PLEASE help! Problem with picture on brand new plasma.

Originally Posted by Carpaccio

I am at my wits end trying to figure out what is causing this problem with the picture on my brand new Samsung PN59D6500. I have done hours of research and trial and error trying to solve the problem and nothing has worked yet.

The other night, I noticed tiny green dots constantly floating up all over my screen in the black areas when I was watching a Blu-ray movie. I couldn't see them from four or more feet away from the screen, but I could when I stood really close to it. It's doesn't affect my actual movie viewing as my seating area is far enough back that I can't see any of the dots and the picture is crystal clear and beautiful. It's the thought of this on a brand new set that is bugging the heck out of me.

After quite a bit of research, I believe it's called "green dithering dots" or "dot crawl".

However, when the BD player is turned off and there is no video signal going into the TV, the screen is completely solid black like it should be (except, of course, for the signal input indicator in the upper left hand corner of the screen).

I see these green dots whenever there is an external signal coming into the TV (i.e. Blu-ray player, cable TV), but I don't see them when I pull up the TV's internal menu. For example, when I put in a movie and pause it during the opening frames that are completely black, I see the green dots all over the screen. But, if I pull up the TV's menu on top of this movie, the green dots will NOT be inside the black parts of the menu, but will still be there in the black parts of the movie signal.

My gut tells me this is some sort of interference since it only happens with an external video signal, but I'm not sure. I've tried turning off the modem and router (which is very close to all this equipment) (but I didn't unplug them) and this didn't help anything. I have the ferrite cores that came with the TV around the TV's power cable (more than 8 inches away from the TV like the instructions said) and around the HDMI that is coming into the TV from the receiver.

I'm using two HDMIs in my entire system: both are 6' 1.4 cables from Monoprice.

Could this be interference of some sort? If so, how do I pinpoint where it's coming from?

Could this be because the ferrite cores that came with the TV aren't in the proper place?

What is this and how do I make it go away?

Originally Posted by serial_carpens

The swarming dots are there because it's how plasma technology works. The dithering noise won't be visible if your TV is displaying the darkest blacks of an image (or a full screen pluge pattern), because the dithering is only used when the pixels are active. If your video sources aren't calibrated 100% correctly, then you might see noise in the video black (because you don't have it set low enough), and the menu black won't have noise (because it's below the threshold).

By the way, I use the dithering noise as a really easy way to calibrate my TV's black level. Just throw up a pluge pattern, turn the brightness on the tv all the way down, and then notch it up one by one until you see your first dithering dots. Turn it back down a notch, and there you go.

Anyway, there's a reason you can't see it unless you get right up to the screenyou're not supposed to get right up to the screen. :-D

Originally Posted by thebigdaddye

i agree with some of what your saying ,but my Panasonic plasma does not do this, i have tried turning the brightness, contrast and cell levels all way down and it has no effect on the noise/dithering green dots/pixel. i know a little about plasmas and to me it seems it's miss firing green color pixel when it should not be or some kind of video noise interference is happening like the original poster stated. like you say you don't really see it unless your a few feet away, but still it should not do that period my panasonic doesn't do that so neither should the samsung. also like i stated i am pretty sure it did not do this the first few months i owned it.