Quote:
Originally Posted by consoleguy67
Yes. It will change the 'temprature' of the picture.
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That system has made a comeback, at least in Insignia flat-screen TVs. Mine has a menu option for color temperature, but it is not continuously variable either -- just three positions: warm, normal and cool. I think the switch on Timmy's set is even more limited -- just two positions, warm and off. Most people who had TVs with this option probably ignored it, or didn't even know it was there; same thing with the Chromix (Sears) and other types of color temperature controls on other brands. Most people found the adjustment so confusing and critical that they just set it at black and white (neutral) and forgot about it for the life of the set -- especially if that switch was, as in Timmy's set, on the rear apron of the chassis.
One of the best things ever to happen to color TV, IMHO, was when these switches and dials were finally done away with; as I said, these controls just made color tuning more complicated and confusing for most viewers, some of whom just settled for whatever was on the screen when they turned on the set -- even if the colors were so horribly off it wasn't funny. Back in color TV's early days, TV shops made a lot of house calls for sets with no color on a known colorcast only to discover that the fine tuning was not set properly, or a color antenna on a rotor was not pointed exactly at the station the person wanted to watch. The set owners did not realize that a color TV picture must be fine-tuned exactly to get any color in the picture at all. Today's flat-screen TVs are designed so that the viewer need not do anything but switch the set on, find a channel he or she wishes to watch, and enjoy the programs. I doubt that anyone even bothers with having a new HDTV calibrated anymore after installing it.
I guess TV manufacturers today do not expect that viewers are going to be adjusting the controls in the on-screen menus very much, since the buttons that activate these menus (and even the set's own power switch, channel +/- and volume +/- buttons) are often located on a small panel mounted on the side of the set. Menu access is often even more complicated using the remote, often requiring the use of a "shift" button which is pushed simultaneously with the menu button; this is something a lot of viewers just don't want to be bothered with, so many people just leave the OSD menus alone, if they are aware that such even exist.
BTW, I have been trying for practically the entire time (nearly six months) I've owned my flat-panel TV to find the counter (if there is one) that shows how many hours the backlight has been on since the television was purchased. It is not mentioned anywhere in the online manual, nor can I find it anywhere in the onscreen menus. This counter is very easily accessible, however, on my HP S2031 flat-screen computer monitor, as there is a menu option on the monitor's main OSD menu. Why this is readily accessible on a computer monitor, but not on a FP television, is beyond me. Maybe TV makers feel that most viewers don't care how long the backlight has been in use; that or else, since my FP television has LED backlighting, they feel such a counter is unnecessary, since LEDs last so much longer than the older cold-cathode fluorescent bulbs in some FP computer monitors and older flat-screen TVs.
I wonder if CCFLs are even used anymore in today's FP monitors and TVs, or have they all made the switch to LED arrays? Since LEDs consume much less power than do large CCFL fluorescent bulbs, I would think the latter have been all but completely replaced by the former -- witness how LED lighting has all but pushed fluorescent-tube lights out of the picture in American homes. I am referring to the long fluorescent tubes used in table lamps and such in the '60s-'70s, not the small screw-base CCFLs that have all but replaced incandescent bulbs, even in the face of the ban on the latter that was supposed to have gone into effect this year, but did not.