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General discussion (archive)LED/LCD TV Question/Problem(12 posts)(12 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted March 07, 2014
Ever since I've owned this (over a year now) 42" Vizio refurbished TV I've wondered if there was a "problem" in that seems always seemed to not be bright enough. But that could be a matter of taste, and I've played with the brightness/contrast to not much satisfaction.

But now I swear it appears worse to me. And the funny thing is, when I first turn it on, the picture comes up, it looks GREAT, if flickers a couple of times (as though settling into some kind of setting, or so I thought but maybe it was a sign of a problem all along??) and after the flickers it looks it's same, dark, dull self.

Today is by far the worst, as I bumped brightness all the way up to 100 and it wasn't all that bright of a picture. It was a dull picture with evidence of it being brightened. Wish I knew how to explain it better.

Anyway, I bought the extended warranty, but I fear I bought the wrong kind of warranty. It's supposed to be a "no questions asked" warranty where you get to, ONCE, return it, and they ship you a replacement, no questions asked, and IIRC they ship when you do, so you're not out of a TV as long. But the ONCE thing scared me, because I can't but wonder if I send this one back, what if I get one that's even worse with more problems??? I should've thought of that before, I know.

Anyway, can anyone tell from my limited ability to explain what it looks like whether they think I have a problem and should return it or whether I should instead live with it, this is the way this particular TV is??? I've played with the picture controls for hours and hours and hours, so no, I don't think there's going to be any satisfaction there.

I guess the thing that makes me feel like it may be a problem is how good the pic always look, JUST FOR A SECOND, before the flickering. I was always under the impression that the flickering and change was intentional, but now I'm not so sure.

Anyone?
Posted March 07, 2014
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OldFatGuy: Ever since I've owned this (over a year now) 42" Vizio refurbished TV I've wondered if there was a "problem" in that seems always seemed to not be bright enough. But that could be a matter of taste, and I've played with the brightness/contrast to not much satisfaction.

But now I swear it appears worse to me. And the funny thing is, when I first turn it on, the picture comes up, it looks GREAT, if flickers a couple of times (as though settling into some kind of setting, or so I thought but maybe it was a sign of a problem all along??) and after the flickers it looks it's same, dark, dull self.

Today is by far the worst, as I bumped brightness all the way up to 100 and it wasn't all that bright of a picture. It was a dull picture with evidence of it being brightened. Wish I knew how to explain it better.

Anyway, I bought the extended warranty, but I fear I bought the wrong kind of warranty. It's supposed to be a "no questions asked" warranty where you get to, ONCE, return it, and they ship you a replacement, no questions asked, and IIRC they ship when you do, so you're not out of a TV as long. But the ONCE thing scared me, because I can't but wonder if I send this one back, what if I get one that's even worse with more problems??? I should've thought of that before, I know.

Anyway, can anyone tell from my limited ability to explain what it looks like whether they think I have a problem and should return it or whether I should instead live with it, this is the way this particular TV is??? I've played with the picture controls for hours and hours and hours, so no, I don't think there's going to be any satisfaction there.

I guess the thing that makes me feel like it may be a problem is how good the pic always look, JUST FOR A SECOND, before the flickering. I was always under the impression that the flickering and change was intentional, but now I'm not so sure.

Anyone?
I am no expert on this but I am always wary of anything that's been refurbished. Maybe you can ask about a non-refurbished model?
Posted March 07, 2014
Instead of cranking the brightness up all the way, have you tried increasing the backlight setting?
Post edited March 07, 2014 by KillingMachine
Posted March 07, 2014
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JudasIscariot: I am no expert on this but I am always wary of anything that's been refurbished. Maybe you can ask about a non-refurbished model?
^Seconded.

"Refurbished" = "It used to be somebody else's problem. Now it's yours."

There are many refurbished Vizio TVs on the market. The reason for this is that most Vizios are sold by mass-market retailers that have no test or repair facilities. When they get returns, they send the returned TV off to a contract remarketer; the big one is Systemax.

Systemax does some superficial testing before sending the TV to a retailer that deals in refurbished Vizios. This testing may amount to no more than "Plug it in, do you get a picture?" "Yes, ship it."

The price advantage for buying refurbished may be no more than $50 on a $1200 TV. The warranty on refurbished Vizios is 3 months. Sadly, this means you probably overpaid for, and are now stuck with, a defective TV that is out of warranty. Bummer.
Post edited March 07, 2014 by cjrgreen
Posted March 07, 2014
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OldFatGuy: Anyway, can anyone tell from my limited ability to explain what it looks like whether they think I have a problem and should return it or whether I should instead live with it, this is the way this particular TV is??? I've played with the picture controls for hours and hours and hours, so no, I don't think there's going to be any satisfaction there.
It sounds like you've got bad electrical conduction, actually. You've got a bunch of little diodes in your TV which are meant to create your backlight. That's the LED part. You probably know that.

LEDs tend to be really efficient, which is great, but if there's any kind of electrical short you can see those diodes generate less light and more heat (heat is a waste product of making light). You could also of course have a problem with the main power supply not getting enough power to your backlighting elements. Either of those problems would present as you've described, because when you first turn the TV on, the wires and traces along which your electricity runs are "cold" and then they heat up. Conductors in consumer electronics are less efficient when hot. Thus, as soon as the electrical parts heat up, you lose brightness.

