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Samsung Announces Zero Dead Pixel Policy
Kez writes "A result for the consumer as Samsung declares any TFT that they sell from today onwards should be guaranteed dead pixel free. Until now, purchasing a TFT has been a gamble, given that dead pixels, while extremely annoying, did not necessarily entitle the consumer to a replacement monitor. Unfortunately, anybody who bought a Samsung TFT before today is not covered by the new policy." Update: 01/01 19:49 GMT by M : The new policy only applies in S. Korea. Suck.
This link here is to Samsungs page on dead pixel policy (last updated 2004-06-18) and has no mention of this "new" policy. It still stands that they won't replace an in warranty monitor as follows:
I have to agree with you here...
In the UK atleast and if you buy online we have a legal right to return any bought product before 14? days have passed with no questions asked, as long as its still worth selling.
I have a 20" HP LCD which has no dead pixels... 1600x1200 of pure sexyness..
But I'd feel robbed if I thought I'd paid the money for that and got more than say 3 dead pixels in conspicuous places.
I laugh at Sony's PSP dead pixel policy and honour Nintendo's 0 tolerance offer...
woopy do how many pixels there are on a monitor -- it does not give companies the right to sell faulty products. If they cant sell them perfect they shouldnt be selling them at all.
In the uk I think I can legally return any product by law if I'm not happy with what I bought... but I also think you *need* to kick up the shit in the showroom you bought it from to do so. (trading standards would come down on them like a ton of bricks) And bad publicity usually makes any store stand down.
Rather than making it up to the consumer to put their own money up front to ensure satisfaction.. I believe it should be law that you recieve (for the same price) a product in the same condition someone else could. Because if I can get a TFT with no dead pixels... why the hell should I buy another that might?
There are several classes for TFT displays which precisely state how many defective pixels the display may have. The ISO standard for this is 13406-2. Most displays sold today do not belong to the no-dead-pixel-at-all class, so customers cannot whine. It usually clearly states on the box somewhere with the other technical data to which class a certain modell belongs.
So no unfair business tactics at all.
The zero dead pixel policy is currently only available in Korea.
Apple's policy is not on the public record, but it can best be summed up by "the more annoying the pixels, the more likely it is to be considered unacceptable". (I've read the policy, it's quite reasonable) You have to take a display into an Apple service center for the tech to reference the policy to determine if the display is considered defective. This is probably to take the burdon off Apple where customers might try to stretch the wording of a quality policy beyond reason. They may say yes or no to a description given to them over the phone, but I haven't tried that. But for certain, Apple does not have a zero-dead-pixel policy.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Display size in real units is not a matter of "UI hack", it's a system setting in X on Linux. Any recent Qt or Gtk linux GUI application should respect it at the toolkit level (provided you're not doing anything really wierd like deliberately not using "new" (antialiased etc.) Xft font rendering) - if they get it wrong, it's a bug, so report it!
Actually, the Display size is usually autodetected from DPMS these days (check output of xdpyinfo command for DPI information).
However, if DPMS is wrong (can happen, particularly on cheap monitors), or you just want to fiddle, in your X config file, you put e.g.
DisplaySize 400 300
Where 400 and 300 are the X and Y screen dimensions in mm in the relevant "Monitor" section of the file. Yes, this is documented in the f-ing manual, but hey.
Also, in GIMP (2.2) Display settings, I note that "Get Monitor Resolution" has a "from windowing system" option, you don't need to calibrate the GIMP separately from the system wide setting if you've got the system-wide setting right!