kdf-42we655 lcd panel made in china

**The 2005 3LCD models are unique in that they are the only models between 2003 and 2007 that have not had a Sony warranty extension.***The expiration date of the extended warranty was originally 10/31/2008, but, based in part on the settlement of a class action lawsuit, on 11/12/2007, Sony extended the expiration date to 6/30/2009.

Most likely, all of the green discolorations occurred due to the presence of improperly polarized light in the green channel, arising from defective green polarizers and/or SXRD panels. There is more recent evidence from a subsequent SXRD class action lawsuit that green haze can be caused by skin oil or debris introduced during the manufacturing process (presumably, optical block assemblers touching the parts with their bare fingers). However, Sony claims that they cleaned such optical block parts in a clean room prior to releasing them.

Sony further claims that the yellow stains in the 2005 SXRDs, which tend to start in the upper or lower right corner, were caused by a "microscopic material" in the liquid crystal panels, disrupting their uniformity over time during prolonged exposure to UV light produced by the projection lamp. Sony claims that the extent of the discoloration depended on the amount of microscopic material present in the panel, which varied from TV to TV, and the frequency of usage by the consumer. They also claim that service records indicate that the issue always appeared within the first 3,000 hours of usage, if it was going to happen.

The blue discolorations seem to be the most common, particularly in the earlier (2003-2005) 3LCD models, although they are also observed in the more recent 3LCD models, as well as the SXRD models. These discolorations can take the form of blue blobs, haze, lines, bands, dots, star pattern, etc. In some cases, the discoloration is centered around an oval-shaped anomaly in the middle of the screen. In many cases, the discoloration (e.g., haze) is most visible on a gray background, but in other cases, the discoloration is visible on a black background (e.g., blobs). Once they become evident, the discolorations tend to accumulate and spread across the entire screen over the course of a few weeks to months.

The precise cause(s) of these discolorations have not been revealed by Sony, but the problem is well-known in the industry.Thediscolorations tend to be bluish in color,because the parts in the blue light path (particularly the blue polarizing filters and liquid crystalpanels) aresubject to the highest energy light (including UV) and heat. Photochemical and heat-based degradation of the blue polarizing filters can allow stray, improperly polarized blue light to pass through the blue LCD panel and onto the screen, leading to blue blobs on images that should be black. Photochemical and heat-based degradation of compounds in the blue LCD panel (e.g., the liquid crystal itself and/or alignment layers) can cause irregular distribution and/or alignment of the of the liquid crystal. This can lead to improper polarization of blue light as it passes through the damaged areas of the panel, resulting in the projection of stray blue light onto the screen.

images--typically called burn-in on older CRT and plasma displays. For example, this can occur in areas of black bars (e.g., letterboxes), in news ticker areas, or when pausing a program on a DVR.As the liquid crystal panels degrade over time, the

While the 2003-2004 3LCD models tend to have primarily blue discolorations, as described above, they can also suffer from stains in the yellow range, and this seems even more common in the newer 3LCD models (e.g., 2005-2006), particularly the A10s. These discolorations tend to start on the edges or appear within oval-shaped anomalies, and to spread over time. Similar to the yellow stains in the SXRDTM models, the yellow color arises due to light being completely blocked in the blue light pathdue to photochemical and heat-based damage (e.g., darkened areas on the orange-colored polarizing filter in the blue light path). The improper blockage of blue lightleaves the predominantly yellow light from the combined green and red light paths. TriState Module sells the orange-colored polarizing filter for the blue light path and reports that it can fix yellow discolorations.

On top of the high risk for blue discolorations described above, some2003-2004 3LCD modelsare also susceptible to developing an opaque, non-moving pattern on the screen, which is particularly evident on white or light backgrounds. This is referred to variously as stationary scribble, squiggly, random line, or road-mapping, and tends to be a solid color such as yellow, purple, or blue-green on a white background, but it varies somewhat depending on the specific color of the image on the screen.The problem tends to grow worse over time.

For the most part, this problem seems to have been caused by defective materials in a specific lot of LCD panels that were installed in the optical blocks, whichare particularly sensitive to damage arising from hot-cold (on-off) cycling. The color of the scribbles likely correlates with the light path with the damaged LCD panel. For example, damage to the blue panel may selectively block blue light in the damaged areas, leading to a yellow scribble (green plus red), damage to the green panel may lead to a purple scribble (blue plus red), or damage to the red panel may lead to a blue-green scribble. In some cases, different colored scribbles appear in different areas on the same TV, suggesting damage to multiple panels.

