The “Break it Down” Blog

You might have caught our coverage at the end of May of the seeming problem Samsung was having with their LNT-xx71f (LNT-5271F specifically) panels having dead pixels popup out of the clear blue after a few months of use.

One of the readers, TiVoHD, pointed out that it’s a known issue and referred to as “delamination”. There doesn’t seem to be a direct cause for the problem besides a manufacturing/quality issue on Samsung’s side that is allowing the flaw to sneak through.

To further back the theory was the fact that Chris Hunkele had been two Samsung LNT-5271f sets in 4 months for exactly the same problem (first one swapped out, 2nd one had the panel replaced under warranty) and Chris found out on AVS Forum that Samsung was doing replacements of the xx71f series using the new A650 series in some cases.

Chris tried to get Samsung to replace his 71f series with a A650 but they wouldn’t budge, sending out a panel-replacement crew instead.

NOTE: Chris did mention that the techs told him the replacement panels are produced by a 3rd party and not by Samsung. This might imply that replacement 71f panels may not suffer from the delamination as easily.

NOTE: I had that wrong, the original panels were 3rd party (the ones with the defect), the new ones are done in-house by Samsung.

Chris recorded the whole panel-replacement process and we are waiting on an update from him of how the image looks after the replacement. In the mean time, check out the gallery:

Update #1: Here’s Chris’s take on the process:

The whole process took about it 15 minutes, at one point there were 3 people working on it, with screw gun clutches ratcheting away like a nascar pit crew. The local repair tech was very knowledgeable, and fully aware of the defect. She explained that the first hardware revision’s panels were made by 3rd party, but now made in house, and that the replacement panel was one of the new ones. My tripple ball effect is still not fixed, but that more of a firmware issue. She did mention that Samsung is pulling 120hz from there line up.. It’s giving them too much trouble Also to note the slight flashlighting has gone away with the new panel.
Fingers crossed, no more issues.