What causes stuck pixels / Also a warranty question

Dear Mr. Zurcher,

TI offers a 5 year warranty to all projector manufacturers.  However each manufacturer is at liberty to extend that warranty to their customers or not.  We cannot confirm Acer’s warranty policies.  However, please continue to contact Acer to try to work out a repair option for your projector. We regret that you are having issues with your Acer projector and hope that you can get the issues resolved with Acer directly.

Best regards,

Eric

Hi Christopher,

To add to what Eric said, stuck pixels can result from a few different things.  It could be that you are exceeding the max power level requirements of the DMD.  What kind of power source are you using?  If you are using a laser, sometimes using the continuous method over long periods of time can cause stuck pixels?  To avoid this, you can use the "pulse width Modulation"  method.  Here you pulsate different sequences of beams, one after another.  This is effective because the DMD mirrors will get more intense or bright as you continue to pulse the laser, but then cool off between trials.   

Below is a link to a quick summary on pulse width modulation in case you want to research more.  I hope this helps.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-width_modulation

Justin Lemon

Digital Light Innovations

jlemon@dlinnovations.com

I was having this issue exactly.

I don't know where you're located, but I was able to find a replacement DMD board for the Acer H5360 from an electronics store in California.

First I talked to Acer about repairing the projector, which was out of warranty, and they said it would be a minimum of $199 to make the repair, plus shipping. I asked if I could just buy the DMD board from them directly, but she said no. I asked for the part number, and she did give that to me:

DMD Board: 55.K010H.003

I contacted a local projector repair shop and told him what the problem was, and he quoted me $195 for labor, plus the cost of the DMD chip and taxes. I asked if I could buy the DMD board directly from him, and he said no, but gave me the phone number to his parts supplier, Andrews Electronics in Santa Clarita, CA.

I called them and asked for the part. It was a special order item which meant they had to order it from the manufacturer and it would take at least 2 weeks to ship. The DMD board itself was $9.47, and then $9.95 shipping, plus tax, and I was on my way with a grand total of $21.12.

I found a service manual for my projector online and will make the repair myself.

Just wanted to share my experience because I had a hell of a time tracking down this part and there weren't any forums really helping me get to the bottom of it. I also didn't accept the price tag of the repair because it was half the cost of a new projector for a part that was only $10.

Hope this helps someone. If nothing else, it will show what jerks Acer is to not support their product. TI clearly offers a 5-year warranty on this part, but Acer only offers a 1-year warranty. Really bad service and policy.

First of all, thanks so much for that link. It's interesting to see that it is a clearly acknowledged defect for "Internal Only," where their support people say, "Oh wow that's terrible I've never heard of that happening, must be pretty rare."
Second, please update once you've done the repair. If this works out, it would be amazing news.

Just reporting back. I finally got the DMD board from Andrews Electronics, and realized it was ONLY the board, and not the chip. When I called them, they said they do not sell the chip and to contact Acer.

Since I had already contacted Acer to no avail, I tried calling TI to see if I could order the chip directly from them. The extremely helpful representative explained that they do not have the chips to sell because it was a custom chip made specifically for Acer.

This means I'm back to square one, which is the option to pay $200 for Acer to possibly repair it, or the option of buying a brand new projector.

Sorry I couldn't be of further assistance.