Contrast too dark ?
Hi
I bought a 30GB iPod last week. When I got it out of the box, I had a hard time reading the text, because it was so dark.
Having red various iPod horror stories on the internet, I said to myself: that's it, your iPod is defective. But I managed to find the contrast menu, and bright things up putting the contrast cursor to the far left (it was in the middle).
Now, even with the contrast setting at it's brightest level, I can still see a dark square all around the iPod screen, which starts at 3mm from the screen edge.
Now I'm not sure if it's defective or not.
I heard people saying that they didn't put their screen too bright because they couldn't read it, so they left it at 10-20%. Mine is at zero, and would want it to be brighter, so that dark square could dissapear.
Any other way to change the contrast setting ?
Opinions, answers, comments ?
Thanks
# 1 Re: Contrast too dark ?
I bought a 30 a few weeks ago. I noticed that the screen was much darker than my previous 2o, and played with the contrast too. But whenever I would turn it on after being off it would default back to the setting I felt was too dark.
Eventually after use it just straightened out, and the screen is just fine now.
My suggestion is to just use it for a while and see if it clears itself up. But be sure to upgrade the firmware to 2.01.
# 2 Re: Contrast too dark ?
Yup. The contrast sucks on my iPod, too. It's terrible compared to previous generations.
# 3 Re: Contrast too dark ?
I bought a 3rd gen. 15 GB iPod from an Apple store and it had the same problem. As soon as I turned it on, I saw the screen was way way dark (almost unreadable). I was able to get the screen contrast to a point I thought had the best readability, but this was at about the 5% point in the adjustment bar scale.
I wound up taking it back to the Apple store, and after arguing politely but firmly with one of the employees for about 30 minutes, including looking at the contrast settings of each of on the display iPods, he finally consulted the manager, who relented into letting me return it. The employee went as far as to fish out his own personal iPod, which was close to (but not quite as) dark as mine, and he repeatedly said that it was normal for some variation in the contrast of each unit, and that that's what the contrast adjustment was for. I would normally agree with this, but not in a case where you have to turn the contrast down just about all the way in order to optimize the ability to read the display. All of the display units looked best somewhere in the 40-60% contrast range, which is what I would have expected.
The worst part of the whole ordeal was when another sales guy was called in to back up the first guy, and he dismissed my reference to their display models looking correct because "oh those are display models; they're on 24 hours a day". His implication seemed to be "they're abused so of course they don't work correctly" - except that they did. He reminded me of a used car salesman - not the type of treatment I expected when I drove 10 miles out of my way to buy my iPod at the Apple store instead of a closer independent computer store.
The contrast on my replacement iPod was just fine, although I notice that the screen background is always darker than that on my original 5GB model, and is not as easy to read.
So it looks like the contrast on the 3rd generation iPods has a rather large variability to it. If you're uncomfortable with it, I would recommend trying to exchange it.
-Michael
# 4 Re: Contrast too dark ?
Contrast is awful on my 30 GB iPod and it seems to be worse when it gets warm. I haven't decided if I will try to exchange it.
# 5 Re: Contrast too dark ?
Consider yourselves lucky. Or not maybe. I got my 3G on the first day and the thing is so light I can barely read it at times. If the song title scrolls, it's barely legible and visible. As time goes on, I have to continually push the contrast bar farther to the right. Other times after being higher contrast just to be normal, it suddenly is rather dark and putting it closer to the middle seems almost good. Right now the contrast bar is about 75% full. I WISH mine was dark.
# 6 Re: Contrast too dark ?
Same thing just happend to me, well twice actually. Just bought a new 40 Gig last week. Only the screen was so light I could bearly read it, had to have it up to 90% or so contrast. Returned it, and the new one seemed perfect when I powered it on, 50% contrast was just right, but as soon as it started to be configured the screen darkned dramaticly. I was starring right at it when it happened. Now when the little Apple logo comes on, you can bearly tell it apart form the background. Now I have to have my contrast set to like 10%.
So I have been hit by both extremes of this contrast issue it seems. Think I might be keeping this one though, much easier to read than the faded lcd of my first. Plus they both played great. Well that is if this one can keep a charge, seems when I leave it in its cradle attached to my PC it gets drained.
This happend to me on a PC, did anyone have this happen to them when they connected to a MAC?
Mago at 2007-11-15 16:56:23 >
# 7 Re: Contrast too dark ?
I just recieved my 10GB iPod that I won from a dice.com contest. I was about ready to purchase one when I got the e-mail stating that I was one of their 30 winners! Thank you Dice.com! Anyways, after the first connection to my PC after running the update, the contrast was set at the default 50% setting but was extremely dark. I managed to set it to 0% and it's good now but I also have the outline on the edges of the screen. I' like to get this fixed so is there anything I can do other than checking for future updates? TIA
TNm6i at 2007-11-15 16:57:27 >
