dying LCD?

thedarkmrchavez

Heya,

Got a Gateway FPD2275w, have had it since Jan 07. Getting 'blotchy' video and 'blocky' gradients. It seems to be having trouble with midtones... this a sign of it's premature death? I'm pretty sure its not a PC issue, because I have a 360 plugged into the component input, and I'm getting the same low-quality video. Games seem to be ok, a bit harder to tell possibly. (PC is going through VGA)

Don't know what else to troubleshoot. Also having a issue with codecs and color for windows, but I assume its unrelated because of the 360 quality... Wanted to try and nail down one problem at a time, I can always format a hard drive... no clue how to fix a monitor other than smacking it a couple times...

This started over the weekend and it corrected itself a few hours later... everything was runnin fine, up till yesterday. What are signs / symps of a dying LCD?

thanks much.
mm

Fristle

This is not how a LCD typically goes out. Usually the fluorescent light which provides the backlight in the display, will grow dimmer over time and then die (but we're talking thousands of hours). If you bought this unit in January and it's having problems, then it's a manufacturing defect, and you're under warranty so I'd just make them replace it.

They'll probably send you a refurb unit though, and it may only be 90% perfect -- I had an expensive Samsung LCD display that self-destructed in less than a month and they replaced it with a refurb like that. It's fine but the backlight is not evenly bright in the bottom left corner. You usually can't tell but sometimes in dark games you can. It really bothers me when I notice it. Anyway when the original unit went bad, it started to display several lines of stuck pixels here and there across the top of the screen.

thedarkmrchavez

Thanks.

The thing that bugs me about this issue is that it 'fixes' itself. As I type this, all my colors are correct and midtones are burning bright...

I got in touch with Gateway CS and they are sending me shipping mats to send my display away.

Meiz

Go here: http://www.psp-vault.com/Article168.psp

-Download the video via the hyperlink: "Here is Version 2 of The Video"
-Disable any Screen savers or power options that would turn off your monitor.
-Run the video overnight.

See if that brings the lass back from the dead.

thedarkmrchavez

actually gateway was really cool about the whole thing. they just sent me a new display, swapped the old one into the box it came in and sent it along its merry way via prepaid fedex.

i was expecting a headache, but it turned out ok.

thanks again