What happened to my plasma!!??

[JerseyDevil]

OK i should start from the top. Bought the panasonic th-42px60u its a great tv blah blah blah. i did not buy a REAL surge protector YET. Well i live in north jersey and we had a bad storm the other day. and just my luck i left my tv on and fell asleep watching the game. at 2am i heard lightning pretty loud it even woke me up! i woke up and a moment later i saw my tv show a messed up image for about 2-3 seconds. it was like the took the top 3/4 of the image and pushed it to the left. the picture went back to normal after this. it was just for a very short time. knowing i did not have a good surge protector i was going crazy. wondering if any damage had been done. but when the surge (if it even was a surge) did happen i still had a cheapo 10-15 dollar one there. it wasnt in the wall directly. so i took the power plug out of the tv (thanked god that it was ok) and went back to sleep.

next day i turn it on and everything seems normal. but upon further inspection i see that if you look carefully you see the resolution is not as super fine as it was before. now this may be my eyes playing tricks on me. i dont THINK it has the POP it used to have. is this possible for a plasma to be damaged in this way? im starting to see the pixels when i see a thin line of a dark color go across a light background. im really afraid about this. just got the tv in late april. the TV is still great but to us videophiles you are able to see these little pixels. but the thing is im not 100% sure if they were there before. it may be just me looking at the image after the surge. im so pissed at myself. of course now i have a 100 buck monster protector.

and of course i have to say what my setup is. Cablevision cable going into Scientific Atlanta 8300HD going to the tv via HDMI.

anyone know if this is possible with a surge on a (panny) plasma? anyway to test the image quality to see if its still 100%? of course this test if there is one would have to be subjective but i think i can tell. i HOPE its the cable box though if anything. i would just have cablevision replace it.

[PINKTULIPS7]

Dude don't get nervous...get a name brand power cond. not Monster brand!!Unplug u'r Plasma from wall outlet for 1/2 an hour,plug it in then reset it!!also check the conecting cable....I honestly don't think surge was a culprit here..good luck... :D :D :D

[RicheyPoor]

[QUOTE=JerseyDevil]OK i should start from the top. Bought the panasonic th-42px60u its a great tv blah blah blah. i did not buy a REAL surge protector YET. Well i live in north jersey and we had a bad storm the other day. and just my luck i left my tv on and fell asleep watching the game. at 2am i heard lightning pretty loud it even woke me up! i woke up and a moment later i saw my tv show a messed up image for about 2-3 seconds. it was like the took the top 3/4 of the image and pushed it to the left. the picture went back to normal after this. it was just for a very short time. knowing i did not have a good surge protector i was going crazy. wondering if any damage had been done. but when the surge (if it even was a surge) did happen i still had a cheapo 10-15 dollar one there. it wasnt in the wall directly. so i took the power plug out of the tv (thanked god that it was ok) and went back to sleep.

next day i turn it on and everything seems normal. but upon further inspection i see that if you look carefully you see the resolution is not as super fine as it was before. now this may be my eyes playing tricks on me. i dont THINK it has the POP it used to have. is this possible for a plasma to be damaged in this way? im starting to see the pixels when i see a thin line of a dark color go across a light background. im really afraid about this. just got the tv in late april. the TV is still great but to us videophiles you are able to see these little pixels. but the thing is im not 100% sure if they were there before. it may be just me looking at the image after the surge. im so pissed at myself. of course now i have a 100 buck monster protector.

and of course i have to say what my setup is. Cablevision cable going into Scientific Atlanta 8300HD going to the tv via HDMI.

anyone know if this is possible with a surge on a (panny) plasma? anyway to test the image quality to see if its still 100%? of course this test if there is one would have to be subjective but i think i can tell. i HOPE its the cable box though if anything. i would just have cablevision replace it.[/QUOTE]Hi JD,
Let’s examine this as scientifically as possible...
A power surge can enter the set in two ways, the RF (antenna) input or the power cord. To enter the TV any other way (HDMI, component cables, etc) it would have to pass through another piece of equipment first. If that happens the equipment closer to the source will almost always (involuntarily perhaps) give up its own life to save your TV.

If the power line was the input path (by far the more common entry point) the power supply would be damaged, and like the external components mentioned earlier, would usually protect the rest of the set by politely blowing up and breaking the path to the rest of the TV’s circuitry. Your symptoms don't sound like power supply problems (at least not the kind that lighting causes) so lets move on... If the antenna/cable input was the path your tuner would be the first thing damaged. Like the power supply the damage almost always ends there. The problems you're describing don't sound like tuner problems either, in fact its unlikely you even have a cable connected to your RF input because of your STB. It would be nearly impossible for the lighting to pass through the STB and damage the TV without doing severe damage to the STB itself.

Other things to consider…
If your neighborhood has underground wiring for cable and/or electric you have little to worry about. When lighting strikes near a telephone pole it can induce a huge pulse into the electrical wiring which travels along the power lines, potentially damaging anything in its path, until it eventually dissipates. To my knowledge this will not happen if the lighting strikes near underground wiring. Granted the power feed to anyone's home is above ground at some point but the further away from your house the above ground wiring is the better your chances that the strike will dissipate before it gets to you.

