Desperately need help with an LCD monitor

Factual Questions
1

For a christmas splurge I recently purchased a Samsung 193P 19 inch flat panel. It’s very nice for it’s price range, and seemed to be the best in it’s class. It has 800:1 contrast ratio and 20 ms response time. All other monitors at this price range were 700:1 and lower and 25 ms response. The first one I purchased had a small cluster of dead pixels (maybe 4 or 5) at the bottom.

I returned it to J&R at they actually busted my chops a bit about it. They told me that the manufacturer considers anything less then 6 dead pixels to be within manufacturing tolerences. I calmly explained that I consider 1 dead pixel do be defective, so give me another one. After a bit of bellyaching they gave me a new one and and we tested it in the store. While it looked fine there, upon getting home and bringing up google, I noticed with the white background a single dead pixel smack dab in the middle of the screen. It’s barely noticable, but to be frank, it bothers the hell out of me. No one would love more to keep this thing, (it’s absolutely lovely) but what’s the point of dropping $600 on something I’m not happy with?

What are my options? I figure they’re going to bust my chops some more, and I fell there’s a strong possibility I won’t be able to return it. Could a new video card fix things? What should I say when I take it back? I’d love to have a LCD, but I’m a bit leary of playing monitor roulette, and taking a chance on a 3rd one.

Bah!

2

Chances are you bought it from a major chain store. If the original store won’t let you return it, I’d have a shot at another location.

Failing that, talk to the manufacturer and explain it’s brand new and it’s not okay with you.

That sure sucks, though. My condolences.

3

The latest.

I called Samsung and they basicall told me I was SOL. They did find a place in NJ that might be able to fix it, and said "sure what the hell we’ll pick up the tab. Of course I’d have to ship the thing on my dime though. I called the place but no one answered. Unfortunately J&R isn’t a chain store, they have one big location.

I also called my bank inquiring about disputing the charges if necessary, and they said “hell yeah you can dispute it”. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but nice to know I have the option. Are dead pixels common with these monitors or do I have really bad luck?

4

I don’t think you’re going to have much luck. A cluster of bad pixels is bad, but the manufacturers allow for single dead pixels as part of the quality review. Apparently, it is too hard to mass produce the panels and eliminate all dead pixels.

5

Then they should go back to the drawing board and fix their manufacturing technology before someone blows $600 bucks on the damn things.

6

Honestly, I think you are being too picky. One dead pixel out of the several million on the screen? You’ll be very very lucky to find one that has none. It’s a fact of life. Same with digital cameras - you’ll get at least one stuck pixel on the CCD, not normally noticeable except at longer exposures.

Technology is good, but not perfect. Unless you want to spend $60,000 for a custom-built screen instead of $600, then you have to put up with it.

7

The thing is, as the displays get larger and the pixel density increases, pixel defects become more common, and guaranteeing their absence becomes all but impossible. The 4" difference between your 19" monitor and a 15" one increases the area by 50%, so the probability of a dead pixel on your monitor increases accordingly. If they were to have QA reject all the monitors with a single dead pixel, you can be sure it’d cost you a lot more than $600. Most manufacturers regard anything less than 6-8 dead pixels as normal, although as you’ve discovered if you kick up a fuss, or have a nasty cluster of them, you can get a swap.

That said, it sucks that your dead pixel is slap bang in the middle. Unfortunately, I think you’ll have to be lucky to find one without defects (unless you insist on a store demonstration of the exact one you buy), so it really depends whether it bugs you enough to return outright. They annoy me quite a bit, so I tend to stick to CRTs. I know the LCDs are nice (my first thought on reading your thread was severe envy), but keep in mind that $600 will buy you a stunning 21" CRT. You just need a lot of desk space is all. :slight_smile:

Huh. As if to deliberately contradict me, I’ve just found out that Samsung in South Korea instituted a zero dead-pixel policy on the 1st of Jan - maybe if you’re bored a bit of targeted letter-writing might get you somewhere…

8

I think you’re being a bit unreasonable.

Oh, sure, I hope you can return it, if it bothers you that much, but you returned one LCD monitor, and were told about the prevailing industry standard. Then you personally inspected the replacement monitor, and still felt ripped off, when a defect emerged that after it passed your one-on-one inspection.

I’m also a bit peeved because you are the undeserving beneficiary of a new industry-leading Samsung policy -the best in the world-and still complaining!

