Backlight leakage, or pressure on liquid crystal?  

oh jesus, is that the new Sony XBR sets?

man, I thought backlight leakage was on no-name brands like Vizio & Westinghouse.

I have a Vizio with the same probelm & there is no way in hell I am keeping it with a problem as big & noticeable as that. Completely & utterly unacceaptable.

Sony made a defective unit (a very expensive one at that) & passed it on to you, simple as that.
Exchange it for another one & don't take any crap when doing so.

I would do an exchange instead of a flat out return with my Vizio as well, but the problems with the leakage are so widespread with them that I just don't trust them anymore.

Exchange it. Check out some other brands while you are there. Take a look at some of the JVCs - I love mine.

Do you have the 40 or 46 inch sony XBR2? Just wondering since I have 40 inch version and have a very slight leakage in the upper right hand corner. Wondering if size of the TV has anything to do with it.

It would be great to hear from other LCD owners and how the backlight looks with a black image in a dark room.

I bought the 46"XBR3 about a week and a half ago and mine has that too. Mine is more on the right side in the middle and closer to the top. You can't see it during the day but at night when I was watching a few movies it was annoying. For the amount of money I paid for it it should be better. My mom has a 32" XBR1 and it does not look like that.

Finally, someone else seeing this. I posted in a seperate thread about this... here are the pics from my 5296D (Samsung, but same panel as the XBR2/3's)

http://home.comcast.net/~tmeader/leak1.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~tmeader/leak2.jpg

I'm contacting Crutchfield about this now actually. I'll keep posted as to the results. I've asked for an exchange, but under the condition that the panel be tested in a darkened environment PRIOR to shipping it out. This is incredibly distracting.

Mine looks like your pictures except its only up on the right middle and a little right above it. Looks almost the same way. Maybe we just got junk ones because I can't belive anybody thats paying that much would accept it. By the way I do love the tv except most of the time that I get to watch it is mostly at night.

Okay, Crutchfield was very prompt with their response (as expected by them) and they're sending out a replacement ASAP since they too deemed the photos above as "unacceptable".

I'll update as to whether or not the new one shows this same issue (fingers crossed).

a ready question would be, what is this "backlight leakage" caused by? bad shipping? does it develop over time? are all our sets doomed to this? thankfully my 40xbr2 does not show any of these symptoms even thru repeated calibrations including dark screens...

but mostly i wonder how yours developed it? was it developed? was there sudden onset or did it arrive as-such?

hmm, curious..

Good question. In my case, I'm guessing it was there from the beginning. I noticed it the first night I had it, but it took watching the film Batman Begins for it to really stand out. On the replacement, I'll be making sure that the first thing I do is watch dark material to check for this.

It looks like backlight leakage or bleeding is still a problem with LCDs, even with expensive name brands and models.

Here is my experience with this issue...

When I bought my 32" Sony KLV-32M1 LCD TV online over a year ago, there were 4 palm-sized "blotches" around 6" from each corner of the screen. They were most noticable in dim ambient light and when the set was displaying a blank black screen. They appeared even with the backlight setting at "0." It drove me nuts when I was watching movies with alot of dark backgrounds and shadows, such as the space scenes in Star Wars. Another identical set I saw at a B&M store had alot of leakage along the bottom edge, indicating to me back then that leakage was not an isolated incident.

For reasons I'm not going to go into, I decided to lay my TV flat down on a table. When I placed the TV back upright and turned it on, to my amazement, the blotches were completely gone. Yeah!

I hypothesized that the cause of the problem was due to localized pressure points on the LCD panel which displaced some of the liquid crystal matrix underneath. I came up with this idea because if you ever pressed against an LCD screen with your finger, you would notice it turns white where you touch it. The same could be happening if there is uneven stress on the panel assembly. Laying it flat might have spread out the stress points, I guess.

Unfortunately, blotches later reappeared along the right side of the screen after I inadvertently bumped into the TV. On a whim, I took a microfiber cloth and physically "massaged" the screen to even out any stress points. I applied firm pressure but not excessively so as to not damage the screen. I kept one hand on the back of the TV to counter the pressure of the other hand. Lo and behold, the blotches disappeared! It's been many months now and the blotches haven't reappeared. I have been taking extra caution not to physically touch the TV at all. I'm afraid a bump may "restress" the screen. I always use the remote to control the TV.

Now reading these makes me want to go Plasma...why dont i just wait 2 yrs to buy anything at all......I have never read so many bad things about Plasma and lcd as I have in here and on HighDefforum...

This is crazy first the new Sony XBR3 models, then someone with a Samsung model & now I just read somone with the new right off the truck Sharp D62U models have this problem too.

This is insane for the latest most expensive cutting edge TV's to still have a big glaring problem like this that's been around so many years ago.

someone posted a pic of their Vizio:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...ncredibles.jpg
Mine is nearly identical.
I seriously thought the problem was with off name brand companies & not with the "big" names.


I tried that & it didn't work.
using pressure on the screen only moved the blocthes by just a bit, not getting rid of them.