I'm guessing that most of your problems are caused by your imagination playing tricks, as anyone’s might who just dropped 2.5k on a new TV. The scrambled picture might have just been the lighting interfering with the cable transmission. One thing I'm sure of is that lighting cannot make your pixels larger and I can't think of anything related to a lighting strike that would reduce the image quality just enough to eliminate the POP without manifesting itself in more sinister ways, lighting is just not that subtle.

In the unlikely event that something was damaged, it will surely show itself again before your year warranty is up. I’d relax, I don’t think the lighting did anything to your TV.

P.S. I spent twenty years fixing TV’s so I saw my share of lighting damage. Good luck.

[necrolop]

I had a surge of some sort that I traced to my VCR. The power somehow was able to crossover to the video output of my VCR, travel to my reciever then into every unit plugged into it.

The result was a dead VCR that was smoking, a Dead PS2, a surround receiver with no video input or output capabilities. dead video inputs on my Sony Wega, and no S-video on my Satellite receiver. It was pretty horrific.

As far as your situation, I think you would get something or nothing, either still works or doesnt. But Im not one to say. But a good restart sounds like it couldnt hurt.

[JerseyDevil]

i am 100% sure now. the full PQ, resolution-wise, is not there.

[RicheyPoor]

[QUOTE=JerseyDevil]i am 100% sure now. the full PQ, resolution-wise, is not there.[/QUOTE]Are you sure it's not your STB?

[JerseyDevil]

aaaaaaaaah i just called panasonic and i told them my story. they said that all damage from surges were really bad. lines across screens, smoking. things like that. idk. my gut feeling tells me its bad now. now im not 100% again. later ill have to look really closly at my DVI to HDMI signal on the TV. and unplug and STB and cables and try again. hope the TV is good. so far everyone is saying its fine and i hope it is. thanks all for your help.

edit - but the guy NEVER said that what i think may have happened is impossible... im afraid it may ge worse later.


ppphhhh i dont know what to think anymore. i wish i left the TV off that night but ill have to try those tests last on. see if its really clear.

[fisheggs]

If your TV had been off, it would still have been connected to your power source, unless you are in the habit of unplugging the TV every time you quit watching. Any thoughts as to this is just normal break in period changes?

[scherer326]

who is your cable provider?

did you fix the situation yet. If so, how.

[michaelingp]

[QUOTE=JerseyDevil]i am 100% sure now. the full PQ, resolution-wise, is not there.[/QUOTE]
I can see the PQ suffering, but I can't see how you describe it as "resolution-wise". The resolution is built into the hardware--it can't change if lightning blasted the set through the wall. Could it be as simple as the aspect is set wrong, say to one of the stretch modes? Or the set reverted to its default settings? A lot of stuff in the set, like the scaler, is digital, so I can't see lightning scrambling the logic.

It's very difficult to imagine a problem this subtle caused by lightning, particularly since you have a surge protector, even if it's not the surge protector of your dreams. Are we to believe the lighting strike was exactly the wrong amount: more surge than the cheapo surge protector provided, but not enough to completely fry either the surge protector or something dramatic in the TV?

I'd say you're either obsessing about nothing, or you are one unlucky dude!

[Felgar]

Hmmm... Actually, I think you may not be crazy. My brother got my 42" panel after I bought a 50" panel a few months back. Now I spent a lot of time tweaking my 42" so it was set very good when I gave it to him. About a week later he mentioned that he tried to hook up a VGA signal into the component input but he couldn't get it working - said that the picture 1st went all green then started going crazy. I told him no worries - just didn't have the component vs VGA setting set, and then the TV lost sync. But then he also started complaining that faces appeared completely messed up - like a computer monitor looks with just 256 colors. I told him he was nuts until I actually went to see for myself....

Turned out there was a "black level extension" setting in the advanced menu that was set to +8, which is wierd because the slider bar in the menu only goes to +4. So there's no way he manually adjusted it to +8. It seems to me that the TV circuitry got confused and changed the setting inadvertantly. I set it back to 0 in the menu and it went back to perfect.

So bottom line, when the screen was appearing distorted maybe some important settings got corrupted in the TV memory. My advice is to look into a way to fully reset the entire TV along with every possible setting, back to factory defaults. Simply unpligging it for 30 mins I don't think will do it. But you'll know when all the Picture settings and the clock go back to default. Edit: I should say that it seems impossible to me that the set was physically damaged - so resetting to default should fix it.

[Elemental1]

[QUOTE=Felgar]Hmmm... Actually, I think you may not be crazy. My brother got my 42" panel after I bought a 50" panel a few months back. Now I spent a lot of time tweaking my 42" so it was set very good when I gave it to him. About a week later he mentioned that he tried to hook up a VGA signal into the component input but he couldn't get it working - said that the picture 1st went all green then started going crazy. I told him no worries - just didn't have the component vs VGA setting set, and then the TV lost sync. But then he also started complaining that faces appeared completely messed up - like a computer monitor looks with just 256 colors. I told him he was nuts until I actually went to see for myself....

