blurred focus on lcd monitor

[Charlie Bress]

A friend called complaining that his out of warranty eMachines monitor
(Gateway) has developed an intermittant blured display. I have not seen it
yet.
While we spoke on the phone it went from blurry to sharp and back a couple
of times.

It seems to me that the problem must be in the monitor itself and not in the
PC'ss video.

Is this related to something that is reasonably repairable or is this
monitor now a throw away?

I can handle CRT based tv and on occasion monitors , but no experience with
LCD displays.

Could this be caused by a degrading lamp?

Varying brightness and contrast had no effect on sharpness.

Charlie

 

[Meat Plow]

A friend called complaining that his out of warranty eMachines monitor
(Gateway) has developed an intermittant blured display. I have not seen it
yet.
While we spoke on the phone it went from blurry to sharp and back a couple
of times.

It seems to me that the problem must be in the monitor itself and not in the
PC'ss video.

Is this related to something that is reasonably repairable or is this
monitor now a throw away?

I can handle CRT based tv and on occasion monitors , but no experience with
LCD displays.

Could this be caused by a degrading lamp?

Varying brightness and contrast had no effect on sharpness.

Charlie

Lamps just illuminate they have no bearing on the focus. I would have your
friend try the monitor on another PC if possible.

 

[Jerry G.]

A soft looking picture would not be the back plane lamps. Weak back
plane lamps will show a dim picture, or shading defects in the
luminocity of the picture.

Check to make sure that the computer's display card is always in the
native mode for the monitor. Make sure that the monitor's auto sync
has been performed while the computer's display card is set up to the
native mode of the monitor. These are most common causes for an LCD
monitor appearing to look like it has soft focus.

As for any defects, it is possible that there is a fault with the
signal processing in the monitor. There are a number of complex tasks
that are performed in the functioning of the way that the monitor
processes the image to the screen. This type of fault is something
that you would not be able to service without swapping boards to make
it function properly. At this point, the monitor would not be cost
effective to service.


Jerry G.
======

 

[William Sommerwerck]

Check to make sure that the computer's display card is always
in the native mode for the monitor.

More precisely, the "native resolution".

If the display's physical resolution is (for example) 1024 x 768, the card
should be set to that. Many monitors can handle non-native-resolution
signals, but the result is sometimes quite awful-looking.

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

A friend called complaining that his out of warranty eMachines monitor
(Gateway) has developed an intermittant blured display. I have not seen it
yet.

Smeared pixels can be anything from A/D jitter to crappy video cables.
Most commonly video cables.

While we spoke on the phone it went from blurry to sharp and back a couple
of times.

Loose cable connector? Extension cable? KVM switch box? Lots of
ways to create this problem.

It seems to me that the problem must be in the monitor itself and not in the
PC'ss video.

Assumption, the mother of all screwups. Bring a laptop or another
machine that has an external video connector and TEST the LCD monitor.

Is this related to something that is reasonably repairable or is this
monitor now a throw away?

No. I fixed one LCD with otto focus problems by replacing the video
cable.

I can handle CRT based tv and on occasion monitors , but no experience with
LCD displays.

Learn by destroying. They're easier to work with.

Could this be caused by a degrading lamp?

No. That would just cause a dim image, not a focus problem.