. Recently I reset the pulse counter and hour counter others have described in this thread.

Have you ever had any serious power issues in the room the display has been operating in?
No

Has the display ever been damage/abused? If so, please detail the damage/abuse.
No

Has the display ever needed repair? If so, when, what was the problem, who did the repair and was the display performing post repair as it was prior to the repair?
No

Has nothing to do with age. Some of the sets were wrong at the factory and reds got tinted red over time apparently. Also, if you look at the first post (poll), 80% of kuro owners who responded haven't had this problem. Of the 20% who are having trouble, we can figure a fair number of those are people who came here because they noticed something bugging them so that should push that percentage overall down a little.

It also appears to be something that may be correctable via service menu, which is why there's a lot of activity in this thread. Right now people are trying to figure out a way to safely fix it via SM w/o negative future consequences for their sets. It looks somewhat optimistic at this point that there will be a way to fix it properly.

Thanks. A much more civilized reply.

I originally posted No. But now I'm starting to see the reddish tint.

That's how it starts.... is it at the bottom right more than other areas?

Completed model info post, added:

AAL3053-A
MFD SEPTEMBER 2008 (made in UK)
SER.NO. HIUK000199EW
barcode: 4977729899511

I took the gamble and reset the pulse meter. Effect at first was eeehh... terrible. Lots of purple sparkles all over the place, especially on black parts of the screen that moved or dissapeared, left a lagging purple smudge of pixels.

I carefully increased the vol rst p while watching a sparkle rich scene all over again, until the sparkles were gone. Testpattern as stated before did not show any sparkles in my case, so beware... you should watch some dark material very analytically for sparkles.

In the end, the image did improve on blacklevels, in the past 9000 hours the set developed a greyish layer which is now gone. In a dark room, a no signal screen is NOT totally black, but when playing material, the blacks are deeper and have much more detail, also the colors are more vibrant, since the gray, misty layer that the set had developed, is now gone. Textures look more real, the improved black level adds more depth and 3D feel. its almost like a new tv...

But... the slight reddish blacks, which can be seen in a totally dark room only, are NOT gone.

Would i recommend the procedure? Since the long term effects are not known, NO. But my panel looks a lot better now... only time will tell if this was a mistake or not.

I too had the pink/purple sparkles all over the screen. I tried raising the rst p, but it didnt go away. When I raised my sus I immediately noticed the sparkles going away. So raising the rst p didnt help me get rid of the sparkles, although it did help me get my black levels up to that standard glow in a ptich black room. Raising the sus took the sparkles away in my case. My original sus was 128 and rst p was 039. My current sus is at 149 and rst p is at 062. No sparkles. The tv (PRO 101FD)looks as good as new. For now..

How many hours did you have?

6,000 hrs. It was a store demo monitor that I bought used. manufactured in April 2009.

So it seems like the more hours you have, the more voltage you need to drive the pixels. Makes sense really.

For info I found another Pioneer document that explains these effects (albeit it is for an older model) ...

Quote "Note: When the V sus voltage adjustments are not performed
properly, dot-like blinking luminance points appear. If
deviated greatly from the right adjustment, PDP will stop
discharging."

The same applies to VOL RST P adjustments.

Very good info. When I raised my sus, I didnt it by small increments(one value at a time) until the sparkles were completely gone.

Now when they say "stop dishcarging" I wonder if they mean stop discharging permanently.

I don't think so but who knows! There would be a few sacked service engineers I bet

There's one guy on here some posts back who did this and he said his black levels were too black because stuff like letter bars etc.. would take more time to fade and needed to adjust the voltage back up a bit. So I would say if you do it cautiously you should be ok - for the time being. The real question and what there doesn't seem to be a clear understanding of is effect over time so that people can adjust and not have to worry about their set breaking later as a result.

This appears to be the elusive factor.

Maybe. Depending on the latitude offered by the voltage adjustments.

As I've already posted numerous times the voltage adjustments set up the different voltages around the voltage margin of the display and also influence the voltage margin itself. Voltage margin is the firing voltage minus the minimum sustain voltage.

PDP displays operate using memory charges (wall charge) to set pixels into on and off states. A state (on or off) does not mean the pixel is emitting light or not. It means the pixel is in a state to emit light or not when a sustain voltage is applied. Until you understand this you will have trouble understanding any of the technical service documents.

The reset period which produces the black level is there to reset all pixels into an common uniform off state such that the address period can set selected pixels into an on state. Then, when sustain voltage is applied to "all pixels" only the ones in the on state will fire.

If you understand this then it is easy to see how the voltages can directly cause misfires. It is desirable to have the largest voltage margin possible to prevent loss of control of the on and off states.

Then there is the concept of discharge probability and discharge delay.

Well said. I get it now. It's just wierd how this developes over time. With my tv it seems like the more I used it, the redder it gets.

Strange - the only adjustment i made on my 1150 (8g) was taking the rst p from 109 DOWN to 93 to get rid of the red tint. It may be a little darker now but I didn't want to fool with it any more than that. Does taking it down bring the voltage up??

Looks great now.

So, with all these problems, is it even worth purchasing a used one? Kind of scared now.

Not all Kuros exhibit this behavior.

We have the same problem in France.
50% of the tv have red tint in blacks.

you can see our survey here:

http://www.homecinema-fr.com/forum/v...194&t=30000451

This is not about the red tint but about the pink sparkles you get when resetting the pulse counter or if you lower the vol_rstp too much.

Unfortunately, the numbers will only increase as panels continue to age over the next few years. Not because all panels are bad, but because the problem will become more noticeable on bad panels.

Wxman you mean old panels?

Since Pioneer stopped making panels a few years ago, there is no way of knowing right now. I think the people smarter than me on this forum will figure out how to fix this problem. The Kuro is a great tv. I would still get one.

Wonder if running a red slide only for several days straight would have any effect on this issue? And if it did anything..would it make it better or worse? Hmmm. This is such a subtle issue that one would think doing the right service menu tweaks could minimize it..if we only knew what exactly to do.