Almost all LCD owners will notice some degree of clouding effect on their HDTVs during dark or completely black scenes. What is the clouding effect? It’s a varying degree of brightness visible across the screen. HDTV reviewers tend to describe the clouding effect as “poor screen uniformity.” It can be caused by different sources, most often from uneven backlighting or flaws in the LCD’s matrix of thin-film transistors. Clouding is most noticeable when a single dark color is shown on the screen, eg, black or dark blue. Other terms for the effect are backlight bleed, flashlight effect, cloud effect, and mura or the mura effect. Mura is a Japanese word meaning an unevenness, blemish, or inconsistency. The clouding effect is generally limited to LCDs because plasmas have a different back light technology.
One way to combat this effect is to avoid watching your television in completely dark rooms. Turn on a lamp with a low light setting to keep a small amount of ambient light in the room. Some LCD manufacters offer ambient light built in to their television, most notably Philips Ambilight.
#1 by Dante on September 22nd, 2008
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Uhh… Bought Samsung Serie 6 last week,really fantastic LCD great colours,excellent blacks (most important thing for me) but it has clouds on 6 places! Yes on dark scenes and is really anoying.Noticable even in ambilight room.I tryed all HDMI inputs,with diferent cables, PS3,Dreambox and 360 over component and playing dark games like Bioshock (upcoming sILENT hILL 5)wos really pain in the eyes.For that price, everything needs to be perfect! One day left for replacement, and what if I get more issues with new TV?!? OMG
Didn`t have problems with previous Sam R86
#2 by Chris on December 14th, 2008
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Sony KDL-40W4500 Very Slight Clouding top left corner , twice as much top right corner. This is driving me nutts but its not as bad as the screenshots here. still debateing weather to get the set replaced arrrrhhhhh
#3 by samsung 46 850 on January 6th, 2009
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clouds on top rigth and bottom corners, some minor ones in left and bottom
#4 by Fuad on January 9th, 2009
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Got an LN46A650 yesterday. It is great but whent he reciever is turned off you see the bleeding…it is slight but as the first post said it is too much to bare for the price
#5 by Fuad on January 20th, 2009
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Called Samsung and told them of issue. They are having the screen replaced. Just FYI incase anyone is interested and within their 1 year warranty!!!
#6 by Chris on March 11th, 2009
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I just bought the Samsung LN52A850 and it has the clouding effect. The most annoying is the 5″ by 5″ square at the bottom left of the screen. Very annoying when you pay a fortune for this TV. First Samsung rep claimed to be clueless. Repair man came out and appeared to be clueless as well. when I pressed Samsung the second time they came clean and told me it was the “flashlight effect due to tight packaging during shipping. I believe they plan to replace the screen.
#7 by howie on March 14th, 2009
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spoke to sony yesterday
they told me that clouding helps preserve life of lcd !
and new 5500 range could still have it
sat 14th march 2009
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#8 by Dennis on April 28th, 2009
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Purchased a Samsung LN46A650 and a Samsung LN52A850. The 46 is perfect in every way. The 52 has severe “clouding” or “flash-lighting” I cannot look at the screen. Called Samsung, Tech knows all about it but customer service does’t. Repair team says their tech reps are telling them it’s okay! They’re coming out to see for themselves. These anomlies are unacceptable. Will keep you up to date.
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#9 by LN52A650 on September 17th, 2009
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Bought Samsung LN52A650 in February. Noticed a lot of clouding. I have had 3 service centers out and they told me it was normal. It is way to obvious to be normal. Took pictures and called Samsung for escalation process. They are reviewing it. Samsung uses 3 different panels. Samsung’s S-PVA panel, the best quality (if you’re lucky).
A-MVA panel from Taiwan’s AUO (a notch worse than S-PVA).
Chinese company Chi Mei’s S-MVA panel (worst of the three). I hope I get a panel replacement and I hope it is a good Samsung one.