Television line “bowing”
Posted: September 25, 2004 10:33 am
Back in June, my family replaced an old RCA that decided to hit the fritz after 10 years of giving us enjoyment. Before we replaced it, we painted and re-arranged the den to a new configuration to give the room some change. My dad and my brother went and purchased a Sony KV-27FS120 as well as some component cables to take advantage of the inputs for a DVD player. I couldn’t say how much I was excited when the “new” room began to take shape. We put the wall unit on a different wall and set up a 4 speaker stereo system (2 in front, 2 in back. “Fake” surround if you will). When we turned the TV on and set the picture settings to our preferences, we loved the set. The picture was awesome… Or was it?
After a few video game plays on the Nintendo Gamecube Game Boy Player accessory, I picked something up. A huge, annoying “flaw” that would become my enemy. Any horizontal lines that appear a certain distance form the top or the bottom of the picture, appeared curved or wavy. I flipped through channels that displayed lines or crawls at the bottom of the screen, and watched the crawls bend on the trip through the picture instead of taking a clean, straight trip. Needless to say, this was a huge let down after two weeks of looking forward to a new entertainment system.
So I showed this discovery to the family. They saw it and we eventually went and exchanged the set with the same model at the place we bought it. While everyone in my family says its “better” (or has just given up), I sure has heck don’t. It’s exactly the same and has been driving me crazy for almost four months. Say I have not life or call me a perfectionist, but I just can’t seem to find enjoyment from the set. I’ve played through the Mega Man Anniversary Collection (a compilation of many classic side-scrolling games that display numerous horizontal lines), and while I beat all the games, I didn’t really enjoy them to the full degree. My eyes were fixed on the defects through all 8 titles. Every time someone in the house turns on the Weather Channel or a news station, my eyes are always fixed on the lines, while everyone else seems to have forgotten about it. When I point it out to someone, they just tell me it’s no big deal or to just ignore it. Even through the Olympics, every time the results came up, my eyes were fixed on the lines that were bowing up. I went on Sony’s tech support, and there was absolutely no mention of this in the FAQs.
I’m not about to put any blame here solely on Sony. When walking down a TV isle in Wal-Mart, Best Buy, etc. I notice that all the sets (various brands) there are doing the same thing! Some are even 5 times worse!
The main point here is to ask if anyone else has purchased a set recently and had this problem. I just don’t get how this could slip by so many engineers and how so many customers are accepting it. I mean, there are so many features on the set that ensure the picture quality is as perfect as possible, so for it to do something like this was so unexpected and mind boggling to say the least. Are they saying if we don’t spend thousands on plasma and/or high-def we have absolutely no care for what the picture looks like? How in the name of blue blazes was there not a massive recall? I refuse to label myself “picky” of anything of that nature, because this is sure a highly noticeable defect and by no means a minor thing only a tech could pick up.
After a few video game plays on the Nintendo Gamecube Game Boy Player accessory, I picked something up. A huge, annoying “flaw” that would become my enemy. Any horizontal lines that appear a certain distance form the top or the bottom of the picture, appeared curved or wavy. I flipped through channels that displayed lines or crawls at the bottom of the screen, and watched the crawls bend on the trip through the picture instead of taking a clean, straight trip. Needless to say, this was a huge let down after two weeks of looking forward to a new entertainment system.
So I showed this discovery to the family. They saw it and we eventually went and exchanged the set with the same model at the place we bought it. While everyone in my family says its “better” (or has just given up), I sure has heck don’t. It’s exactly the same and has been driving me crazy for almost four months. Say I have not life or call me a perfectionist, but I just can’t seem to find enjoyment from the set. I’ve played through the Mega Man Anniversary Collection (a compilation of many classic side-scrolling games that display numerous horizontal lines), and while I beat all the games, I didn’t really enjoy them to the full degree. My eyes were fixed on the defects through all 8 titles. Every time someone in the house turns on the Weather Channel or a news station, my eyes are always fixed on the lines, while everyone else seems to have forgotten about it. When I point it out to someone, they just tell me it’s no big deal or to just ignore it. Even through the Olympics, every time the results came up, my eyes were fixed on the lines that were bowing up. I went on Sony’s tech support, and there was absolutely no mention of this in the FAQs.
I’m not about to put any blame here solely on Sony. When walking down a TV isle in Wal-Mart, Best Buy, etc. I notice that all the sets (various brands) there are doing the same thing! Some are even 5 times worse!
The main point here is to ask if anyone else has purchased a set recently and had this problem. I just don’t get how this could slip by so many engineers and how so many customers are accepting it. I mean, there are so many features on the set that ensure the picture quality is as perfect as possible, so for it to do something like this was so unexpected and mind boggling to say the least. Are they saying if we don’t spend thousands on plasma and/or high-def we have absolutely no care for what the picture looks like? How in the name of blue blazes was there not a massive recall? I refuse to label myself “picky” of anything of that nature, because this is sure a highly noticeable defect and by no means a minor thing only a tech could pick up.
