Hitachi VS810 Owner's Thread - Page 44

do you have his name, and phone number ....... I'd like to speak to him, as I feel I've been burned by Hitachi.

Does anybody know if this new light engine is indeed truly a reworked model that isn't succetable to the green bleed issues?

My TV is under warranty for 3 years with CC, and if it truly is a definitive fix, I may just call them up. To anybody that has received this new light engine, how does its picture quality compare to the original engine (minus the green bleed issues and whatnot)?

Something about these new and improved light engines has me wondering.

In looking at the price and model number, are these "new" light engines not just refurbished and perhaps modified versions of the old ones?

Original: UX23751 @ $1458
New: UX23751R @ $658

When I see the letter "R", and a value at less than half of the original, it seems kind of obvious. Not saying this is a bad thing if the "R" version works better and lasts.

My depot is ordering a light engine for my TV today. Should I be calling them to specify which light engine?

I have been waiting since december 7 for my light engine replacement, should I be upset?

I have a guy coming out to look at my Vs810 tonight
PLEASE let me know if you find anything more about the replacement (R) refurbished part number.
I have no warranty and am biting the bullet to buy the new part, if the problems have not been addressed, I am throwing money away.
Hitatchi should be eating this one, I have since bought the Sony KDS2000A SXRD
It is quite amazing, but I did get a 3 year warranty THIS time around.

Rick
Toronto, Canada

KDS60A2000 Sony
50VS810 Hitatchi
Harmen Kardon AV210
BELL EXPRESSVU 6100 HD

I PM'd you the info. Good luck

Getting my new light engine Friday morning..... Details on the part # used, how hard it was for the tech to install, and how well it works, will come after thorough testing of the new engine.... God I hope it works well... If it doesn't, then I will fall under CC's strike three policy and will get a new TV.... Not sure what I would get or how much credit they will give me for a new one ..... I really hope it doesn't come to that.....

Strike 1 Blotches (new screen assembly fixed 100%)
Strike 2 Green bleed getting worse (light engine installed later this morning)
Strike 3 ?????

PLEASE report
great forum

CC Tech arrived with the refurbished light engine and I did not let him install it... The box was extremely damaged. In other words, the box was crushed.... I am getting pretty ticked off now, and complained to the store in person... Not sure what I will do, but I have a choice to reorder parts or consider replacement.... I have waited since December the 9th for light engine to come in and once I saw the box was badly damaged I just about lost it.... The CC tech was realy nice and he said before he left that I did the right thing by not installing it.... I haven't decided what i am going to do.... I guess it all depends on what they can offer me as replacement......

hi, long time lurker, but also a long time home theater geek. I have a 60vs810A, and was wondering if anyone has any suggeestions on any tweaks for the tv inside the service menu? i am mainly curious as to what the the sub light setting is on your tvs. before i get flamed for not looking in other boards, i have not seen anything that deals directly with the service menu itself, only how to get to it. also, if there are any other settings that could be adjusted to sharpen or improve the picture, let me know.

as for what i am running, my hdmi's are taken by a hd a1 and a ps3, and my hd cablebox is in component 1.

what i am trying to figure out is how to improve my picture, as it looks great as it is, but i can tell it can look better. i know some of it is related to the sets natural push of green, and i am considering having the ligth engine swapped out.

i look forward to any info you could share.

I just had my light engine replaced a couple of days ago. No green bleed and all seems to be ok. My service tech said the repair invoice was around $1400 but from what was on the light engine I do believe my unit was refurbished late 2006 (label on the box). I had to do some basic adjusting of the LCD in the service menu as I was getting vertical banding as others were reporting in other threads but that was a simple adjustment. I'm wondering if anyone out there knows or has a manual that explains what each of the calibration points in the service menu do as a lot of them are quite cryptic. I'm having particular trouble in figuring out which of the settings causes the LCD to shift vertically and I'm not referring to the vertical shifting of the entire screen. I would like to adjust my RGB all separately as in the test patterns i seem to be one pixel row off from being perfect. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Mike

I am supposed to get mine done this week, no warranty
is there a warranty on the replaced part?
glad everything worked out good, I would just be worried that the same thing might happen a year down the road

OK. I'm back again and I am starting to get pissed off. After not having my 50VX915 for almost 3 months while awaiting a light engine replacement, my 6 month old lamp blew the other night. The freaking lamp cost me about $240 from theSears 1800Parts deal.

The documentaion that came with the lamp clearly states that the warranty on the bulb is one (1) year. After spending an hour on the phone and talking with 9 different people, Sears finally blew me off and told me to call Hitachi. Consequently, I did. This is where the story gets interesting.

I call 1800Hitachi and the guy tells me the warranty is 90 days. I email Hitachi and get a response and apology and am told that the warranty is 1 year. I call Hitachi and am again told 90 days. As I am hanging up the phone, I get another email telling me 1 year. I am about to go BALLISTIC.

Right now, I can watch my TV as I saved the old bulb. However, a screen wipe shows, as does light colored scenes, the green blob starting to re-appear.

My wife told me to buy the Sony. She won't have to tell me that next time. With three (3) years left on my extended warranty, I'm going to do my best to get my money's worth out of this damn TV.

In summary, the documentation and emails from Hitachi state that the warranty on a new lamp is one (1) year but live people at Hitachi say 90 days. Jesus.

OK. I faxed a copy of the documentation that came with bulb and got a call back from Hitachi. They are going to send me a new bulb. The lady who called still didn't know what the deal was. She stated that she was going to forward my fax to upper management to see if it was a typo or what. Thus, the good news is that I am getting a new bulb. The bad news is that the warranty on same is unknown. Go figure.

