Ferrite Rings

paul3_uk

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I notice that there are a number of threads on the forum that mention the use of a ferrite ring to remove the dark bar issue that is inherrent with most widescreen televisions.

Has anyone out there actually had a ferrite ring modification done to their tv, and if so, does it actually work?
 
I had engineer out to my phillips, showed him ferrite ring solution, from a link on this forum.

The ferrite ring he said had a phillips part number. He didnt know about this fix, but is looking into it, and I am waiting for him to get back to me. He only came last sat. though. :eek:
 
I went through an engineer as well to solve the bar problem. i told him about the ferrite ring and he said he would contact Philips.
Yesterday I had a message on my phone from the service guy.
He basically said that Philips were aware of the problem BUT they havent got a fix for it yet.
Does any one know whats going on here?
 
I find it a bit strange that philips haven't found a fix for this particular problem yet, since the post that I read on this forum pointed to a philips web page (all be it in french ...) that detailed the use of a ferrite ring to solve the problem. :confused:

Surley with all this technology that is being put inside tv's these days, a manufacturer must know if a simple piece of metal can rectify a issue that is so common across all widescreen tv's.:mad:
 
hello, I dont really know what you are talking about but I am just wondering exactly and I mean exactly :) what the dark bar issue is? Im looking into buying a new tv soon :/
 
These are vertical areas of "darkness" or black stripes which some people are seeing on mainly Philips sets - sometimes Panasonic too.

They show in dark pictures reproduction and seem to vary from set to set.

Some Sonys also seem to have black bars appearing but they move around too!

Not sure what you do with the ferrite bars or how they cure the problem though...
 
I've done a search on this forum but can't find where people are fitting the Ferrite rings. I'm guessing that you fit them on each end of the cables but does that mean all cables including power, interconnects and scarts etc or just a specific cable?
 
I'm REALLY interested in this issue with the dark bars as I have a 32PW9617 that shows the same. Not just on EXT3 as seems to being reported but on aerial input too. Yes, its there when the brightness is turned up but I also see it when you have a solid colour and fast panning across the screen. Football is a prime example....although not when England are playing as the ball doesn't move that much...lol.

Had the engineer out and showed him and was told that the brightness was too high. Pratt ! Finally got him to take the TV in to test and was then told that it was a reflection on the front of the screen despite me telling hin that the bars still appeared when I went to Dual screen Teletext. The bars remain BUT in the small TV picture on the left.

Have been back to them today armed with a printout of some of the posts on this forum and the link to the Philips French website. I even f'ing translated the page (using Alta Vista) for him ! He's going to call Philips next week. He was interested as to whether the ferrite rings actually solved the problem. I am too. I see lots of posts about them but no response as to whether this has rid the vertical bars.

I called the Philips Customer Care line and they hadn't heard of the problem. Hmmm.....waste of a phone call I suppose.

Engineer suggested to me that it may be best to replace the set with something else from another company. Shame if I have to do this as the Pixel Plus set is brilliant apart from the bars problem. I also like Philips kit and it fits with everything else I have.

Thanks for any response.
 
I have had a service man out to check my 32PW9527, two vertical black bars noticable on any connection, including terrestial TV. The service man acknowledged the fault, but even after talking to Philips offered no remedy, I had given him a print out of the French site ferrite rings fix, and he got no response from Philips. I have since phoned and emailed Philips, and have only received a standard reply, copy below:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Thank you for your recent e-mail.

We apologise for any inconvenience you may be having.

The symptoms that you have described indicate there may be a problem
with your unit.

This to me warrants further investigation please contact your retailer
and they will be able to test the product for you under the terms of
the warranty.

To reply to this e-mail please go to http://www.philips.com and select
"contact us."

Alternatively, should you wish to speak to a Customer Service
Professional, feel free to call our helpdesk on 0870 900 9070 (select
options 1 & 3).

Thank you for choosing Philips.

Kind Regards,
Philips Consumer Electronics (UK)"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have sent another email stating that I have already done everything they suggest, and asking them if they are aware of this fault and more importantly is there a fix.
I am not holding my breath, and have already started looking at alternatives in anticipation of a refund.

cheers
mij
 
Well, engineer has just been, was a different one than what came out to see tv initially.