There is some evidence that leaving the TV on for an extended period (e.g., several days) can, at least temporarily, resolve or reduce this issue, perhaps by causing the defective panel to heat up, but this is not a complete or permanent fix.

For reference,in addition to liquid crystal projection technology (3LCD andLCoS/SXRDTM), othernewer technologies at the time included digital light processing (DLP) projection,plasma flat-panel,and LCD flat-panel. In the large screen market, DLP and plasma were in direct competition with liquid crystal projection in its heyday, and LCD flat-panels have overtaken the market as prices have come down on larger panels.

An industry group of LCD projection manufacturers called the "3LCD Group" was formed in 2004 to help market the 3LCD microdisplay technology. Sony is a member of this marketing group, and, along with Epson, accounted for most of the production of the LCD microdisplay panels used in the projection models. Although the current 3LCD Group web site refers only to front projectors, it included rear-projection TVs when they were in production. For example, see this version of the 3LCD Group web site archived in January of 2005. Here is an excerpt from a 1/7/2005 3LCD Group press release:

“As the U.S. market leader in microdisplay televisions, Sony has always been committed to providing consumers with video products that exceed their expectations,” said Mike Fidler, senior vice president in Sony Electronics’ Home Products Division. “3LCD technology fulfills this role by offering an ideal balance between superior performance, overall reliability and manufacturing efficiency.”

Liquid crystal projection TV sales and marketing efforts attempted to steer customers away from competing plasma TVs by citing a short 10,000-20,000-hour lifespanof the plasma tubes (less than 10 years at 3-6 hours per day).In addition, the longevity of competing DLP projection TVs was questioned based on the use of moving parts (DLP technology uses a spinning color wheel with millions of hinged micromirrors). Consistent with this, Sony and its 3LCD Group have released marketing statements such as the following:

It is generally accepted that liquid crystal flat-panel displays have an expected life span of about 60,000 hours(about 27 years at 6 hours per day)(e.g., site 1, site 2, site 3). The liquid crystal microdisplay panels in Sony"s 3LCD and SXRDTM TVs are a bit different than flat-panels. However, Sony and the 3LCD Group do not differentiate LCD flat panels and microdisplays when speaking about reliability. For example, the following statement can be found on the 3LCD Group web site:

Reliable, Road-Tested Tecnology: LCD technology surrounds us – HDTVs, PDAs, mobile phones, monitors and more...this powerful and road-tested technology is an optimal way to achieve sharp, beautiful images. 3LCD systems are reliable and use a simple optical design: 3 chips and 1 prism.

Furthermore, the estimated 60,000-hour lifespan of an LCD flat panel is actually based more on the longevity of the fluorescent back-lighting than the liquid crystal components themselves. So, if the lighting systems were replaceable on these units, the lifespan could, theoretically, be much longer.In liquid crystal projection systems, the lamps are, in fact, user-replaceable, and Sony has exploited this to further promote the longevity of the technology. They strongly promoted that their TVs only needed a lamp change every several years to restore the TV to a like-new condition. Here are some quotes from some of Sony"s marketing:

The Fountain of Youth - User-Replaceable UHP Lamp. In the past, the gradual loss of picture quality was just part of owning a TV. Once the picture got to a point where it was unwatchable, the TV was replaced and the process started over. Sony recognizes the investment in time and money that a TV represents. That is the reason that Grand WEGA comes with an ingenious user-replaceable UHP lamp. After countless hours of enjoyment, simply replace the lamp and your Grand WEGA is as good as the day you bought it. In fact, with Sony"s renowned quality, Grand WEGA may be the last TV you ever own.The implication from these quotes is that liquid crystal rear-projection TVs could have an even longer life than a liquid crystal flat-panel display, and even CRT-based TVs, due to the user-replaceable lamps. In fact, a "white paper" from Sony on their projection systems directly suggests that liquid crystal microdisplay (fixed-pixel) projection panels offer "far longer life" than CRT-based TVs (e.g., see page 23):

CRTs have phosphors that are subject to burn-in when an image stays on the screen too long...Fixed-pixel projector display panels are immune to burn-in, offering far longer life. And the SXRD panel is particularly robust.However, unlike flat-panel liquid crystal displays with non-damaging fluorescent back-lighting, the UHP lamps in Sony"s rear-projection TVs create substantial direct heat, direct light (e.g., ultraviolet), and indirect heat (produced by conversion of reflected light). This damaging energy is focused on the small filters and liquid crystal panels within the optical block, significantly reducing lifespan.

