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    Panasonic Y5 screen brightness

    Discussion in 'Panasonic' started by mesament, Nov 16, 2007.

  1. mesament

    mesament Newbie

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    I have had my Y5 for about a month and am increasingly noticing that the screen seems very dim, let alone the viewing angles being very tight. Anyone else seeing the same issue with theirs?

    Steve
     
  2. Toughbook

    Toughbook Drop and Give Me 20!

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    How old is it? The backlight may be going... Or the inverter. You can artificially make it brighter by playing with the Gamma settings and then the contrast and brightness.

    Go to Start/Control Panel/ Gamma Loader (If you have Adobe installed)

    Or you can find them in the panel for your video driver.
     
  3. deepsouth

    deepsouth Notebook Enthusiast

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    Steve,

    I've had my Y5 since about April 1 and haven't noticed any problems (from the start or developing) with the screen brightness. Also, I almost exclusively use it on battery power with the screen set to about 50%, and the brightness is just fine. A little uneven, perhaps, but fine. Maybe this is warranty work?
     
  4. skagen

    skagen Notebook Deity

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    I have had the Y5 since March and I havent seen any intrinsic drop-off in the bulb brightness. However there are two issues which may be relevant to you:

    First, Panasonic seems to have some some diffusion coating on the W5 and Y screen, to reduce the need for raw brightness. As far as I can tell, it also has the effect of reducing the optimal viewing angle, so you need to shift it sometimes as you look up or down the screen. This was slight irritating at first, but now not an issue.

    Second I think there is a weird quirk/glitch/big/programming error in the utility that manages power setttings.

    What do I mean by this? For example, When you unplug from mains power, the Y5 automatically goes to a battery mode, dropping brighness a couple notches. You can manually bump it back up, or set it to not do that. However when you plug back in, the Y5 does not always return to full brightness. Since the difference is subtle, you can end up using it at that dimmed setting and not realising till later. It seem the brigtness indicator does not reflect that dimmed state if you check it.

    What I find works is to unplug, dim it while on battery and then bump back to full blast.

    Sorry if this explanation is convoluted but there is defintely something going on there with the power mgt and brightness management,