He didn't even know what problem was, just had the part. Explained dark bars, and showed him the fix from the french website.

He took back of tv off and chassis is different to the one on the link to the ferrite fix. But he had a look and the wires in question already had the ferrite ring around them he said. So he put it around the video cable and crt pcb (not sure what that is).

He commented that just moving the ferrite ring on the wires could resolve the problem?? So he moved it up a bit.

Switched tv and dvd on to check and there were no dark bars. Engineer left, i sat down to watch dvd and noticed dark bars. Although they seemed very faint, hardly noticeable. which i could cope with. After a couple of minutes, when there was another dark scene, there they were. Same as before.

So back to where we started. don't know if ferrite ring fix works. Apparently this ferrite ring is already around the wires on my 9527, he showed me, but im not too clued up on the insides of tellies.

Cant see how the fix could work, if my tv already has it.

What to do now???

Sorry to advise of the bad news!
:(
 
PaulJ,

Sorry to here that the fix did not work. What I can't understand is, how come the dark bars were ok for a short while and then returned to normal.

Surley if the 'fix' had not worked, the bars would have been the same straight after the engineer had 'fixed' the tv.

This dark bar issue is one of the reasons that I am holding off from buying a widescreen tv and find it annoying that the tv manufacturers cannot solve such a widespread problem.

If I find any more info/fixes, I will let you know.
;)
 
it would be nice if they actually admitted to the problem first ! I guess all manufacturers work on the basis of keeping quiet about problems likes this and only get involved if consumers kick up a fuss. Their cheaper option is to use warranties and service contracts to pay for the resolution if someone notices.

I haven't bought a TV magazine for a while but have they picked up on the problem and reported it? Or are they tied in to keep writing good reviews to ensure that the manufacturers keep them sweet with information.
 
It is a shame the reviews dont pick up on things like these. Im sure if they came across the problems, they should be advising the manufacturers. If it hadn't been for this forum, i would have known nothing about the problem.

When I initially phoned comet with the problem, i was advised that as it was within 28 days of purchase, i could have a replacement, but engineer was sent to see if it could be fixed.

Only problem is, if i get a replacement, will have the same problems or worse? I am now outside the 28 day period though.

Paul3, It did seem odd, that the dark bars were not there initially, both me and the missus had a look but didnt notice them.

Ive noticed before though, when i just switch tv on and start looking for the bars, they dont seem as prominent straight away, but when you've been watching tv for a while and a dark scene comes on, they seem a lot more obvious?

I could probably live with the dark bars, as they are only on dark scenes. But dont feel i should, due to the amount of money i paid out for the tv.

:rolleyes:
 
Maybe the review models that the magazines get are checked thoroughly before leaving the supplier to ensure that there are no gremlins.

I've had my 9617 since they first came out earlier this year and I'm sure that the problem wasn't there when I first had it. I really like Philips products and waited for this TV to come out but I'm, so far, not impressed with the support I'm getting. Partly this is down to the engineer that I dealt with who wasn't interested saying, one minute that he'd seen the problem before, and the next saying that I had the brightness too high and that was the problem. I told him in no uncertain terms that I can have the brightness set at whatever I liked on a £1500 TV and not expect to see any problems. His response was that if I turned the sound right up the speakers would distort. ****. After having a go at him he took the TV in for a week and the summise was that it was the reflection on the front of the screen. Latest suggestion they said was to replace the set with another brand. That's helpful as it then won't match by Philips DVD and TV.


I often find that the problem is accentuated when the room is dark or lit rather than with natural daylight. In fact it seems even worse now since the engineers had it for a week !

I hope that the ferrite rings will sort the problem out. If not Philips will be getting a serious ear bashing and there will be letters going to just about every TV mag in the country.

I'm sure your 28 day problem won't be an issue. You told them about the problem within the 28 days. Also, if they can't fix the problem outside of this then they will have to do something about replacing the set.
 