I have a problem with colored vertical lines going down the screen of my 32" Sony Bravia br4 LCD TV. They started slow but now are so bad I can"t watch TV. I"ve contacted Sony, and had a TV technician look at it. He said it was the LCD panel. I"m waiting to hear from Sony. TV cost $1700 just over 2 years ago. I"m hoping Sony will do the right thing and be fair.

I purchased a Sony KDL46W3000 TV on 4/24/08. Eighteen months after the purchase, the TV started to flicker in the lower right hand corner of the screen and the picture would be dark. But after being on for awhile, it would correct itself. Unfortunately, the problem did not go away. It got worse and started to spread out over more of the screen and take longer to correct. We called a factory authorized repair store to come out and look at the TV. The tech said it could not be fixed and we needed a whole new LCD panel at a cost of $2000.

Rear Projection LCD HDTV (model KF60WE610) purchased on May 22, 2004 has developed the blue blob issue. I will not try to get this repaired. The TV was expensive at $4,000 retail. I expected it to last a lot longer.

I bought my Sony 46-inch XBR 120HZ TV 21 months ago and the right side of the screen has developed lines and off colors for the first 15 minutes it is on. The repair shop said it is a bad LCD controller that would cost $1,200.00 to repair. He also said it is a common problem that Sony is aware of, but won"t recall or cover.

I purchased a Sony Grand Vega kdf-50wf655 LCD projection TV in 2005. Since then, I have gone through a projection lamp. Now my TV needs an optical block. It began turning blue along the right side, and is now blue on the bottom of the screen also.

I purchased a Sony Grand Vega kdf-50we655 LCD projection TV in 2005. Since then, I have gone through 2 projection bulbs. Now my TV needs an optical block. It has been turning blue with blotchy blue specks. It is getting worse. When I watch a movie in black and white, it looks like black and blue. I have paid $200.00 twice for the bulbs and now being told it will cost $750.00 to replace the optical block. I wonder how long that will last.

In December of 2005, my husband and I purchased a Sony Rear projection LCD 60" KDF 60XS955 and I can"t begin to explain how frustrated I am with Sony"s (or anyone else"s) lack of responses to the massive issues this and other similar models have. I replaced the bulb in February of last year and ever since then the Optical Block started failing causing several blue dots and streaks throughout the screen. We researched the cost of this repair (after just spending $140 for a new bulb) and found it to be over 1K in repairs. The TV and stand came to about $4200 so we decided to see if Sony would help out. Every time I call, the reps put me on hold for several minutes each time and continue to tell me that there is nothing they can do because my warranty has expired. Lo and behold, my bulb went out again last night. I am now shopping for a new TV and will never even look at Sony again. You can bet that I will be sharing my story with other shoppers as well.

I bought a Sony 52 inch KDL52W4100 less than a year ago. The screen after 10 months had multicolored lines making the picture unable to be seen. I called Sony for repair. They refused to send a tech. I had to wait seven days for them to send me a software upgrade. It did not work. I had to wait for Sony to send a part to the tech. He came two weeks later to fix the TV. It did not work. I have to wait another seven days for another part to be sent. That will be four weeks without a TV during holidays, house guests, and football games. And Sony will not guarantee this will fix the TV or will not agree to send me another TV if it does not get repaired. I bought Sony thinking if anything went wrong, it would be immediately repaired or replaced. It will not! They have no concern about their representation to the public. When the tech took the back of the TV panel off, I saw major parts are made in China. Where is the quality control? I do not recommend Sony to anyone ever again. However, the tech they sent was kind, friendly and did all he could.

I have purchased three Sony LCD TVs: 40" and 46" Bravia X series made in Japan and one 32" in May 2008. It"s more than a month now the 46" is with the agent who says the motherboard of the TV is faulty. I have paid RO 1300 for the 46" TV alone and in just 17 months, the TV starts giving stars on the screen. To replace the motherboard, the agents are asking for RO 150, which is more than 10% of the price of the TV. My argument is, why should I pay? First of all, the TV is with them for more than one month. I never had any sort of contact from them in one-month period. What were they doing? They are so careless. If the motherboard is faulty, they should have replaced it and sent TV to my residence instead of keeping it with them for so long.

One of today’s modern technological wonders is the flat-panel liquid crystal display (LCD) screen, which is the key component we find inside televisions, computer monitors, smartphones, and an ever-proliferating range of gadgets that display information electronically.What most people don’t realize is how complex and sophisticated the manufacturing process is. The entire world’s supply is made within two time zones in East Asia. Unless, of course, the factory proposed by Foxconn for Wisconsin actually gets built.