They decided to handle your Christmas monitor a far better warranty than you were entitled to – a warranty they don’t even offer in US or or most of the world yet, and which no other manufacturer plans to offer in the foreseeable future (Some resellers offer “zero dead pixel” guarantees, with an appreciable price premium, which you didn’t pay, and probably wouldn’t have wanted to.)

That was a very nice thing for them to do. Be grateful.

Normally, I’m ALL for the consumer (which is the only reason I hope you will be allowed to return the second monitor, despite having personally inspected it before taking possession), but should products really measure up to your IMAGINED standard of quality before being offered for sale? Millions of LCD monitors are in use today, and a sizeable fraction, if not a majority of the higher resolution units have a dead pixel. I suppose you’d deprive those happy users of their monitors until YOU were satisfied, just because you didn’t read any reviews of the REAL WORLD LCD monitor market, and think your imagination should rule.

It’s not just a matter of “going back to their drawing board and doing things right” – all of us who have used Active Matrix LCD laptops (I was an early adopter almost 20 years ago) would have been deprived of a valuable tool, and without that huge LCD market, your inexpensive zero-defect monitor would still be decades in the future. “Perfection or nothing” is a terribly short-sighted policy. It almost always yields “nothing”.

A certain number of dead pixels has been allowed under the warranty for for as long as TFT (thin film transistors) have been used in displays (though zero defects was more common in the less-demanding VGA and sub-VGA displays). There are ways of building redundancy into the transistor film, but they generally decrease contrast and all increase price. Some OEMs have tighter standards of acceptability than others, which is a spec every prudent buyer should weigh: every significant product you buy is a trade-off between features, quality, price and performance! There’s always a cheaper version and a pricier higher quality version.

Cars and houses are expensive, and are NEVER perfect to the sub-part-per-million level. I know you know that, but anyone who researched LCD monitors would know about the dead pixel issue, and anyone who didn’t do their homework – well, who knows what they might “imagine”?

Your TV has a resolution between 50% (for the low end 200+ line units) and 80% (for expensive 400+ line models): I doubt a single mass-marketed TV today can resolve the full 480 line vertical video resolution of the “standard” TV signal – but aren’t we lucky that the TV picture in line with “what you (personally) imagined”! If you’d known what full TV resolution looked like, none of us would have TVs.

9

And then you have companies such as Viewsonic, I had a customer one time buy a Viewsonic LCD monitor and after two or three weeks he returned the monitor to me and complained of a dead pixel center screen. I gave him the usual rant about 1 dead pixel doesn’t necessarily warant a replacement but, as he was a graphic artist and it made a difference to him I said I would contact Viewsonic and see what I could do. Viewsonics response went something like this: If the monitor is less than 90 days old we will gladly replace any monitor. So I asked but what if it’s, at which point I was cut off and told that Viewsonics policy was to make certain that the customer got exactly what they wanted no questions asked. Now this was about five years ago so things might have changed but I was pretty dam impressed no other company even came close to this kind of policy. Needless to say as my monitors expire they are all being replaced with Viewsonic.

10

The inspection was done in a rush sort of way, on a computer that was halfway through a windows installation and hadn’t been set up for video yet. The whole screen image was over to the left about 3 iinches. I actually believe that the pixel died after my first day of use, though, so it wouldn’t have made a difference.

The policy only applies if I live in South Korea, which I don’t.

[quote]
Normally, I’m ALL for the consumer (which is the only reason I hope you will be allowed to return the second monitor, despite having personally inspected it before taking possession), but should products really measure up to your IMAGINED standard of quality before being offered for sale?

Imagined standard of quality? I don’t think not wanting a dead pixel center screen is ludicrous notion.

I’m not concerned with what other people think. I spend a great deal of money on a product that I’m not happy with, and because of (IMO) a silly policy, I may be stuck with it. That’s all, I’m frustrated about a monumental waste of money.
Back to the OP, is it possible to repair it? Samsung gave me the name of a company that might do it, and said they would pay for it. I bet the place would think I’m nuts for sending it to fix a single pixel, but they would be right, I’m totally nuts…

…about getting my money’s worth.

11

Can’t you return it for a refund? Since you’re unhappy with a policy that every major manufacturer of LCD monitors has, it seems your only option is to get a CRT instead.

Since dead pixels are usually caused by defective transistors, I doubt it can be repaired at all.

$600 for a 19" LCD with only one dead pixel is, IMHO, well worth the money.

