The picture on my plasma TV just went extremely dark, leading me to believe that the backlight has finally died. The TV is about 3.5 years old so this seems about right. What should I do with this TV? Is it possible to have this repaired at a decent price (~$100)? I'm thinking it might be easier to just get a new TV.

1/1/2012 6:34:22 PM

Plasmas don't have backlights.

1/1/2012 7:28:51 PM

Oh. Well I'm not sure what the issue is then. The TV will periodically go very dim, but then come back to full brightness. We are watching Netflix/Hulu on a PS3.

1/1/2012 7:44:30 PM

Auto brightness sensor going bad? Shutoff any sort of energy saving/auto brightness setting.

1/1/2012 7:45:39 PM

Is the hdmi cable or whatever you're using bad/not plugged in well/etc? My plasma is well over 3.5 years and I've never had problems like that due to age.

1/1/2012 7:51:37 PM

Are you sure it's a plasma and not an LCD?

1/1/2012 10:21:37 PM

^that would be my first question.... You can probably tell by a plasma will have a 'clean' or 'anti burn in' pattern you can run in it's settings (in case you were using it for digital signage or something.)

1/2/2012 9:49:07 AM

Quote :

"Are you sure it's a plasma and not an LCD?"

1/2/2012 10:00:27 AM

Tell us the make and model of the TV.

1/2/2012 10:29:44 AM

1/2/2012 11:18:04 AM

It's definitely a plasma. It's a Panasonic VIERA TH-46PZ8OU. It's not any auto-dimmer setting as far as I can tell, but when it goes dark it's almost unwatchable. There are a couple of settings labeled "Color management" and "x.v.Color" that I have now turned off. Hopefully this will fix the issue.

[Edited on January 2, 2012 at 3:25 PM. Reason : ]

1/2/2012 3:25:28 PM

The brightness on plasmas degrades over the life of the set but its typically a gradual thing, try swaping to different inputs and cables to make sure if its a single source or the entire set.

1/2/2012 4:35:40 PM

Seems to be OK now. Must have been a connection issue coupled with a desire to buy a new TV

Thanks for the input.

1/3/2012 11:01:03 AM

If it's a Panasonic, it's a known issue with certain models. Panasonic claims it's normal, even though it's not.

1/3/2012 11:23:07 AM