– Updated February 16, 2010

I acquired the Sony KDL-52V5100 for $400 last year as an offer for resolve my issue with the KDS-50A2000. It is most definitely an improvement, but it does have one flaw known as “red flashing”.

What is the “red flashing” problem?

It’s called “red flashing” by many owners of the AVSForum’s V5100 thread who are experiencing this issue. What happens is the color intensity/balance of an image will sometimes automatically adjust as seen in the video below:

The YouTube description is apt:

While difficult to capture with a video camera, in this clip the background noticeably shifts colors when the interview subject brings his hands into the frame. In person the color shift is visible across the entire picture.

Sony denies the problem exists.

Called local authorized repair shop and they were told that this problem was already addressed in the most recent firmware update which I already have. That’s bullshit. The most recent firmware available on the support site addressed the auto-dimming issue, not this new color fluctuation issue.

As for what they could do? They offered to pick up the unit for in-house testing, but that’s it; they could not do anything else for me. As we all know, this is not a simple part replacement fix. Many AVSForum members already tried part replacements without success. I told them I wanted to contact Sony Canada themselves. They said that was fine and to repeat what they told me.

Contacting Sony Canada produced no results. They were shocked to discover that the local authorized repair shop couldn’t do anything. They reconfirmed that I installed the latest firmware and that was all. They told me that they had to contact the local authorized repair shop to sync up info and will get back to me in a “few days”. I voiced my displeasure and said that I would be waiting.

Now I wait. If there’s no acknowledgement of this problem, I’m going to demand a replacement. I don’t want to risk another defective replacement.

Clip from the “Colbert Report” on November 16, 2009, with guest Paul Goldberger.

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I would have loved to download and write up some impressions on the newly released Red Faction: Guerilla demo, however I’m currently breaching 90% of the bandwidth limit. So instead, I’ll be talking about my Mini 9 and my impressions of it after five months of use.

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Everyone knows HDTVs have to standout in a store line-up. To achieve that striking appearance, most HDTVs are configured with colors which are too vibrant and unnatural for normal home viewing. So what do you do? You could attempt to calibrate your HDTV by eye, but that’s hardly accurate. If absolute accuracy was your goal, you could get a professional ISF calibration performed. However, that won’t be cheap at all. What’s the solution then?

A $17 Blu-ray disc called DVE HD Basics.

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Want the true home cinema experience? Look no further than Phillips and their brand new 21:9 LCD HDTV. According to them, it’s the world’s first cinema-proportioned LCD HDTV which means no more black bars for movies! Needless to say it’s ridiculously wide and annoying for every other piece of media outside of the 21:9 aspect ratio.

So the choice is yours: black bars for movies? Or black bars for everything else? There’s a reason why they chose 16:9, you know.

Apparently, the pressures of having high quality HDTVs is taking its toll with Pioneer. Rumors state that Pioneer have ceased production on all plasma panels — not just 42″ panels, but all panels.

This does not mean Pioneer is going to stop making plasma HDTVs though. They will continue to purchase panels from other suppliers. While this piece of news may bring a sigh of relief, it should be noted that not all panels are created equally.

It’s over for Pioneer’s own 42″ plasma screens. While they will stop producing 42″ panels within their own factories, this does not stop them from simply purchasing 42″ panels from one of their plasma brethren, Panasonic. Plasma fans need not to worry: Pioneer’s 50″+ plasmas remain unphased for now.

LCDs and Plasmas are nice today, but something better could be just around the corner: OLED. Sony is hoping to bring OLED displays into the mainstream market sooner rather than later and by investing $204 million into larger panels; these are great first steps. Hopefully we’ll be seeing screens larger than 11 inches in production.

I’m personally excited for this technology and to see any company invest money into its development is always a plus.

In other news, Sony is selling off their Cell chip production facilities to Toshiba. Toshiba will be taking over the Cell processor and RSX chip manufacturing for both the PlayStation 3 and other products which include Toshiba’s.