Chromatic Oil Spill Rainbow effects on 5G iPod video screen

"Normal" is unacceptable though, isn't it? For me it is! My 5g is only 5 days old - same problem. Its not there all the time - but 3 times in 3 days - and goes away in about 15 mins (of the unit staying off - not sure if thats part of the equation or not)

Has anyone heard from Apple as to what the official deal is and how they are addressing it?? Am very bummed.

I'd like to share my findings on the oil spill / rainbow effect issue I reported earlier.

In short - its the polarized sunglasses!!!! Put them on - its there, take them off - its gone! simple. It baffled me for a while because of all the factors and my subconcious actions of putting them on and taking them off in sequence of other events made it look like other events were responsible.

Its the polarized glasses for me - 100% sure and proven!

Hope others find it useful.

Jay

Yes it's normal, and caused by tiny differences in the thickness of the plastic over the screen area.

If you want to see a neat trick, hold the iPod it up to a computer LCD or look at the reflection of the LCD on the iPod screen, and the rainbow effect will be glaring. Move it over to incandescant light and it'll disappear. The backlight on LCDs is polarized and makes the rainbow affect more visible.

yeah, i find this whole sunlight rainbow effect unacceptable. does anyone have a link to an official forum where i can lodge a complaint. maybe they can do something with a firmware update for solar 2.0? i mean surely the sun should work perfectly as advertised. i even get these wierd spots when i look at it directly, although they go away after 15 minutes or so

Sunlight is actually very unpolarized.

Polarization of light simply means that all the electromagnetic waves in a ray of light are in the same orientation, for example all pointing forward at a level parallel with the ground.

That is why polarized sunglasses are good for your eyes, well, better than non polarized sunglasses. Because the light hits your eye at one orientation so less mess for your eyes to deal with.

Sunlight is a mish mash of light waves coming from every direction.

the fast-food answer would be that the rainbow effect is a side-effect, induced by a feature that makes the screen and the images on it better. it is but a small trade-off for an otherwise unadvertised benefit...

and those are the kind of features that really ruin a product for me.

I never noticed this at first but it now visible on my NEW 60GB 5G video after about a week.

Just a thought... I put a PDA screen protector on to protect the screen (obviously!) but is it causing a build up of heat and hence the rainbow effect?

I've taken the screen protector off at present just in case it's causing problems.

It's my first iPod so can somebody tell me if the area of rainbow effect increases with time.

The rainbow is called photoelasticty.
It is caused by stress on the LCD, either during manufacturing, assembly or normal use.
The polarization screen on the LCD with the clear case make it more pronounced.
As noted, polarized sunglasses make it even more so.

Leaving the iPod on should not affect it one way or the other.
If it's bad, take it back and tell them it's too bad and you want a replacemnet.

I can see a rainbow colored pattern on my iPod screen. Is it faulty?
The rainbow effect (photoelasticity-the effects of stress, such as double refraction, on the optical properties of transparent materials) is well documented with the iPod - some suffer from it more than others and your ambient light conditions will make it appear worse. In a nutshell - stresses in a clear material cause polarized light to bend and colors to seperate as it passes through the material. Thus, if you have a defect of some sort in your iPod’s screen, when you are in polarized light, you will see a rainbow appear across the iPod. It just so happens that when the sun is lower on the horizon, it tends to polarize.

yes i have it on my ipod too

Yeah, i have this to. I thought i did something to it to make this come up. lol im glad im not alone. what is it anyway???

The rainbow effect in certain light has been apparent on all iPods and is normal.

It is the plastic/light combination and gets even more apparent if you are wearing polarized sunglasses.

Nikki

Yup. LCDs work because of polarized light. If you didn't have that 'rainbow' effect, you wouldn't have a working LCD. Sunlight is also naturally polarized, so... sunlight?

erm... yeah... Reflected sunlight often gets polarized, though... right? heh... Let's see how much I can remember from physics.

so in summary, do we need to worry about that rainbow getting worse? or is it simply a trade off for being able to watch movies on a 2.5 icnh lcd ??