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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.
"Waiter, there's a dead pixel in my soup!"
"Terribly sorry sir."
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Why aren't the 1600x1200 flat panel LCD monitors more popular? Why do people put up with the crappy 1280x1024 resolution with a 20" monitor? Laptops have better resolution than most desktops these days. Very strange.
Logical step are ...
...
1) they raise the price of samsung monitor
2) they wait inspection before applying Samsung sticker to monitor and send those that fail to other brand
I am a REAL American from Canada , not a wanna-be from the country , self called "last remaining superpower" "of America
Lots of people notice them, and when they complain, they are told that 1 or 2 is an acceptable number due to the manufacturing process.
Hopefully Samsung's actions will set a standard for other's to follow.
I can't seem to find a samsung source that says this? But it is very very nice, and about time, I think! Nowhere else do you buy products that are slightly defect (and still very expensive!)...
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
Why anyone would ever actually believe that you couldn't return an LCD (or laptop) with a dead pixel. This is a manufacturing defect, plain and simple. Every customer expects there will be NO dead pixels, so my guess is that proving to a court of law that a dead pixel is a de facto breach of various implied warranties (and probably express warranties that come with the unit as well) would not be difficult.
Any decent credit card will likely supply the consumer with enough tools to reject a charge for such an item, if refused. Further, if pushed, I sincerely doubt any company would believe that they could win in a case where they're trying to foist an obviously defective monitor on someone by claiming that the defect is really bad enough to be a defect. Right. Most states provide a damages multiplier for unfair business practices such as this. This means if push actually did come to shove and you had to go to small claims court, you'd get double or triple your money back.
My guess? Samsung realizes the above to be true, and is trying to play this to their advantage.
Given that there's undoubtedly still going to be a few monitors produced with dead pixels, are they going to supply thier otherwise worthless screens to other vendors for sale at a discount? And then would the consumer ever see these savings?
Further - how hard will it be for them to weasel out of the "no dead pixel" policy? After all, should something happen during shipping or in the hands of the retailer, are they going to let themselves be held responsible for damage that they may or may not have had anything to do with?
Perhaps I'm being overly skeptical on the last part there, but questions are made to be asked, after all.
P.S. does anyone else think op is trying to bring that forum down...
origin of the news, have no idea how trustworthy it is: http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200412 /200412300018.html
This Sig is removed due to factual inaccuracy
> most customers probably wont even notice 1 or 2 dead pixels..happy 2005
Sorry, but that's just not true. "dead" pixels do one of two things. They either stick open or stick closed. The end result is that you have a dot on the screen that either is very obviously dark when the surrounding material is light, or vice-versa.
While this isn't terribly noticible when playing movies or video games, it is quite noticible when using most traditional 2D desktop apps. A dark pixel in the middle of your otherwise mostly white word-processing session becomes obvious.
Case-in-point is the support wires in Sony Trinitron monitors. Very, very fine horizontal lines at the 1/3 and 2/3 levels on the screen are used to hold a mesh in place which gives the Trinitron series a great display. Every Trinitron style screen I've ever sold, I got asked, immediately, what the story was with the lines. Most customers balked somewhat, but all eventually agreed to live with it.
Dead pixels are, in fact, defects. I don't intend to purchase a defective product out of the box. A product should be free of manufacturing faults for the period of its warranty, or be replaced/repaired. Cosmetic damage to say a bezel, or a power cord is trivial to ignore, but a dead pixel is a flaw in the display's ability to display accurately what it's told to.
As such, I will never buy a laptop or LCD without being allowed to first verify its display is without flaw. A retailer who refuses to allow me to confirm the proper functioning of the device before purchase/departure is a retailer who loses my business. Period.
"Oh no... he found the
Although we're talking about slightly different technology here, I've got a Samsung DLP TV. Although they haven't stated it in writing as such, from what I can gather they've been extremely good to people who have experienced "dead pixels" on their DLP sets. I haven't had any problems at all with mine (find wood, knock, repeat), but I know some people who have had the "light engines" in their sets replaced by Samsung due to dead pixels. With getting fixed pixel technology off the ground, Samsung has been reasonably consumer friendly. It doesn't suprise me that they're taking the high road here as a differentiator from their competition.
Sony on the other hand has been very stingy with their LCD sets as far as dead pixels go. Apparantly they find some number of dead pixels to be acceptable. I don't know what the threshold is, but I know that LCD sets have a reputation for dead pixels and that Sony hasn't been particularly good about getting it resolved.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
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 remember that Apple has a dead pixel policy many years ago for the early powerbooks that also would not replace units with only a few dead pixels on the LCD displays. Some 133t individuals figured out how to patch the SCSI/HD driver with some code to fake some (more) bad pixels. Since it was in the HD driver, it ran even if you booted from a floppy. I think they called this the "warranty manager" or something witty like that.
...and you see that in other areas as well, e.g. CPUs. Those who pass the most rigorous stability tests become server chips, the others may (unless scrap) be sold as desktops. Or binned in some other fashion.
I mean, for many uses an LCD with a dead pixel or five is completely acceptable. For others it is not. I very much doubt they'll throw away a screen with a single dead pixel. It has simply too much value.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Yes -- look for dead pixels on a white background, then change the background color to black and look for pixels that are stuck on. The latter part may be easier if you try several backgrounds with different solid colors.
What the anonymous coward said about a checkerboard does not make sense to me -- how is it easier to look for dead pixels when every other pixel is off? (And same logic applies to pixels stuck on.) However, his method is good for auto-adjusting LCD color, which is another discussion.
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.
In general, when shopping for an LCD monitor, look for low power-consumption, small screen-pitch (less than or equal to 0.26), and at least a three-year warranty.
But before you buy a Samsung LCD monitor, get your hands on the repair manual (PDFs can be found if you are good at using Google). In the parts diagram, ensure that the LCD screen and the screen controller circuit-board are SHOWN separately and can therefore be PURCHASED separately.
I am stuck with a Samsung TFT 770 whose screen is perfect but the screen-controller board has failed. They are considered by Samsung to be ONE part, although the LCD screen is worth over $600 and the screen-controller is likely worth $15.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
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
Whatever. Philips have been offering a zero dead pixel guarantee on all their DVI monitors for years. They only cost $20 - $50 more than the cheapo analogue ones and here in NZ they also come with a 3 year on site warranty.
I'd consider that wasteful. I'd be happy to buy a monitor with say 10 dead pixels at halfprice or so.
Recently, here in India the LCD of my laptop (bought in the US) went bust. HP replaced it for about US$350 (it was out of warranty), and the replacement has a pixel that's permanently red. Initially I found that annoying but now I don't even notice it. Very possibly they knew it was defective and that's why it was relatively cheap: I believe replacing a laptop screen costs at least $1000 in the US (and this one is a very good 1400x1050 15.3" screen), and that's not counting labour, I remember being told (by CompUSA, I think) that it costs $200 just to get someone to open the laptop and look at it if it's out of warranty.
If I'm right and it was cheap for that reason, I don't see why they can't formalise the process and sell "defective" monitors cheap. There could be quite a demand.
Uhh.. thanks. I'd never noticed those lines until now. Crap.
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