Liquid crystal display (LCD) screens are manufactured by assembling a sandwich of two thin sheets of glass.On one of the sheets are transistor “cells” formed by first depositing a layer of indium tin oxide (ITO), an unusual metal alloy that you can actually see through.That’s how you can get electrical signals to the middle of a screen.Then you deposit a layer of silicon, followed by a process that builds millions of precisely shaped transistor parts.This patterning step is repeated to build up tiny little cells, one for each dot (known as a pixel) on the screen.Each step has to be precisely aligned to the previous one within a few microns.Remember, the average human hair is 40 microns in diameter.

On the other sheet of glass, you make an array of millions of red, green, and blue dots in a black matrix, called a color filter array (CFA).This is how you produce the colors when you shine light through it.Then you drop tiny amounts of liquid crystal material into the cells on the first sheet and glue the two sheets together.You have to align the two sheets so the colored dots sit right on top of the cells, and you can’t be off by more than a few microns in each direction anywhere on the sheet.The sandwich is next covered with special sheets of polarizing film, and the sheets are cut into individual “panels” – a term that is used to describe the subassembly that actually goes into a TV.

For the sake of efficiency, you would like to make as many panels on a sheet as possible, within the practical limitations of how big a sheet you can handle at a time.The first modern LCD Fabs built in the early 1990s made sheets the size of a single notebook computer screen, and the size grew over time. A Gen 5 sheet, from around 2003, is 1100 x 1300 mm, while a Gen 10.5 sheet is 2940 x 3370 mm (9.6 x 11 ft).The sheets of glass are only 0.5 - 0.7 mm thick or sometimes even thinner, so as you can imagine they are extremely fragile and can really only be handled by robots.The Hefei Gen 10.5 fab is designed to produce the panels for either eight 65 inch or six 75 inch TVs on a single mother glass.If you wanted to make 110 inch TVs, you could make two of them at a time.

The fab is enormous, 1.3 km from one end to the other, divided into three large buildings connected by bridges.LCD fabs are multi-story affairs.The main equipment floor is sandwiched between a ground floor that is filled with chemical pipelines, power distribution, and air handling equipment, and a third floor that also has a lot of air handling and other mechanical equipment.The main equipment floor has to provide a very stable environment with no vibrations, so an LCD fab typically uses far more structural steel in its construction than a typical skyscraper.I visited a Gen 5 fab in Taiwan in 2003, and the plant manager there told me they used three times as much structural steel as Taipei 101, which was the world’s tallest building from 2004- 2010.Since the equipment floor is usually one or two stories up, there are large loading docks on the outside of the building.When they bring the manufacturing equipment in, they load it onto a platform and hoist it with a crane on the outside of the building.That’s one way to recognize an LCD fab from the outside – loading docks on high floors that just open to the outdoors.

LCD fabs have to maintain strict standards of cleanliness inside.Any dust particles in the air could cause defects in the finished displays – tiny dark spots or uneven intensities on your screen.That means the air is passed through elaborate filtration systems and pushed downwards from the ceiling constantly.Workers have to wear special clean room protective clothing and scrub before entering to minimize dust particles or other contamination.People are the largest source of particles, from shedding dead skin cells, dust from cosmetic powders, or smoke particles exhaled from the lungs of workers who smoke.Clean rooms are rated by the number of particles per cubic meter of air.A class 100 cleanroom has less than 100 particles less than 0.3 microns in diameter per cubic meter of air, Class 10 has less than 10 particles, and so on. Fab 9 has hundeds of thousands of square meters of Class 100 cleanroom, and many critical areas like photolithography are Class 10.In comparison, the air in Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA is roughly Class 8,000,000, and probably gets substantially worse when an MBTA bus passes through.

The Hefei Gen 10.5 is one of the most sophisticated manufacturing plants in the world.On opening day for the fab, BOE shipped panels to Sony, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, Vizio, and Haier.So if you have a new 65 or 75-inch TV, there is some chance the LCD panel came from here.

Elevate your entertainment with Sony"s KDF-42WE655 Grand WEGA™ Integrated LCD Rear Projection High Definition Television. Featuring a beautiful 16:9 aspect ratio and high definition integrated television display, the KDF-42WE655 produces stunning picture quality. A few of its bells and whistles include an ATSC Integrated Tuner, a CableCARD™ Slot, a 30 Watt S-Master Digital Amplifier and CineMotion™ Reverse 3-2 Pulldown Technology. Visually, the set is beautiful with its slim tabletop design that is sure to compliment any decor. You can even impress friends and family by viewing your family photos onscreen while listening to MP3 audio with its built-in Enhanced Memory Stick® Media slot.