bug inside lcd screen quotation

Argh, help! I’ve got a living bug crawling around inside my LCD computer monitor! It’s actually walking around which is quite annoying. I’ve no idea how it got in there but it’s small enough to have fit through the small holes at the back of the monitor.

On the bright side, there only seems to be one so they won’t be making babies in there any time soon. Has anyone ever had bugs inside their monitors and how did they get rid of them? The advice I’ve had so far is to wait for them to die and hope that they die off screen or somewhere where it won’t affect the picture too much.

Update (July 2010): Incredibly, this article has had 10,000 hits since it’s been published (most of them being in July each year which seems to be peak season). Please read the comments below for tips and discussion. In my case, I found that the bug disappeared after a few days providing that you don’t squish it or anything. You don’t need to do anything elaborate like taking your screen apart (and would not be advised to). Please do drop a comment below and let us know what’s working for you.  – Ken

Picture this. You’re looking forward to your favourite release of the year, a new DOOM. And you’ve got a fancy $1000 monitor to play it on. There’s just one small problem. One day, you wake up and discover a bug has somehow carked it in your screen. No problem: the monitor’s well under warranty. So everything should be OK, right?

That’s what happened to long time Australian gamer Narull. Just before Christmas, he forked out the money for a very nice 1440p IPS screen, the 165Hz ASUS ROG Swift PG279QE. It’s a good gaming screen and one that you think would be perfect for games like DOOM Eternal, with all their colour and blood.

Narull didn’t even have the option of blaming himself and wallowing in self-pity, like Kirk did. Like most people, he asked the simple question: how the hell did the bug get inside his monitor to begin with?

Yeah, I bought it end of November, been working perfectly since then this bug appears inside it on Sunday night. I assumed monitors were sealed but I guess not…?— Narull (@Narull) March 17, 2020

But all was still looking well at this point. The monitor was not only within warranty under Australian consumer law, but ASUS’s limited 12 month warranty. Parts weren’t required, because all a competent repairer needs to do is pull the screen apart and clean the gunk from the protective layer that sits between the LCD panel and the screen. There’s plenty of legitimate precedent for it being free, too. LCD screens are a bright light source, and naturally small insects and moths are going to gravitate towards them. It’s the manufacturer’s job to make sure they can’t get inside.

Well that confirmed @ASUSAU don"t deal with small problems first I guess. Over a week to take an insect out of a screen (and I"m expecting longer honestly)

It pisses me off. Screw you ASUS for having a fucking $1000 monitor that insects can get inside of. pic.twitter.com/lPjfkuJFfp— Narull (@Narull) March 19, 2020

Things were looking up. Sort of. A ticket on the official ASUS support page replied: they’d deal with the issue, but not immediately. Narull would get his PG279QE screen back on March 25, two days after DOOM Eternal‘s official launch. Not ideal, but at least someone was putting the poor bug where they belonged.

But a lot can change in 24 hours. On Thursday morning, Narull received a response from a different ASUS support member. “After inspecting the LCD, we are determined the LCD have insect inside the panel unfortunately insect damage is not covered under the manufactory warranty,” an email from ASUS read, directing Narull to ASUS’s policy for Australia and New Zealand where “contamination with hazardous substances, diseases, vermin or radiation” is not covered under warranty.

Naturally, Narull was perplexed. ASUS initially accepted the support request and said they’d send the monitor back within a week, only to say new parts were needed. Then to turn around and say the monitor couldn’t be “repaired” at all, even though the monitor doesn’t need an actual repair. It just needs the bug cleaned out of the panel (and maybe some questions answered as to how the bloody thing could get inside to begin with).

It’s not a huge stretch to say monitors should be built in a way that doesn’t allow bugs or insects to crawl inside the panel. LCD/LED screens are giant sources of light. Of course they’re going to attract moths, mosquitoes, tiny flies and whatever else comes in from outside the window. One would assume they’d be built to keep critters at bay, even with modern monitors having more aggressive cooling mechanisms.

“It makes me wonder what they lodged [the issue] as,” Narull told Kotaku Australia. “When I first called and they ask the issue I said ‘there is an insect inside the panel’ but clearly the service centre did not know that, so what did they lodge the issue as?”