I have found that if you use some of the presets, it does a reasonable job of masking the black bars at the expense of loosing some detail, when I adjust the settings using the Terminator 2 THX setup menu untill I can barely see the letters "THX" I find I can see the vertical black bars in most scenes, and on slow camera pans it creates a dirty screen effect that almost makes me go bosseyed. The worst film so far for displaying the bars was the Panic Room, and also the beginning of Star Wars 2 AOTC.
It does seem that all 100hz TV's seem to suffer from these vertical black bars, and I agree that it would be nice if one of the magazines would highlight this with an explananaton as to why.

mij
 
yes, I find the standard settings show the same and at various times. I also find that the picture when using some of these settings it too dark for my taste anyway. Rich is about the best but this still has the bars problem.

Haven't seen Stars Wars 2 on DVD yet so can't comment on that, it should arrive next week :)

I'm not sure about all 100Hz TV's having this problem. I had another Philips 100Hz and it was perfect.
 
might be of interest to some owners, I have a Pioneer 454 DVD player and the 32PW9527 TV, I changed the output of the DVD to S-Video and connected via scart 2 and the vertical bars have totally dissapeared, with no noticable drop in picture quality.

On my TV I have found that the bars only show up when using an RGB connection, and is a lot worse on scart 3 than on scart 1.

mij
 
I seem to have the same problem as mij, (on my 6006), as the bars (2 on the left 1 on the right) are there when my dvd is set to RGB, but are totally absent in s-video mode.

The RGB feed on my player is much better than s-video, so Ive just been putting up with it for now, but a 'fix' sure would be welcome!

tom
 
Mine are as bad on both ext 1 & 3, I get them whilst watching both dvd and cable, which is a bit of a nuisance.

Anyway, called comet again, explained situation to the dopey operator, he was insistant that another engineer should come and take a look. So he is coming tomorrow, hopefully he may have heard of the problem before, that would be a start.

If nothing comes of that, i'll try and get a replacement, keep my fingers crossed it doesn't have the same problem.

The odd thing was though, that my tv has the ferrite ring around the correct cables already???

:rolleyes:
 
Hi All
I have had a 32PW9527 for a couple of weeks now and recently noticed the dark bands, then stumbled across this thread.

Mine is persistent on E1 and E3 (both set to RGB) but more noticeable with DVD player. I first noticed it with scenery panning shots during The Lord Of The Rings, and now I have spotted it I notice it more.

I'll give S-Video input a go for the DVD player and get back to you.

Paul
 
Just had qed on the phone. Apparantly Philips wont listen to their contract engineers. So im getting a visit from an engineer from a firm called Endeavour, who apparantly are the only ones philips will deal with(maybe they bribe them to tell us all we are imagining the problem) on Monday.
So maybe I/we can get somewhere with this bloody black bar problem!! Fingers crossed.
 
That seems a bit daft, they will only deal with one companies engineers?

Surely thats bad business, as the retailer is always going to send their own engineers first.

Greenthumbs, dont know if you noticed my previous comment. My 9527 apparently has the ferrite ring on it, but still has the problem. Havent heard of anyone thats actually had the bars, but had the problem fixed. Engineer came round this morning, 3rd one! I had to leave for work before he came, but son was at home.

Engineer came in, looked at bars, said he had to speak to philips and left. Thats what the 1st engineer was supposed to do, but i don't think he bothered contacting philips. He just ordered ferrite ring after i showed him the apparent fix.

If nothing comes of that, I will ask for a replacement. Hopefully it won't have the bars on.

Let us know what your engineer says on Monday, greenthumbs. If they are a philips designated engineer they should hopefully know something about the problem.

Are there any 9527 owners out there that do not suffer with the dark bar problem??

:(
 
Just checked the October issue of what vid&tv, as a couple of you mentioned magazine reviews not mentioning anything about certain problem issues.

Well get this short paragraph regarding the 36zt29b:-

'Also, we occasionally spotted trace evidence of two stationary vertical bands at either edge of the screen. Aggravation caused by these is rare, but it's the sort of thing that some readers can get a bit obsessed with'.

Now this is a different make of tv, and the problem may be slightly different, but if the reviewer of a respected mag feels such issues are barely worth mentioning, then how will such problems ever be prevented in the future?

tom
 

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