Well last night I got out my microfiber cloth and started to rub the two sections of the screen that were uneven. It took a while but its better than it was because the patches are not as bright as before in other words I got it to even out. The only problem is when you put pressure on one part it will kind of move to another area so I had to work at it for awhile. I think it might be ok but we will see after a few days if it stays.

Well, bad news.

I took receipt of the replacement panel this afternoon, and since it's finally gotten dark enough to test, I gave it a whirl... same exact problem. I'm beginning to wonder if this is instead an issue with this model and not just particular ones. Can't get pictures right now since the camera is away with the girlfriend... but I've already emailed cr*tchfield again regardless. We'll see.

I noticed the same issue - perhaps not so extreme - as the first poster. I have a Sony 46XBR2 - probably the same one in the picture. The bleeding areas are in almost exactly the same spots... Curious as to whether your set was exchanged for a new one, and if the new one was improved at all...

Same here...although not as bad, and I only see it in the extreme upper left corner when switching from a really bright scene to a really dark scene (mostly just when switching inputs). The curious thing is that I don't notice it at all if there is any image in the middle of the screen and only the edges are black (i.e., in shadows)...only when the entire screen is completely black...and even then, if the screen stays black for more than 1/2 second, the "cloudiness" fades away...I also notice that adjusting some of the "Contrast Enhancement" features, excentuates or diminishes the effect based on what settings you use. I guess I have to say that since I don't see this problem while watching program material (or while playing the XBOX 360), it isn't really a deal breaker for me...it would be if it was distracting, but it isn't.

Interesting that you say it "fades away", mine certainly doesn't.

My second set from Crutchfield has the same problem though, so that too is going back. In fact, the right side is even worse (brighter) than the first panel. I'm giving them one more shot, and then going with a different manufacturer (Sharp likely if they can get this "banding" issue taken care of in the next few weeks).

Getting so frustrating sending these things back over and over. Are they not tested in a dim envornment AT ALL prior to shipping out?

I would like to know if there is anyone that DOESN'T have any of these issues with their large format LCD screens at all. I think that for some this may be more or less noticible than others, but I bet we would be hard pressed to find anyone that owns a large LCD screen that doesn't have even a little bit of this effecting theirs...I think it is just an inherient aspect of LCD screens...especially when they are larger than 20". I wonder if it is also caused by LCD manufactures trying to increase the contrast ratio of thier screens...since LCD screens with lower contrast ratios would be uniformly grey, so this sort of thing would just blend in.

I guess it's just me, but I really don't worry too much about this issue. Maybe I just don't watch alot of material where more than 75% of the screen is black so it doesn't bother me as much...but I defintely think that at this late in the game, these sort of problems should have been resolved...

I used an microfiber cloth on mine. Since the "clouds" were mostly on the right side of the screen. When you rub the screen though the light patches move so I had to work at it a while until it looked fairly uniform. It still is not perfect but its better than it was so I think I'm gonna keep it since my 30 return is up tomorrow. One other thing I did was when I am watching it with no lights on I turn the backlight down to minimum and that helps a little more.

I may be blind but I have not noticed this on my 40" LCD.

Hey guys this IS what I was trying to describe eralier here:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=741556

I didn't know how to describe it since I've never seen it before on any lcd. I have that exactly like the first post on my Sony KDL 46XBR2 46".

Mine is pretty bad and I'm taking it back immediately. No way I'm paying that kind of cash for something that's going to leave me in this state. That's too much money and it should make you feel good and not regret the purchase.

I'll try another one and if it's not better I'll get my money back and wait a few years until this new techs get their act together. It used to be that you'd spend $800+ on a tv that you KNEW was going to make you happy and you knew it was going to last. :mad:

My Sammy LN-S4051D is uniformly black across the entire screen. FWIW, I have my backlight set to the dimmest setting. But even on the brightest setting, I don't see any 'clouds'.

i notice this "uneven backlight" on my sony v2500 when i'm looking at a disconnected video input (ie - when you're toggling between inputs). is this the same thing?

haven't noticed it while watching HDTV yet.. i'll find a movie and see if this happens. guess i could check the credits like these photos show

Yes...it is very strange...again, I don't notice this at all when there is an image on the screen and only the edges are black...for example, with Letterboxes: the Black bars are evenly black...but if the whole screen is brightly lit, and then it goes black, I can see the "clouds". It also seems that the longer the TV is on, the more noticable it becomes...like if I have the TV on for 6 hours or more, the blotches are slightly bigger/"brighter"...but I solve this my simply switching the set off for a second or two...

otakuon, I can understand if you an't be bothered with returning it, but I wouldn't be inclined to just "live with" issues like this on this expensive a piece of electronics.

Look at it this way, if it's doing that already, imagine what it might do in a year or too.

When televisions cost 300 dollars, things were a little different. But when you are talking 10 times that or more, the acceptability level of defects really ought to decline in relation to the rise in price.

Absolutely. If not they should let us know this before we purchase and spend a ton on them. I'm really mad about this but I just got off the phone with BB and they'll have another one for me. Hopefully I'll get what I paid for this time.