That *should* be a warrantable issue. If it is what I've guessed, above, then you probably should return the TV for a replacement. It isn't something you should just put up with. Sadly, unless your state has some good consumer protection laws there's not a lot you can do if you get sent another TV with the same problem, because there's not a lot of careful oversight in regards to refurbishing processes. :/
Posted March 07, 2014
THANK YOU all very much, once again. This place is just awesome.

I don't think I'll ever opt for refurbished again, but that doesn't help any with my current problem (because I can't afford a new TV right now) so I'm going to first return this one and give that a try.

Thing is, I've got a family that does so many things for me, if I told them about this, they'd probably just immediately buy me a brand new one to replace it (they're not rich, but they're far from poor, upper middle class I guess would be the right classification) and I just don't want to do that. I bought this on my own, and am going to try the extended warranty that I bought.

EDIT: Guess I should clarify that last remark, sounds like I'm a teenager instead of an old fat guy. I'm disabled, living on disability, which isn't enough to live on. Since my disability, my family has helped immensely, and it's safe to say I wouldn't be here were it not for them. Because I would be homeless if all I had to live on was my disability, and I don't think I would last long homeless. Not long at all. Anyway, being disabled might explain "I bought this on my own" better cause it sort of sounded like I was a teenager just coming of age.
Post edited March 07, 2014 by OldFatGuy
Posted March 08, 2014
LOL! Once again I'm an idiot.

This den used to be exclusively used by my nephew and his girlfriend (he lived here with me for a couple of years) and he came by and I was telling him about having to send my TV back and....

He had changed a setting that I didn't even knew existed, in fact, there was a whole other screen of adjustments that I had never found in all the tinkering I had done. Anyway, they always liked to be down here with no lights on and watching TV (or playing games) and he had adjusted some "External Sensor" something or other to a point where the picture was basically always dimmer, but looked good when all the lights were out.

Readjusted that and BAM, MY TV HAS A GREAT PICTURE!!!! WHO KNEW!!!!

Unbelievable. All the hours I spent on this, tinkering; adjusting this, readjusting that, and with one simple change, BIG BRIGHT BEAUTIFUL PICTURE!

Damn I'm an idiot.

And damn I'm glad he came by before I had boxed it up.

EDIT: WOW, Playing the same game I've been playing for weeks now and it looks AMAZING! Like I changed TV's!!! This is so awesome! It is actually so different it feels like I'm playing on a brand new TV.
Post edited March 08, 2014 by OldFatGuy
Posted March 08, 2014
I had the same issue with a portable DVD player.
It had a 'menu' button on the player and another on the remote.
Sent the first one back, got the second and it still was a terrible picture.
For some reason I decided to use the remote menu button and wow!
A whole entirely different menu with all the settings I needed!
So don't feel bad, I've been in computers/electronics all my life! :)
Posted March 08, 2014
With all the dumbing down we see in movies and games and such it's always surprising to me that TVs themselves need a ton of tinkering to look decent. Glad you found the setting you needed.
Posted March 08, 2014
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StingingVelvet: With all the dumbing down we see in movies and games and such it's always surprising to me that TVs themselves need a ton of tinkering to look decent. Glad you found the setting you needed.
That's largely a matter of personal preference I doubt that one preset would work well for everybody. The main annoyance my parents have with their new TV is that it doesn't permit them to scale the image up to fill the whole screen. You can zoom, but that takes off a bit on the sides, for some reason it insists on only stretching it in the horizontal direction most of the time. I can change the format, but then the picture is small rather than taking up the most area on the screen possible.

I'm definitely looking forward to the future when most TV shows are 16:9 and it's mostly older programming that has to have those black borders.

Other than that though, it was pretty easy to set up, the nice thing about it is that it has a sensor built in to adjust the backlight based upon the ambient lighting.

Overall, I have to say that Samsung makes some rather nice TVs these days.
Posted March 08, 2014
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hedwards: That's largely a matter of personal preference I doubt that one preset would work well for everybody. The main annoyance my parents have with their new TV is that it doesn't permit them to scale the image up to fill the whole screen. You can zoom, but that takes off a bit on the sides, for some reason it insists on only stretching it in the horizontal direction most of the time. I can change the format, but then the picture is small rather than taking up the most area on the screen possible.
Oh man, if I had my way I would ban all that shit and force people to watch things in their native aspect ratios.
Posted March 08, 2014
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hedwards: That's largely a matter of personal preference I doubt that one preset would work well for everybody. The main annoyance my parents have with their new TV is that it doesn't permit them to scale the image up to fill the whole screen. You can zoom, but that takes off a bit on the sides, for some reason it insists on only stretching it in the horizontal direction most of the time. I can change the format, but then the picture is small rather than taking up the most area on the screen possible.
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StingingVelvet: Oh man, if I had my way I would ban all that shit and force people to watch things in their native aspect ratios.
I want it to be 4:3 ratio as it was filmed, but the TV only stretches it sideways rather than vertically I'm hoping that it's a matter of the setting being hidden somewhere, because it's annoying to get the bars on the top and bottom and still have the picture stretched.

There is a 4:3 mode, but the manual warns against possible damage if it's used for long periods of time.
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General discussion (archive)LED/LCD TV Question/Problem(12 posts)(12 posts)
(12 posts)