What does it mean when you can see a thin black vertical line down the side of the screen of an LCD TV?

Question

We have a 32 " flat screen LCD made by Westinghouse. The TV is about 2 years old. The line only appears when the TV is turned on. This happened about a year ago as well, but then it disappeared in about a week so I never bothered taking it in. Well now its appeared again. What causes the line?

Answer 1

Could be a bad LCD panel, hard to troubleshoot over the internet, but that's what it sounds like.

Answer 2

I just had a customer with a Westinghouse and the line in it.....

Now....do YOU watch TV with the black bars on the left and right sides all the time, or MOST of the time?

Well then, you have the same problem as my customer did....

If it's a line from top to bottom, then it's a vertical line, and that line MIGHT be right where the picture ends, and the black box BEGINS.....

Normally to verify this, I put my finger right at the point where the line is, then find a channel with the black bars....

And I ALWAYS find my finger RIGHT AT THE EDGE of the bar!!

ALWAYS !!

So now, what....

Well, the line is caused by a thing called IMAGE RETENTION and on LCD TV sets, it can be fixed....but it takes time to fix it...

First you MUST AVOID the BLACK BARS for a long time.....

You MUST give the TV set a Full picture to erase that line....

You MUST erase the pixel's MEMORY and active/moving video works those crystals and dememorizes it....

Yeah, I know it's not scientific sounding, and I could BORE YOU with ionized crystalline structures.....but that sucks when all you want is a solution to your problem and some simple understanding of WHY it happened....

Now...use the format button in the center or your remote...it's the button that has two arrows pointing out like this <-->

That's your format button, just press it and select the mode that fills the screen with the biggest picture that fits it.....

If you change channels, attempt your best to keep the entire screen filled with picture.....

Now, it may take weeks or even MONTHS to neutralize the image retention problem, but it's worth the effort.....

Answer 3

zoom in and out, otherwise you might just be losing pixels.

Answer 4

It can be dead pixles, or bad wire. It happenes on all settings? DVD / Cable / Video game?