12

I’m with World Eater on this.
My first laptop was a Zenith Z-NoteFlex (10" LCD) purchased from CompUSA back in 1993. When I got it home and turned it on, I found that it had two bad pixels (one that always stayed green, and one that always stayed red). I returned it and CompUSA gave me the same model with no bad pixels.
In 1996 I bought my second laptop–a WinBook (12" LCD). It arrived via UPS with two bad pixels (both steady reds). I called WinBook, and the people I spoke to there let me return it. WinBook paid the shipping. WinBook sent me a replacement with no bad pixels.
I bought my third laptop in 2000. Another WinBook (14.1" LCD). This time I asked them to verify that there were no bad pixels. When the notebook arrived, all pixels were (and remain) perfect.
Once you know a bad pixel is there, your eyes can be drawn to it. I don’t like paying full price for a noticeably flawed product. Yes, LCDs are tough to manufacture without defects, but we pay extra for LCDs over CRTs, so I think the whole “acceptable number of bad pixels” policy sucks. Several contributors to this thread seem amenable to the notion of a few bad pixels, so maybe the solution is for them to keep the bad ones, while the rest of us get the ones without flaws. That’s kinda’ win-win, ain’t it?
As for getting bad pixels fixed, that seems like it wouldn’t be worth anyone’s effort. With so many companies now enacting “acceptable numbers of bad pixels” policies, I recommend that anyone who doesn’t want to pay full price for a flawed LCD make that clear to the company/salesperson BEFORE paying for the product. If a company or salesperson wants to make the sale—and they will want to make the sale—they’ll find you a flawless LCD. But once you have a bad one in your hands, it may be too late for you. I haven’t yet bought a fourth laptop (and I’m still using an old 17” CRT for my desktop), so—for all I know—even CompUSA and WinBook may now refuse to exchange an LCD with one-to-five bad pixels.

13

My LG 19" LCD has one dead (green) pixel. Came with the computer but neither the manufacturer nor seller (Evesham) would replace for just one. Perhaps I should’ve made more fuss. Anyway, it bothered the hell out of me at first but you quickly tune out to it and I can’t even see it even against a totally black background unless I get much closer to the screen than normal. Maybe it’s the failing eyesight.

14

Yeah sadly I’m wondering if I should just hang on to it. Aside from the microscopic always red pixel, the thing is beautiful and much better then my old monitor. going back to my old one when I returned the first LCD was hell. I can’t get over $600 for a flawed product though.

15

Slight tangent, but related anecdote:

I purchased a $150 Nintendo DS (their new handheld with two screens) and I had three dead pixels on the lower screen. It wasn’t a huge deal, but like you, I wanted near perfection for a device I spent $150 bucks for. So I called Nintendo up and apparently they have a no-tolerance policy when it comes to dead-pixels, despite it being an unavoidable part of the manufacturing process. Needless to say, I was impressed. I even got to keep my current unit until the new one arrived, and they paid for everything, including shipping.

Siimilarly, Sony’s new handheld, the PSP, also suffers from the dead pixel problem (as it also has an LCD screen). However, they adhere to the industry standard of not replacing units with dead pixels. They’ll only entertain the notion of the amount exceed six. The problem is compounded by the fact that handhelds are often held mere inches from your face, as opposed to a computer monitor which generally sits at least a foot and a half away.

Anyways, World Eater, while I know how you feel, I think once the novelty and newness of the monitor wears off, I believe the one dead pixel will become less of problem. I know that I cease to notice a product’s defects once the initial excitedness (is that even a word?) of the product wears off.

The only way for this problem to be solved entirely, it seems, is if Nintendo were to start selling computer LCD screens :wink:

16

But who want a 256x192 pixel computer screen? (As has already been pointed out, probability of dead pixels increase rapidly with increased physical size and pixel count.)

17

It was a joke…

18

A big part of my last job was setting up large LCD displays for viewing medical images. We tried several manufacturers, and settled on Viewsonics. I’ve installed, and calibrated to rigorous standards, dozens of their 20" LCD’s at 1200x1600 resolution (we used them in portrait mode). I’ve never had a bad pixel, and every problem I had with any of their monitors was dealt with so effectively I would never consider another brand.

Take your’s back, then go buy a Viewsonic. You won’t be disappointed. Here is the one I’d recommend, based upon what you have now. It has a 700:1 contrast ratio (which is plenty), and a 16ms response time – great for full motion video.

BTW, any manufacturers or dealers out there, this thread is an example of how superior customer service pays off – multiple happy customers, willingly shilling for your product. Can’t buy that any other way than customer service.