It’s not the customer experience you’d expect after buying a $1000 monitor. Generally, most brands are pretty good about support on their premium products. You’ve already paid several hundred, or almost a grand in this case. Having a bug that can climb into the screen and die is obviously a suboptimal experience. I get why a company might try and reject it after a year – especially if the user is dumb enough to squish the bug themselves.

Kotaku Australia emailed ASUS’s local team for comment, asking for an explanation on how the customer service should have functioned, what steps they would take to improve logging of customer complaints in the future and their approach to dealing with small insects getting inside enclosed monitor units. I also asked what their official advice was to users who discovered bugs inside their monitor – if ASUS isn’t going to cover it, should users try and fix it themselves? Can they fix it themselves?

As for small insects, ASUS said monitors are “not a completely sealed device” and customers should be patient if they discover one. “When customers find an insect in their screen, we would suggest him or her to wait the insect to get out by itself while it’s still alive,” ASUS said. “However, if the insect has already dead in the screen, the customer should always contact our service team to arrange the repairing as soon as possible. Service fees may apply in this situation. Service fees may apply in this situation.”

Huh, I thought, it’s a bug crawling across my computer monitor. I reached out to flick it off, and found that I could not. I stared at it, unsure of what I was seeing. The bug was there, but I could not touch it. Was I hacked? Was this some sort of malware?

Eventually I concluded that no, it was a real bug, crawling around behind the screen of my monitor. I don’t know how it got there, nor what it hoped to accomplish.

This is how it went for the next hour or so. The bug would come; the bug would go. I wouldn’t see it for ten minutes at a time, then it’d come crawling back, wandering across my Kotaku Slack window as if to say, remember me? I’m still here. Inside your computer screen.

I will spend the rest of my life struggling to explain what happened next. As the bug was on what had to be its fiftieth trip across my screen, I placed my finger on it and pressed down.

I did not pause to consider the ramifications of this action. I did not google “bug in my monitor screen” first. I didn’t even wait for the bug to reach the edge of the screen. I pressed down while it was squarely in the most usable space. It died, leaving a small black carcass stuck to the underside of the screen.

I immediately realised that I now had a dead insect permanently affixed to the underside of my screen, where it would remain for as long as I owned this monitor. I panicked and attempted to tap the bug loose, thinking maybe it would fall to a lower, less critical part of the screen.

There is now a one-centimeter smear of bug guts occupying the center-left quadrant of my computer monitor, a part of the screen my eyes visit approximately six hundred times per day. I will never be able to un-see it, ignore it, or pretend it isn’t there. I will never be able to forget that its existence is entirely my fault. It will haunt me forever.

I bring you this tragic story in the hopes that, should you ever see a small bug crawling underneath your computer screen, you will leave it alone. Don’t be like me. Remember my folly, and my loss will not have been entirely in vain.

kJelt, I had the same problem with my Dell U2412M except I made it worse by pressing the bug while it was walking around so the bug was now dead and permanently stuck between the LCD panel and the back light filter.

With the help of another person, they held the monitor upright and tilted the top forward slightly until the LCD glass fell forward on an angle, the side of the glass with the ribbon remained where it was as a pivot point.

There is not much room to get in there, the glass is leaning forward less than 45 degrees and the rest of the panel is perfectly upright, I then used a damp cotton tip to clean the bug off the back light filter.

Hey buddy just wanted to say thank you for this. I got my squished dead bug of my Acer K272HUL using this is my only guide and it translated to my monitor perfectly.

The a7R V is the fifth iteration of Sony"s high-end, high-res full-frame mirrorless camera. The new 60MP Mark IV, gains advanced AF, focus stacking and a new rear screen arrangement. We"ve tested its image quality and video performance.

So as it came out after a visit of appointed by Samsung service, I also have a "dead bug" that crawled between lcd screen and a backlight, casting a dead-pixel-like shadow on the lcd panel.

Few days after the visit Samsung confirmed that this won"t be covered by warranty, as this is not their fault that the bug crawled inside, and that their tv are apparently produced to highest standard.

This is surely not right and quite questionable, as panels of this type and priced as much as they were at the point of my purchase (similar to yours), should be sealed in a manner that disallow bugs to crawl in, especially that this is all too common and well known occurence.

Samsung in their response to my warranty repair request confirmed that there are vents in the sealing to allow for cooling of the lcd panel. And this is probably how the bug came in. I believe that even if there are any cooling vents in the sealant, these should be secured so that this situation wouldn"t take place.

