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 22, 2008 - 7:06 pm
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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
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#2 by Chris on December 14, 2008 - 2:33 pm
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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
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#3 by samsung 46 850 on January 6, 2009 - 10:19 pm
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clouds on top rigth and bottom corners, some minor ones in left and bottom
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#4 by Fuad on January 9, 2009 - 9:33 pm
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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
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#5 by Fuad on January 20, 2009 - 4:00 pm
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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!!!
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#6 by Chris on March 11, 2009 - 6:14 pm
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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.
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#7 by howie on March 14, 2009 - 5:42 pm
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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 28, 2009 - 4:35 pm
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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 17, 2009 - 9:19 am
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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.
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#10 by Cris on December 28, 2009 - 2:03 am
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Wow I had no idea about clouding since I’ve had no issues with my first and only LCD TV; Toshiba Regza 42RV530U, but on boxing day 2009 (Canada) I bought two Sony KDL40V4100 Bravia TVs. One is for my sister’s friend and the second is for his brother. I got them for $699 a piece pretty good price, but when setting up my sister’s BF TV I did notice a cloud effect near the center of the TV I didn’t think much of it until I saw some forums about people saying that their Sony’s are clouding.
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#11 by David on March 31, 2010 - 2:18 pm
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Bought Samsung UN55B8000 and it has been replaced twice for severe backlight bleeding in all 4 corners and 2 big 5″x5″ blobs dead center! This second set is even worse! It is going back and getting a full refund. Plasma is the choice now………
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#12 by reu on April 9, 2010 - 9:08 pm
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go plasma ?
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#13 by David on April 25, 2010 - 4:44 am
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I have a Samsung LN46A750 have clouding on 3 of 4 corners, I have noticed its getting worse with age (have had the set about 1.5 yrs) I have friends and family with Sonys and LGs and they haven’t had any problems (although I have read on forums that Sony XBRs have had clouding problems as well).
With all the horrible customer service stuff I have heard about Samsung, I don’t think I will ever be purchasing another one (always been in a Sony family, think I should go back to the roots).
I do want to mention one thing, when I first got the set it seemed fine, I had to move it once to do some maintenance and after the move I noticed the clouding, so I am guessing its possible that the pressure on the bezel during the move could have caused some of this, but its silly because a TV should really not be this sensitive (especially such a pricey one).
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#14 by Mash on August 16, 2010 - 3:40 am
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I bout Sony KDL40W4500, it sucks! One time it shows a perfect picture sometime total cloud on the left side! I need to be assisted before I really go nust!
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#15 by aleksander on October 7, 2010 - 5:54 pm
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i have same problem on right side of the tv (where was the most anoying), then i notice that this clouding things are there only where the screws are on the back side of tv so i decide to un-tide them and problem was gone.
they tide screws so tide that presure is to great on lcd panel behind! try this and you will see many inprovement before even returning.
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#16 by Andrew on January 6, 2011 - 3:15 am
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Purchased a Sony EX710/712 46″ which was impossible to watch, extremely poor flashlighting on all corners, especially those on the right. Then a washout on the left fading out across ~20% of the screen’s width. Add some clouding in places across the screen and you can imagine how I felt. Plus being an MVA screen panel (vs PVA) it had poor black levels (dark grey in fact). I purchased this based on the review of the 40″ (which got top marks), only finding out after purchase that 32″ and 46″ had different panel types to 40″ and 55″. This should be illegal as it’s misrepresentative! Anyway, swopped (with additional 15% in cost) for Samsung UE C6900 which is far superior in every regard. It does has 4 clouds to the left of the screen, but fortunately not THAT noticeable and no-where near the top or bottom (where much more noticeable on letterbox / black bar widescreen content). These can only be seen at night, even with backlight turned to mid setting. Not quite sure if I want to try a replacement – will tweak contrast more tonight and see if I can improve on things.
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#17 by Ivanhoe on April 21, 2011 - 8:23 am
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Purchased Samsung UE55c6500 3 days ago, clouding on many places accross the screen. If I had knew about this “common” LCD issue before I would have definitely gone plasma.
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