Turned out there was a "black level extension" setting in the advanced menu that was set to +8, which is wierd because the slider bar in the menu only goes to +4. So there's no way he manually adjusted it to +8. It seems to me that the TV circuitry got confused and changed the setting inadvertantly. I set it back to 0 in the menu and it went back to perfect.

So bottom line, when the screen was appearing distorted maybe some important settings got corrupted in the TV memory. My advice is to look into a way to fully reset the entire TV along with every possible setting, back to factory defaults. Simply unpligging it for 30 mins I don't think will do it. But you'll know when all the Picture settings and the clock go back to default. Edit: I should say that it seems impossible to me that the set was physically damaged - so resetting to default should fix it.[/QUOTE]

Hmm...I wonder if that was what happened to me when I was loosing my mind hooking up VGA. :eek:

[JerseyDevil]

sup all. man this board rules. lots of pros here. you guysknow what you are doing.

a hunch tells me its a scaler issue. and thats IF anything has happened. i can never be too sure. i mean before im pretty sure i didnt see these little pixels in this guys tie. and now when i look at it, its not as "perfect". diagonal lines have a TAD more "steps" in them.

i hope im crazy and i dont have to worry about this whole thing. i have to go to the store and check out one there. change teh settings to the way i have them and see how it goes. the cable box could have a slight problem too. then again it could all be in my head but i dont really know about that. even has the same thing.

thank you all so much for your input. i take each post seriously so thank you!!!

i dont want to waste anyones time anymore. after i do what i can (check out the store, make sure the settings are right which i did already) im going to just ignore what is going on in my head and enjoy my tv! if i really start to see this little things come up again then ill find something to do about it. blu-ray/hd dvd can be a test when available.

[scherer326]

how do you reset the tv to default (42px60u)

[kbp]

Do DVDs also have a noticeable drop in PQ? If not, I’m wondering if your STB rebooted and/or somehow had it’s output resolution changed to 480i or 480p due to power outage or a forced update. Have you checked the STBs output settings?

[Felgar]

Good point kbp...

[JerseyDevil]

kbp that is a very good point indeed but that was hte first thing i checked. nothing restarted. just a surge. and like i said, i could be crazy and all is fine. i even hit the recall button on the TV and it shows its still 1080i or 720p. i dont wanna waste anyone elses time. id feel badif this is all in my head and all you are trying to help but i cant really be sure if its fine or its diff. i could finally be getting usd to the TV and now i see that its not perfect (no TV is)

[JerseyDevil]

case closed - my plasma is fine. BUT, i wasnt crazy!!! its just that the shows i started to watch are nowhere near as clear as the ones i was watching when i first got it. I saw a show on INHD about hummers and i saw it was back to life-like images. and some tennis matches i was watching, the lines were so bad! it wasnt the TV though. but now as i watch them its still terrible so it was something on their end. you can see the jaggies in the lines from far away so after a surge if you see this, it makes you worry. but all is well. thank you all for your ideas!!! i still learned something!!!

[ddz]

FYI - My buddy had a lightning strike about 200 yards from his home and started seeing weird stuff on his TVs, both plasma and rpcrt. From his description of the intermittent problems I suggested he give Comcast a call before suspecting his TVs. He was glad he called because Comcast told him BOTH his Comcast boxes were problematic. They replaced both, did some re-wiring under his house, boosted signals with an amp, and VOILA - the best reception he's ever had. He's ecstatic.

Do yourself a favor and spend the time to have your cable provider check things out on their stuff before you suspect your baby....

[kevin49er]

I'm inclined to agree with they guy that repaired TVs for 20+ years.

Lighting would in no way change the way pixels are laid out on the glass... nor make them bigger or smaller. If lightning had affected the glass, it would probably have blown the TV up... or at least left a burn mark in the glass.

Also, you said you have a $10-15 Surge Protector in place... certainly that would show signs of a lightning strike or a surge. It would be the first to go... mainly it would blow, and if it couldn't disipate all the surge it would pass on to things you have plugged in to it. Is the TV the only thing you have plugged into it? What is your setup like? Have you had any issues with other electric appliances in your house? (possibly those closest to the breaker panel as your house is wired?)

Have you checked the TV to see if all of your settings are where you set them?

I do have to say though that the picture shift you mentioned seems like the kind of interference lightning causes. Did the picture freeze up before the shift? or did it just shift? Did it freeze when it shifted? (hint... I'm thinking digital signal here)

Your mind might just be tricking you... but there is always a chance something strange happened, however unlikely...

[TempesTrip]

First post here and have been a long time reader of the boards becuase obviously a lot of pro's here. Any who i had a similar situation here in nyc the other night and after reading this i'm glad to say that i am not worried about any type of surge on my tv but will be buying a high quality surge protector very soon. Thanks to everyone for their input on the issue. Keep it up guys, those of us who aren't that well educated on the issue do appreciate your input/help.