Atari 2600 Screen Gets Darker After Game Starts.

[Obadiah64]

I noticed when I play certain games, Joust for example, that after I start the game either by hitting the reset switch or by pressing the red controller button (as in Joust), the screen gets darker. I'm playing on a Samsung 55" LED. I have a feeling it has something to do with the TV. I don't have an old CRT to try it on for comparison. The games are still playable, just a little darker. Also my 2600 has an A/V mod, so I'm connecting through the yellow RCA video input. Just thought I would reach out and see anyone knew why this is.

[+bcombee]

Look for a TV picture setting with a name like 'streaming contrast' or 'fail' brightness' and turn it off.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

If you have a Samsung...this is what you have to do:

 

Change the input name on your AV input that you play the atari on to say "PC"

 

You're welcome!

[Obadiah64]

Well, I did find a setting call Dynamic Contrast and I turned it off with no effect. Its not a problem, I was just curious as to what might be causing it. Games are still playable, its just that the picture looks better before the darkening. And I also changed the AV input say "PC".

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Well..I don't know the exact model of Samsung you have. But I just replaced a Samsung 48 inch LED that would change the brightness level automatically no matter what I did. Apparently this was hard locked into the TVs for energy usage compliance ratings. Anway, it was discovered that if you changed the input source to be PC or rather on my particular model, I could change the input name from HDMI..DVD...Satellite...etc and just changed it to PC that it would stop the auto screen dimming feature. No one ever found out why and Samsung doesn't acknowledge it as a defect since it is designed this way by default. Usually disabling all power ECO settings will also stop this, but on Samsungs or at least the one I had, it never did until i changed the Input type to be PC.

 

Which input are you using for your Atari? I just realized that since all must stuff is AV modded, I do believe I still had this issue through the COAX RF off the TV and wasn't able to change that one to prevent it. After AV modding I was able to change my HDMI inputs etc to all just say PC to stop the auto dimming.

[Obadiah64]

I'm using an AV mod on my Atari. The darkening seems to take place only after the game is actually started and by that I mean when I actually start playing the game a few seconds later the screen will darken slightly. When the game is just sitting there in what I call demo mode I don't notice the darkening. It only seems to happen once you start playing the game and then about a second later it goes dark just slightly.

[AtariLeaf]

Bump, I just noticed this playing Joust too. However with me, its a stock junior using RF, not modded, played though a vcr into a commodore 1702. I'm playing along, for about 5 minutes or so and it's as if someone turned the brightness down to about half of what it was. I turned the system off and on and all seems fine. This only happened once (so far) and I can't reproduce it now. I left joust running for about half an hour and it seemed fine, played a bunch of other games, everything is fine. Doing a search brought me to this thread and it's interesting that joust was specifically mentioned. Not sure if I'm posting this to ask a question, just adding to the thread. Very odd.

Edited April 20, 2019 by AtariLeaf