LCD blacklight bleeding.

human_male

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Hi there, technical question.

I just bought a LCD monitor for gaming (Samsung P2350). One thing that really botheres me is what I believe to be blacklight bleeding. If I look anywhere on the screen where it's dark there's a sort of grey, shiny appearance. A tech savy friend of mine had a look and said that was blacklight bleeding and you can't do anything about it, it's just one of those things with LCDs, although some are worse than others.

So my question is is there a way of telling or measuring how much blacklight bleed a monitor has? I could go and look at one in a store but since it would be brightly lit I wouldn't be able to see it.

Does any particular manufacturer have a reputation for being very good in that regard?

Are TVs better or worse or the same as monitors?

What's my alternative to an LCD if I just can't live with it? I've got a 19" CRT and I'd happily stay with that but it's not wide screen and games get letterboxed. But I love the picture.

Thanks very much.
 
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First I would talk to the distributor and see if it is a common problem, perhaps even get your monitor replaced to see if you just had a faulty one, it does happen with monitors.

I own two Asus 22" 2ms LCD monitors for gaming and work. I love them and have had no problems with them, the on board speakers are awful but if you're gaming you'll most likely have a good headset anyways. The price is good to, I bought both of mine for 160 dollars each.
 
First I would talk to the distributor and see if it is a common problem, perhaps even get your monitor replaced to see if you just had a faulty one, it does happen with monitors.

Yeah I was thinking that. But the vendor will charge me 10% restocking fee. It cost $412 New Zealand dollars, and with courier to send it back it will cost me about $50 just to return it, and I may find another one is just the same.

What was the model of your Asus ones?
 
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Hi there, technical question.

I just bought a LCD monitor for gaming (Samsung P2350). One thing that really botheres me is what I believe to be blacklight bleeding. If I look anywhere on the screen where it's dark there's a sort of grey, shiny appearance. A tech savy friend of mine had a look and said that was blacklight bleeding and you can't do anything about it, it's just one of those things with LCDs, although some are worse than others.

So my question is is there a way of telling or measuring how much blacklight bleed a monitor has? I could go and look at one in a store but since it would be brightly lit I wouldn't be able to see it.

Does any particular manufacturer have a reputation for being very good in that regard?

Are TVs better or worse or the same as monitors?

What's my alternative to an LCD if I just can't live with it? I've got a 19" CRT and I'd happily stay with that but it's not wide screen and games get letterboxed. But I love the picture.

Thanks very much.


This is going to sound like a really stupid question, but when you have ALL the lights off in your room, do you still see the shiny gray color?

And is the glass on your screen shiny or matte?

And PS, it's called BACKlight, not blacklight.
 
Sorry to say this, but your friend may or may not know what he's talking about. The best way to test backlight bleeding is to turn off all the lights in the room and put on a pure black screen.

this may work for the test needed... You should also check for stuck or dead pixels.
http://www.ekimsoftware.com/products/lcdtest/

When the screen goes all black, the "bleeding" is the amount of white light you can see from the edges. This happens because the CCFL is not tightly seated against the refracting layers in front of the actual display and light leaks out. You may forget about it during normal browsing, but it may become a problem during movies with a letterbox (black bars) format.

Have you installed the drivers for the monitor? There are brightness adjustments in the settings menu on the monitor too, it may help to turn the brightness down. I remember when I got my 216bw it was super bright, turning the brightness down helped quite a bit with picture clarity and colors.

As eluded to before, talk to someone at Samsung to see if it's a common problem- if so Samsung support is phenomenal.
 
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Hi there, technical question.

I just bought a LCD monitor for gaming (Samsung P2350). One thing that really botheres me is what I believe to be blacklight bleeding. If I look anywhere on the screen where it's dark there's a sort of grey, shiny appearance. A tech savy friend of mine had a look and said that was blacklight bleeding and you can't do anything about it, it's just one of those things with LCDs, although some are worse than others.

So my question is is there a way of telling or measuring how much blacklight bleed a monitor has? I could go and look at one in a store but since it would be brightly lit I wouldn't be able to see it.

Does any particular manufacturer have a reputation for being very good in that regard?

Are TVs better or worse or the same as monitors?

What's my alternative to an LCD if I just can't live with it? I've got a 19" CRT and I'd happily stay with that but it's not wide screen and games get letterboxed. But I love the picture.

Thanks very much.

I own 3 SamSung monitors, a 244T, and 2-2253 and all are exceptional. I did have issues with the 244T about a yr after I bought it and they sent me a refurbished one twice...both times it went right straight back because of issues. They finally sent me a new one and I have been happy. I would call SamSung and get a replacement...last I remember they have a 90 day return policy
 
This is going to sound like a really stupid question, but when you have ALL the lights off in your room, do you still see the shiny gray color?

And is the glass on your screen shiny or matte?

And PS, it's called BACKlight, not blacklight.

Yep when you have all the lights off it's more noticable, if the rooms well lit you can't see it.

Matte.
 
Sorry to say this, but your friend may or may not know what he's talking about. The best way to test backlight bleeding is to turn off all the lights in the room and put on a pure black screen.

this may work for the test needed... You should also check for stuck or dead pixels.
http://www.ekimsoftware.com/products/lcdtest/

When the screen goes all black, the "bleeding" is the amount of white light you can see from the edges. This happens because the CCFL is not tightly seated against the refracting layers in front of the actual display and light leaks out. You may forget about it during normal browsing, but it may become a problem during movies with a letterbox (black bars) format.

