Tomtrekkie
08-28-2003, 06:30 PM
So I finally had the Circuit City service person come to my house to look at my 4 month old 51swx20. primarily, I wanted him to check and adjust the color temperature. Reviews and discussions indicate this is always too high as delivered. I pointed out the color setting of 13 that I was using. I didn't say anything about red push, which I have not adjusted for yet (following widely discussed settings).
Anyway, he looked at the TV and said it looked like a good picture. He told me I should never use the 4:3 standard mode, though he did say that burn-in seemed to be more of a problem with the black bars as opposed to the grey that I had. He turned on the auto color mode, and hooked up a little test signal generator (color and grey bars) to the front panel composite input. He adjusted the color level up to 30 or so and when I commented that I thought the bars were blooming he backed off to about 20.
After that he unplugged his box and we returned to the dish and SR-t151 signals. The skin tones weren't glowing, but they sure looked like they have way too much makeup on, mostly dark red. Every time I commented about color and color temperature he talked about how each channel is different and the set needed to be adjusted for each of the different [bad] channels, if I wanted to bother.
And... That was it! He said he could not set color temperature -- that it was set at the factory along with other service settings. He indicated that he only adjusts settings when installing new hardware, like a new crt. He couldn't recommend anyone that would fine tune the set. He never looked at the service menu or the convergence screen. He only looked at the "sports" mode that my son left the set in (not the other 3 modes). He did adjust the tint slightly toward the green to reduce the red level.
Though I asked different ways, he offered no insights on the set, projection TV in general, or otherwise. He just kept saying that I had to compromise due to signal variation between channels and even program content.
So, when he left, I turned off auto color and backed off the color setting. Thinking again to my service plan, I guess "guaranteed good performance" is a relative term.
I don't regret the service plan I bought, but now I know better that "if it ain't REALLY broke, they won't fix it".
I think the set has a good picture. Like many of us, I want to see if it can be better. Maybe I'll give myself a Christmas present and find a good ISP tech between Chicago and Milwaukee (Waukegan).
As an aside, what partly triggered the service call was (both) my TV remotes would rarely work. The dish remote is RF and it was fine. When we finally realized that the Yamaha receiver remote was flaky too, we looked for an interfering signal. We turned around all the remotes that typically lay on an end table and the tv remote worked fine. The VCR remote got stuck "on". Batteries out and back in for the vcr remote and it was happy again. I never had a remote stuck transmitting before, and I've been using them since they just rotated thru the channels with a high-freq chime sound from a little remote (a motor turned the dial). Keys and other stuff worked too :-)
Anyway, he looked at the TV and said it looked like a good picture. He told me I should never use the 4:3 standard mode, though he did say that burn-in seemed to be more of a problem with the black bars as opposed to the grey that I had. He turned on the auto color mode, and hooked up a little test signal generator (color and grey bars) to the front panel composite input. He adjusted the color level up to 30 or so and when I commented that I thought the bars were blooming he backed off to about 20.
After that he unplugged his box and we returned to the dish and SR-t151 signals. The skin tones weren't glowing, but they sure looked like they have way too much makeup on, mostly dark red. Every time I commented about color and color temperature he talked about how each channel is different and the set needed to be adjusted for each of the different [bad] channels, if I wanted to bother.
And... That was it! He said he could not set color temperature -- that it was set at the factory along with other service settings. He indicated that he only adjusts settings when installing new hardware, like a new crt. He couldn't recommend anyone that would fine tune the set. He never looked at the service menu or the convergence screen. He only looked at the "sports" mode that my son left the set in (not the other 3 modes). He did adjust the tint slightly toward the green to reduce the red level.
Though I asked different ways, he offered no insights on the set, projection TV in general, or otherwise. He just kept saying that I had to compromise due to signal variation between channels and even program content.
So, when he left, I turned off auto color and backed off the color setting. Thinking again to my service plan, I guess "guaranteed good performance" is a relative term.
I don't regret the service plan I bought, but now I know better that "if it ain't REALLY broke, they won't fix it".
I think the set has a good picture. Like many of us, I want to see if it can be better. Maybe I'll give myself a Christmas present and find a good ISP tech between Chicago and Milwaukee (Waukegan).
As an aside, what partly triggered the service call was (both) my TV remotes would rarely work. The dish remote is RF and it was fine. When we finally realized that the Yamaha receiver remote was flaky too, we looked for an interfering signal. We turned around all the remotes that typically lay on an end table and the tv remote worked fine. The VCR remote got stuck "on". Batteries out and back in for the vcr remote and it was happy again. I never had a remote stuck transmitting before, and I've been using them since they just rotated thru the channels with a high-freq chime sound from a little remote (a motor turned the dial). Keys and other stuff worked too :-)
