I smelled a rat - why did Manchester Arndale Sony Centre tell me to go to the Sony website 2 days after they'd closed their doors?  If there was going to be help, then why would it magically appear on a Tuesday?

So, I called and emailed the Sony support centre.  Email was useless - instant automated reply, but all the links in the reply were corrupt and didn't link to anything.

Phone call was better, although the english of the operative was not brilliant.

I've been booked in for a visit by a local repair engineer who told me to have the tv switched off for a couple of hours prior to their arrival, so they can get a 'proper reading', so basically, they're coming round to test for the overheating issue.

Let's see what the engineer says when he sees my shadows. Wonder if he'll try to fob me off?  I think he'll be in for a shock if he tries it - I'm a freelance broadcast TV engineer, working mainly for the BBC, Sky and ITV!!

Roll on next Friday.

(This photo shows the problems - dark shadow lines on the right and bottom, plus a dark halo in the middle - un-edited iPhone 4 photo)

Message was edited by: skipton01

Message was edited by: skipton01

Will do Jay - I've learned that you should never buy anything other than cheap kitchen electricals from Comet (or Currys).  I've also now learned that 'Sony Centre' shops have nothing to do with Sony - they're franchises!  So that leaves John Lewis as the probable best choice.

A repair/replacement for me will hinge on the state of the Sonex warranty.

I have exactly the same problem. Having just read the 13 pages in this thread and coutless other threads on this and other forums all to do with shadowing on Sony Bravia screens. Surely we have a case!

Do we have any legal experts amongst us? I'd be willing to chip in, it would be cheaper than buying a new TV!

Can anyone beat this for shadowing?

Message was edited by: virginreco

Message was edited by: virginreco to include a picture.

skipton01 wrote:

 

Well, although not as marked as your 'staining' Virginreco, if you download the photo of my screen and layer it with yours in Photoshop, you'll see that the stains line up perfectly.  There's the side ones and about 6 vertical lines in the middle of the screen.  This just proves that it's a component failure (probably the path that the cold cathode backlight takes) and Sony need to acknowledge that they've bought in screen units that are duff.

 

I'm sure that any cost to Sony inreplacement units can be got back by Sony sueing the screen supplier.

As I was reading your post I thought you were going to say:  They line up perfectly an spell the word SUCKER

Just found this:

http://www.hdtvuk.tv/2007/08/ifa_2007_sony_s.html

If it's a unique Sony backlight, this may well explain why the V3000 models are affected.

Hi virginreco,

Can you believe I only discovered that these dark lines were a common issue this week. I also only found out this week about the "overheating" recall on this model TV and a few others, I am a Which Mag member and discovered a forum there about the recall and also the dark shadows issue.

I am waiting for a service engineer to call and arrange a visit to check out the overheating problem, I will use the opportunity to see what Sony will do about the dark shadows and show the engineer this forum.

Sony have to honour this as a product failure at some point.  Good idea about starting up a list. This fault must be Europe or even Worldwide. Can we check that out in some way, maybe Sony are recognising the issue in other countries??.

Shadows don't look so dark on my TV. Bought the TV in Feb 2008. Shadows started to appear early 2011, thought the screen was dusty to start with.

This totally spoils the viewing pleasure which was fantastic until this appeared. Will keep viewing this forum for further details and will advise outcome of service engineer visit.

I've been doing some more research and it appears the shading we're all experiencing has a name - mura

It's commonly seen as clouding and is caused by many factors, most of which have been overcome with better manufacturing and quality control, but there's also the distortion of the light guide/diffusion layer.

Here is the full list of causes:

Mura Causes in LCD displays:

1 - non uniform tft thickness
2 - non uniform density of Liquid crystal material
3 - non uniform gap between substrates
4 - non uniform color of color filters
5 - non uniform lamp array
6 - non uniform optical filter
7 - warped light guide/diffuser

It's the last one we should be interested in and it is caused by heat in the main.  Interestingly, the one common factor in all the screen issues is the faint line along the right side of the screen and this is where the power (electricity) input is situated.

I've run over my screen tonight, with a non-contact laser thermometer and there's a wide range across the screen.  On the left of the screen, the temps are lower and obviously, the temps rise as you go up the screen.  Mine ranges from 28 celcius at bottom left to 42 celcius at top right.

Now that we're all aware of the possible over-heating issues associated with this screen, I believe that even if the component that is liable to over-heat is still considered to be within safe limits, it is still too hot for the diffusion layer in the backlight system, leading to localised warping.  The most severe shadowing also happens to be nearest to the hottest component within the tv chassis.

I'll continue my research and see if I can't come up with somthing absolutely definitive.  As it is though, I believe we've all got a convincing case for replacement, due to design problems.

I searched 'mura lcd' on Google images and most of the images that appear seem to be more of a clouding effect rather than the vertical shadows that we are experiencing. I'm no expert (carpenter) in this field at all but I do think that if we are going to quote technical issues to Sony we should be 100% sure of where the design fault is and what is causing the problem.

I'm not suggesting you're wrong skippy, I bow down to your expertise. I don't understand the first thing about this electrickety!

A lot of the images lead you to your kind of light reading skippy.