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January 21st, 2006 06:00

LCD Question - Odd diagonal gradient or uneven lighting

I have been in contact with support for some time now. Long story short, my original screen on my Inspiron 9100 had some defects and I thought I'd have them fix it under warranty. They sent me 3 LCD panels and I installed each one and each time they were refurbished LCD screens and all had problems greater than that of my original screen! So finally I sent the whole laptop in and they replaced the screen with LCD #4. I got it back and this screen is very close to good but still not quite up to snuff.

It has what many of the others had... A strange diagonal gradient when you look at a black or dark screen. It's hard to describe. It looks like uneven backlighting but I don't think that is it. It is always brighter in the lower right corner and darker in the upper left corner. If I watch a dark movie scene, for example, and I move my head just to the right of dead center, the upper left corner looks kind of inverted. But if I move my head the other way I don't get that same effect. Needless to say it's a bit annoying.

I am having troubles researching this strange phenomena and I don't know what to call it. It's hard enough to explain. My original screen was very even and I could look at it from side to side horizontally both ways at reasonable angles without this issue. One of the screens Dell sent me did not have this problem and was very evenly lit and symmetrical but had issues with dead pixels. I feel like I can't win. :-/

Here's a picture of one of the screens with this problem:
http://ip.gliebetronics.com:800/dell/After_with_black_full_screen.JPG

Does anybody have any technical explanation as to what this is? Any ideas on how to get around to getting a nice even screen again? Or am I being way too unrealistic? You'd think that a $600 LCD screen would be of higher quality.

Thanks in advance.
-Dan

2.9K Posts

January 21st, 2006 09:00

Gliebetronics,
I believe theyre replacing the wrong component.  Most likely, the problem is not in the LCD screen. I assume, of course, that you have moved the Inspiron to numerous locations to see if your immediate environment has an RFI or EMI problem. May  be an internal design flaw. My first inclination would be that those powerul permanent magnets on the hard drive stepper mechanism are not properly shielded from video circuitry inductors.  That could explain the dark upper left quadrant of your screen.   Basic test of this theory would be to remove the hard drive. Boot from CD and see if problem remains.  Likewise, you might remove the CD/DVD rom drive from its bay and see what happens.  Something is degrading the pixel intensity (brightness if you will) in the upper left quadrant of your screen.  Something is affecting the either the main circuit board or screen logic board for sure if the same problem exists with several screens.  Does this problem occur on external CRT and LCD external monitors?  If not, then it is the screens that are defective after all.
Tony
 

Message Edited by tgsmith on 01-21-2006 06:22 AM

January 21st, 2006 15:00

I have moved it around a few times and it has no effect. I really don't think this is a magnetic or EMI problem. CRT's are affected by magnets but LCD's are not. I had a screen that did not have this problem in the same computer in the same enviornment in the same position before. Nothing has changed. If I connect external monitors to my laptop I see no problems. Also, because the diagonal gradient ... thing.. moves around when I move my head side to side, that tells me it's the LCD.

If you're interested, try turning out the lights, and put up a full screen image of nothing but black on your screen. Then look at it straight on like normal and move your head side to side. Maybe someone out there will see what I see. Like in the picture link above.

Message Edited by gliebetronics on 01-21-2006 09:27 AM

2.9K Posts

January 21st, 2006 21:00

Gliebetronics,

Yep.  Sounds and looks like that thing is warped to me.  Or they twisted the twisted nematic liquid crystals too much in that part of the screen.  Since the problem has been evident on several screens, it must be a manufacturing defect in the twisted nematic crystal elements as described here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LCD  or the other elements of the LCD screen.

Tony

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