Question about lamps

[hifiman]

I just had to replace my Sony Grand Wega LCD's lamp for the first time. My picture had been getting darker by the day before the lamp went poof. Now I have a beautiful bright picture. My question to those who know the answer is this: If the brightness is turned up on the TV is it actually making the lamp shine brighter or is this being done by some sort of processing in the set? I'm just wondering about prolonging the life of the lamp since the next time it needs to be replaced it might be out of warranty.

 

[tbewick]

My guess would be that the lamp would have to do more work for a brighter picture. If you want to prolong the life of your lamp, then you should turn the contrast and brightness settings down from their factory settings. The factory settings can be set too high. If your set has a presets for picture settings, you could also try changing to something like the 'movie' or 'natural' setting.

There are calibration DVD's out there you can use to set up your TV. The THX one is included free on many THX DVD's.