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Apple TV Video artifacts on screen?

B

billymac1

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 13, 2008
9
0
Boston
Hi, my Apple TV has been showing for a little while white pixel dots on my 60" Sony. Its usually in the same places, little white dots, like an LCD pixel is dead, I have the Sony SXRD HD projection, its not the TV, I tried it on HDMI and component, the pixels may be a little different but I still have the problem. Its not too noticeable:mad: but I do notice it. Is this possibly an Nvida issue, I am thinking of checking the heat sink set up on the Video chipset. I just upgraded to a 250 gb drive and should have taken it apart a little more to see what is on the other side of the board.

Billymac.....
 
It noticeable at all times now, I tried 1080-720-480 it seems to change a little with each resolution change
 
The problem was happening with the stock 40 gig drive, the new drive is about the same temp.

I pulled the unit apart, there are 4 IC's that ar heat sinked, there are 2 with thermal paste which include the NVidia GPU and the Intel processor, 2 other chips are heat sinked with a thermal pad and conductive oil. I removed the thermal paste of the Intel and Nvidia IC's, cleaned with alcohol all surfaces and applied a ceramic based heat sink compound. The gray thermal paste from Apple seemed dried out, as with any high quality thermal paste it takes time to form a good bond to get the best results. I only ran it a few minutes so far (no time) and noticed less pixel issues, but I still saw a couple, I wil lhave to heat it up and see what happens, could be my video gpu is faulting, we will see...
 
I'm having this seem problem too. Random tiny white 'dots' in the menu screen, enough to make it look like there's dust on the screen.

Also my movies are now playing with a fair amount of noise/grain in them. It seems to get worse the longer I leave my Apple TV on,
 
There is a large 3 page thread on the Apple forums on this problem, many many users are having the same problems, it is not the hard drive, not the TV, its the GPU, heat has finally met its match to the ATV. Some people say firmware updates have caused the problems. I have an Imac 24" white from 2006 which had tons of video issues, it was a faulty video daughter card, many Imacs had and have this problem with this chipset, and guess what it was the Nvidia 7300 series in my Imac, same probably thats in the Apple TV. Fortunately the Imac video card is replaceable and they put a 7600 GT upgrade card in instead, so far so good.

People have figured out that on the Imacs the OS updates did something with the Quartz extreme drivers are pushing the chipset to overheat. They make utiliites to monitor the temps inside the macs, how about porting it to the ATV!!!!

Can anyone make a patch to see if quartz extreme is running or can be controlled in the ATV OS!!!!

I just bought a new Apple TV 160 GB, could not stand the problems. The only fix is a new motherboard in the ATV or if it can be done, a new NVidia GPU installed on the board, lots of tiny pins, with the right stuff it can be done!

Your SOL until apple gets pressured for a recall, complain to them!!!!

Here is the link to the Apple Thread. Lets all get together and fight this , its going to happen I bet to a lot more people!!!! :mad:


http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1759018&start=0&tstart=0


billymac
 
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