What is also interesting is that the design of the lcd panel does not allow for taking it apart - as it was the case in older models of lcd tv"s- and as confirmed by the servicemen who visited me.

It is very convenient to Samsung, as replacement of entire lcd panel in this case makes up about 3/4 of the price I have paid for the TV. Fixing of the issue by qualified technician would be cheap in comparison.

I thought the bug was right behind the first layer, between LCD and glass. However as I found out these two layers are permanently glued and sealed. That"s a good news as no bugs get in.

I found the bug (actually 3 of them, two that I didn"t know of) between diffuser and LCD. This space can be quite easily reached with just basic tools (pry tool, flat and Phillips screwdriver) within 30 minutes. You can follow detailed steps in Acer Thin Bezel Monitor Disassembly.

The Hisense U8H matches the excellent brightness and color performance of much pricier LCD TVs, and its Google TV smart platform is a welcome addition. But it’s available in only three screen sizes.

The Hisense U8H is the best LCD/LED TV for most people because it delivers the performance of a much pricier TV yet starts at under $1,000, for the smallest (55-inch) screen size. This TV utilizes quantum dots, a full-array backlight with mini-LEDs, and a 120 Hz refresh rate to deliver a great-looking 4K HDR image. It’s compatible with every major HDR format. And it’s equipped with two full-bandwidth HDMI 2.1 inputs to support 4K 120 Hz gaming from the newest Xbox and PlayStation consoles. Add in the intuitive, fully featured Google TV smart-TV platform, and the U8H’s price-to-performance ratio is of inarguable value.

That’s not to say the U8H has pixel-precise light control—it’s not an OLED TV, after all—but it does a terrific job most of the time. In fact, in our tests, the U8H bested last year’s upgrade pick, the Samsung QN90A, in certain scenarios: The intro to Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities on Netflix features the filmmaker against a pitch-black backdrop. Though last year’s QN90A failed to maintain perfect control over dimming elements during this scene (the black backdrop brightened distractingly once a sufficient amount of brighter content appeared on screen), the U8H did not. (For the record, the newer QN90B also passed this test.) The U8H’s mini-LEDs also help the screen look uniformly bright: Although the U8H is still not as good as an OLED TV in this respect, it shows very little indication of being a backlight-driven display, even during tricky scenes with large swaths of dim lighting.

The onboard Google TV smart platform is another feather in this TV’s cap. As usual, however, it will be much more satisfying to use if you have a Google account and already take advantage of Google’s connected services, like Photos. The experience of navigating the TV’s smart features—scanning QR codes to sign into apps, using the onscreen keyboard, and browsing your Google Photos to set a photo as a screensaver—was very satisfying in terms of responsiveness and speed. Powering on the TV and booting into an app took just seconds. The included Bluetooth remote is also equipped with a handy “Hey Google” button, allowing you to pull up Google’s assistant and use voice commands to search for content or set a reminder. If you have multiple users with their own Google accounts, you can designate separate profiles (attached to a Gmail account) so that each user can customize the experience to their liking, as well as access their own Google Drive or Photos. While some reviewers have reported instances of momentary freezing while using the U8H’s platform, I didn’t personally experience any instances of slowdown that were egregiously worse than with any other smart-TV platform.

The Hisense U8H has some difficulties with banding, or areas of uneven gradation, where transitions that should appear smooth instead look like “bands” of color (sometimes also called posterization). Like many current 4K HDR TVs, the U8H uses an 8-bit panel rather than a 10-bit panel, which affects the color decoding and color presentation process. This is usually relevant only with HDR video and games. When playing games on the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, I saw a few instances where the content wasn’t rendered correctly and displayed ugly splotches of color on the screen. However, this almost always occurred during static screens (such as a pause menu or loading screen); I rarely spotted it during actual gameplay. Hisense has stated that it would address the problem in a future firmware update, but at the time of writing it was still present. This is a flaw that may give dedicated gamers pause, but we don’t consider it to be a dealbreaker for most people.

Finally, like most TVs that use vertical alignment (VA) LCD panels, the U8H has a limited horizontal viewing angle, which may be a bit annoying if you’re hoping to entertain a large crowd. Our upgrade pick uses a special wide-angle technology to address this.