Not really sure what to make of this. it's kinda long and a little bit technical, but maybe someone can give me some insight.
My set is about a year and a half old, and I've probably got over 2k hours on it. I haven't been in the service menu in a long time (at least 7-8 months), and only changed the cut/drv values whenever I did use it. I know that the brightness was normal about a month or so ago, because I had gotten a Display Pro to play with and started from scratch with the video settings.
Up until recently, 54 was the ideal brightness setting for my set. 16 on the brightness test video would show no dithering/sparklies, even with my nose almost touching the screen, and 17+ were all visible from viewing distance. At some point recently, I noticed that some of the darker scenes in a movie I was watching seemed like they were being crushed slightly, so i turned the brightness up, just to see if that was the case, and i notice that the black in the mattes didn't budge until I was over 60 brightness. So i check the brightness test pattern, and sure enough, now it needs to be set at 63 brightness before 16 starts dithering. On top of that, 17 isn't visible from my couch. 17 has some sparkling pixels that I can see if I get really close to the set, but i cant see it flashing from viewing distance anymore. I ran the brightness pattern on both my PS3 and HTPC with the same result. I did a factory reset on my TV, and tried a different input. Same result. Everything is piped through my Denon AVR-591, I havent' tried bypassing it yet because it would be a hassle, but I don't see how my receiver could be doing it, though i'm still going to try it when i get home from work.
Here's another weird thing I noticed; I don't know if any of you have ever really messed with the black extension, but it can be used to lower gamma at lower IRE's by setting it to 3 or 4, and then turning up the brightness. The black doesn't start rising until the 65-72ish range depending on which BE setting you chose, and it improves shadow detail a little bit . One of the problems with doing this though, is that the BE doesn't apply to the pixel orbiter border, so if you have BE on 4, and your brightness up to about 72, the pixel orbiter is washed out and visible, because the brightness of the pixel orbiter is the same as the rest of the screen would be if BE wasn't turned on.
Well, what I've noticed is that even after doing a factory reset, the pixel orbiter border is behaving like BE is on, and it still scales the way my brightness used to scale before i noticed this issue, meaning that it doesn't match the brightness of the rest of the screen, even though BE is off. I've also noticed that I can't use the BE trick anymore. The BE still appears to work, but when I try to turn the brightness up to compensate, the blacks start dithering before I'm able to use it like I was able to previously. It's almost like there are BE settings that are stuck or something.
This isn't normal for the 2011 sets is it? I was half-way wondering if the TV made some sort of adjustment after I passed a certain hour marker or something, but I haven't read about anybody experiencing anything like this, so I assume that it's just messed up, since I did a factory reset and am still having the same problem. I still plan to try bypassing my receiver when I get home, but I can't really see how it could be the problem. I got an extended warranty on it, but it's through Best Buy, so don't think I have any sort of tech support option.
Halp!
My set is about a year and a half old, and I've probably got over 2k hours on it. I haven't been in the service menu in a long time (at least 7-8 months), and only changed the cut/drv values whenever I did use it. I know that the brightness was normal about a month or so ago, because I had gotten a Display Pro to play with and started from scratch with the video settings.
Up until recently, 54 was the ideal brightness setting for my set. 16 on the brightness test video would show no dithering/sparklies, even with my nose almost touching the screen, and 17+ were all visible from viewing distance. At some point recently, I noticed that some of the darker scenes in a movie I was watching seemed like they were being crushed slightly, so i turned the brightness up, just to see if that was the case, and i notice that the black in the mattes didn't budge until I was over 60 brightness. So i check the brightness test pattern, and sure enough, now it needs to be set at 63 brightness before 16 starts dithering. On top of that, 17 isn't visible from my couch. 17 has some sparkling pixels that I can see if I get really close to the set, but i cant see it flashing from viewing distance anymore. I ran the brightness pattern on both my PS3 and HTPC with the same result. I did a factory reset on my TV, and tried a different input. Same result. Everything is piped through my Denon AVR-591, I havent' tried bypassing it yet because it would be a hassle, but I don't see how my receiver could be doing it, though i'm still going to try it when i get home from work.
Here's another weird thing I noticed; I don't know if any of you have ever really messed with the black extension, but it can be used to lower gamma at lower IRE's by setting it to 3 or 4, and then turning up the brightness. The black doesn't start rising until the 65-72ish range depending on which BE setting you chose, and it improves shadow detail a little bit . One of the problems with doing this though, is that the BE doesn't apply to the pixel orbiter border, so if you have BE on 4, and your brightness up to about 72, the pixel orbiter is washed out and visible, because the brightness of the pixel orbiter is the same as the rest of the screen would be if BE wasn't turned on.
Well, what I've noticed is that even after doing a factory reset, the pixel orbiter border is behaving like BE is on, and it still scales the way my brightness used to scale before i noticed this issue, meaning that it doesn't match the brightness of the rest of the screen, even though BE is off. I've also noticed that I can't use the BE trick anymore. The BE still appears to work, but when I try to turn the brightness up to compensate, the blacks start dithering before I'm able to use it like I was able to previously. It's almost like there are BE settings that are stuck or something.
This isn't normal for the 2011 sets is it? I was half-way wondering if the TV made some sort of adjustment after I passed a certain hour marker or something, but I haven't read about anybody experiencing anything like this, so I assume that it's just messed up, since I did a factory reset and am still having the same problem. I still plan to try bypassing my receiver when I get home, but I can't really see how it could be the problem. I got an extended warranty on it, but it's through Best Buy, so don't think I have any sort of tech support option.
Halp!