Have you installed the drivers for the monitor? There are brightness adjustments in the settings menu on the monitor too, it may help to turn the brightness down. I remember when I got my 216bw it was super bright, turning the brightness down helped quite a bit with picture clarity and colors.

As eluded to before, talk to someone at Samsung to see if it's a common problem- if so Samsung support is phenomenal.

It's not just around the edges it's the whole screen. If I'm playing a game and it's just a little bit dark it's very noticable.

I haven't installed the software because it use it for my 360 but I tried it on the PC also and it was just the same.

I don't know if Samsung will exchange it directly. I assume they'll just tell me I have to return it to the vendor (who will charge 10% if I can't prove it's a fault), but it's worth a try if you think it sounds like an issue. I have played with a couple of other LCDs in the past, a Samsung and a BenQ and they had the issue too as I recall, but I can't recall if it was this bad.

Thank you.
 
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LCDs do tend to show some backlighting in very dark rooms, thats just how they are. IF its severe then it could be a problem with the settings, and some manufacturers are better than others. The ones that have Led backlight don't have this issue as much, since instead of a few flourescent bars that are always on they have a whole lot of LEDs that light sections and are turned off is the section is dark. These are still farily new and expensive though.
 
From what I can gather form a couple of other forums I've posted on, my monitor is ok it's just I'm expecting way too much from it. But Samsung say they'll test it for me so I'm going to have them do that anyway.

Edit. I phoned Samsung today to arrange to have my monitor assessed and they warned me I will be charged if they don't find a fault! Quite a lot.

They recommended just sending it back to the vendor since I've only had it a week but they charge a 10% restocking fee for goods that have been opened and aren't faulty (I can't prove that it's faulty).

So I can't risk having Samsung look at it because i can't afford a huge bill. And there's no point returning it because it will cost me fifty bucks. But if I don't do anything I'll never know if I have a fault or not.

I'm screwed.
 
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I've found that about 90% of people have their LCD turned up way too bright. If your video card has a calibration utility, use it. There's a good chance that it'll move down into an acceptable level if it's calibrated properly. I KNOW NVidia cards have a utility, but not 100% sure on ATI. There are also hardware solutions that can calibrate it that are probably cheaper than either of your two current options.

Good luck. I hate it when a major purchase like this doesn't meet expectations.

Hopefully you can find a good solution.
 
I've found that about 90% of people have their LCD turned up way too bright. If your video card has a calibration utility, use it. There's a good chance that it'll move down into an acceptable level if it's calibrated properly. I KNOW NVidia cards have a utility, but not 100% sure on ATI. There are also hardware solutions that can calibrate it that are probably cheaper than either of your two current options.

Good luck. I hate it when a major purchase like this doesn't meet expectations.

Hopefully you can find a good solution.

Thank you. I'd wondered about calibrating it, but I use it exclusively on my 360, not my PC. So would it do any good to calibrate it on the PC then just plug it back into the 360? Or is there software for the 360 or something?

I returned it and they tell me they did find a fault with backlight bleeding and they replaced something and sent it back. Thing is I don't really want it anymore. It's too big and expensive. I said I want a refund even if they charge the restocking fee but now they're saying they won't accept it back because of some minor damage to the base, which I know absolutely nothing about. It could be something broke when I removed the base from the unit but I followed the instructions.

I think I'm still screwed.
 
I have an LG 22" and I use mine in the dark all the time and dont have any trouble with it at all..

I love it..
 
I have an LG 22" and I use mine in the dark all the time and dont have any trouble with it at all..

I love it..

I envy you. That's what everyone says about their monitors and I so envy them.

This thing has caused me nothing but headache and anxiety. Looks like I'm going to be stuck with it too. And to top it off the guy I've been emailing at the store has started to get a bit condescending with me. When I asked if I could get my money back he said "Sorry, but this has already been dispatched, and aside from that it
looks like there's some minor damage to the base unit- are you able to
tell me how that happened? "

Let's hope there's some improvement anyway. I dout they'll be impressed if it's no better and I ask to return it again.
 
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Man you have my sympathy that totally sucks.

I hate it when electronic equipment doesnt work. I mean geez its not like the stuff is cheap.

My LG was expensive..
 
Man you have my sympathy that totally sucks.

I hate it when electronic equipment doesnt work. I mean geez its not like the stuff is cheap.

My LG was expensive..

Thank you. To be fair they did repair it. They said they replaced "the main unit" whatever that is. But I think the damaged base is bogus. It could only have happened pulling the base off, and I had to get it off somehow, and I followed the instruction.

They just don't want to give me my money back even though I said I'd accept the restocking fee.

So what model is yours?
 
Monitors usually come from the factory set so the pictures look bright and colors are saturated in a brightly lit showroom. if you go into the settings of your monitor and adjust the colof balance, and the brightness, you can minimize the backlight bleeding.
 
Monitors usually come from the factory set so the pictures look bright and colors are saturated in a brightly lit showroom. if you go into the settings of your monitor and adjust the colof balance, and the brightness, you can minimize the backlight bleeding.

I'll try that and hopefully that's all it is. I will calibrate it with the software on my PC to see if it makes a difference. I haven't done that because I use it on my 360 but it may help anyway.
 
Here's another question about different size monitors. Right now I'm playing Dragon Age on a 19" CRT at 1280x1024. The picture's letterboxed and really small, but the graphics are sharp. When I played the same game on the 23" 1920x1080 I noticed the jaggies a lot more. I'm assuming this is because of the size of the screen, or perhaps scaling.

Would I notice it less on a 22" or 20" screen at 1920x1080, or would it not make any difference? Anyone with experience with those sized monitors?

Thank you.
 
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