Just a reminder to newer viewers who may have missed my earlier post:

I have VS810 series firmware v0140.0000. It is the latest for this TV as of ~Oct 2006. If you would like me toi email it to you, please PM me.

d2thez,

What exactly does all the new firmware updates do??? I am still on V135.0000.. By the way, I told the CC tech to reorder the Light Engine... I just can't let go of this TV... I want to give the new Light Engine a chance before I consider a replacement from CC...

Well Hitachi doesn't provide changelogs with the firmware them send you, but I do know it fixes alot of issues with CableCards. I started with v0134.0000 and have updated to 135 and 140 with my set. PM me an email address and I will send you teh firmware and instructions. The flashing is very easy.

On a side note, I too suffer form the green bleed. Please let us know the outcome of your new light engine (it is the supposedly redisgned refurb model you requested right??).

So, I got my new refurbed light engine and 2 days into use noticed something is not quite right... I started messing around with the service menu and what I noticed was as follows. When I go into the stripe function of the LCD adjust, on my reds and blues I have a skewed line pattern at about 5 degrees from 12 o'clock. Next, comparatively speaking to my old light engine, the green push is overwhelming, and I can't seem to mitigate it. Next, high frequency ringing, which usually shows up in high contrast areas is much more pronounced then before; every TV suffers from this but this is to the point of annoyance. Next, which I have a feeling is the result of high frequency ringing is that in 2.35:1 ratio movies when you have the top and bottom black bars show up I have the first centimeter or so from each dark area quite a bit lighter then the rest of the image which makes it quite distracting when watching movies.

Most of this is not a problem if you are watching 16:9 or 4:3 extended as the entire screen is covered and there is nothing unusual except from the two points I mentioned first however, if any one has any idea how to mitigate the ringing as much as possible and the green push please let me know. Also for those of you that own this TV I have a favor to ask of you. When you get into the service menu and go to the test patterns the patterns where there is a black square in the center of the screen with either red, green, or blue, do you have a row of lighter colored pixels for each of the patters just above the black square? If not then there has to be a way to calibrate that, please let me know because my tech is useless and Hitachi guys are of no help.

BTW my tech has been notified and he will be coming sometime this week.

Thanks,
Mike

-Just purchased a Hitachi 70vs810, very excited, it is a refurbished unit, light engine was replaced. There are a couple of things missing and I would like to know what settings are best suited for this TV. Missing items are the sync CD and software as well as the user manual. Any important issues i need to be aware of??? I currently own a couple of HDTV's (Sony), was looking at the 70XBR2 but it was out of my budget, ran across the Hitachi and i couldn't pass up the deal. Please help with any and all information possible. Thanks in advance for everyone's help, Zeb.

mstaz,

What did you do in the service menu to help with the vertical banding? My service rep told me i needed a new light engine, again!

What will help with the vertical banding is the streak option in the LCD adjust menu. You need to do this calibration for each of the RGB colors and the 5 brightness settings of each. As noted earlier my banding is pretty much gone or goes unnoticed however, my refurbed light engine has other issues that need to be resolved and my tech already made a note of them and is contacting Hitachi to see if it may be adjusted within the service menu.

Let me know how it goes.

I am still with you guys,....... just nothing has happened yet.... Hope tho have something within a week or so...

I have owned the Hitachi 70VS810 with matching stand for 2 years and found it amazing vs. the Sony LCD set I almost bought myself at the same time.

FYI, I found the set settings out-of-box almost perfect to begin with and adjusted the colour to my personal taste as it has many of them.
The day and night settings I ignored and I use the daytime one as I find the night setting washes out the blacks and good contrast this set can provide.

If you get to the Hitachi website, you should still be able to find the user data you seek for this set.
Whatever price you got for this Hitachi set, I am certain it was half the selling price of the current same size Sony 1080p set as when I bought my set new as it was this price about 2 years ago, so you probably got great deal.

Hope this assists you.

The information you provided was excellent, yeah i did get a great deal. I'm too ashamed to say what i paid for it, but if you shoot me a PM I'll give you the details. They had another one but it wasn't available for sale as yet (light engine was being replaced). The Hitachi replaced a 60" Sony XBR HDTV (2002 model year), needless to say that the Hitachi was superior. Thanks again for your help, if you have any additional information you feel would be important, pleeeeeease post it, thanks, Zeb.

i've had my 50vs810 for a little over a year now and i am very happy with it.i bought it as a demo and got a really good deal.in the past year i have had the light engine and screen replaced under warranty(the light engine was not bad but the tech missdiagnosed the problem so i got a new light engine anyway).the other day i was playing the xbox 360 and the picture seemed to get washed out.what i mean by that is that it is sort of on the whitish side as far as color and the picture just isn't as crisp as it used to be.i tried readjusting the picture but i can't seem to get it back to the beautiful picture i am used to having.i think i can eliminate the light engine since it was just replaced.could the bulb be getting weak?any other suggestions before i call the tech since i'm out of warranty?i did try a screen wipe just for the heck of it but it didn't help.

something probably changed in the sets software. The first thing I would try is to unplug the set for 10 minutes, plug it back in and restet the video settings. If the bulb was failing, the picture would get dark, not brighter. Failing that, there is a Memory Init in the service menu which may correct your problem.

i reset all the settings to factory and my deep colors are back and the washed out look is gone.the only problem now is that the picture is definately on the dark side and it is set to Day which was usually very bright.

did you reset the user menu, or the service menu settings?

i went to the video menu and clicked on reset at the very bottom.that's all i've tried so far.is that what you mean or is it something different?

check all the cables, turn off black enhancement, set color temp to high, then go to the screen wipe. if you are in a dark room, the picture should be bright enough to be uncomfortable to watch. if you re watching a dvd, be sure the players settings are set to normal.