Why new firmware may be a good fix for screen problems

Question

When I read on the Internet Thursday that some people had reported that the firmware had fixed their dark screen problems, I wondered if this was possible, and was this a good fix. I had taken my Touch to the Apple store earlier, and had the screen problem confirmed, but no exchange was possible at the moment, because the Touch was out of stock.
Where I work we have a number of small LCD screens that have a narrow viewing angle like the Touch, but being commercial monitors, also have knobs to control brightness and most importantly contrast. I started playing with the contrast and was surprised that I was able to exactly duplicate the problem my Touch had, just with contrast. The contrast adjustment on this narrow view LCD controlled viewing angle, and I could duplicate the negative image thing perfectly. I now had great hope that the firmware would in fact fix my Touch.
When I got home from work, I installed the firmware update to my week 36 Touch, and was thrilled to see all video issues gone. We need to remember that Apple has a lot more control over the LCD display through software than we have. We only have brightness! I mean if you had to adjust the contrast knob on your new computer monitor would you label the monitor as defective?
I believe that Apple knew by serial number which Touches needed adjustment to the video based on LCD origin, and applied them with this software. They merely tuned the contrast knob, and some other video settings that we don't have! (It would be nice if they added a contrast slider, and maybe color saturation level, to the brightness level already included!)
I have no intention of returning my Touch now for exchange, will count myself as lucky that my video got tweaked to perfection, and I have no dead pixels in my week 36 Touch. I understand that some people are never going to be happy with all of this, that in a perfect world everything would be great right out of the gate, all the time. But...
Enjoying my Touch a lot. A great gadget.
Now if we could only have those 3rd party applications!

Answer 1

This is true. With any LCD screen you can adjust contrast and color temperature which seem to be the combination working against week 36 and 37 owners. It makes sense Apple could control these settings through a software update. I suspect as you have stated, the 1.1.1 firmware upgrade does a serial check and selectively alters certain settings to compensate for the difference in the screens.
I say this because I still strongly suspect that Apple did change screens, screen coating or something in the hardware betweent he 37 and 38 lines (or early on in the 38 line) because there are reports with screen shots to confirm inconsistency int he effect of the 1.1.1 firmware update fixing the problem.
If the firmware update works for you, fantastic! If it does not then I would return it. If I recieved a week 36 and week 37 device from an on-line order I would return unopened to the nearest Apple store to avoid a restocking fee. If I didn't have an Apple store I would do the return through whoever I did the on-line order with.
The reason I would do this is that I am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to displays. I feel like if I'm paying $300-$400 for one of these devices my desire to have the best screen would take priority over my need to own the device quickly, but that's just me.
Jeremy
Is your iPod Touch screen bad? Compare it against these screen shots:
http://jdeats762.bravehost.com/iBadScreen.htm
Message was edited by: Ramzy76