Screen Brightness Question

[mburke6225 at aol.com]

Hey there folks, you might find this interesting albeit long:

I was making a presentation last week with the Ti 1 Gig.  The room was dark with little ambient light.  The Ti screen was on a black frame in the presentation and I noticed that the black gradiented from the center to mid level grey at the edges of the screen.  This grey area starts at the frame then graduates after 1 inch to black into the center.  I took the problem to the guy at the Genius Bar who acknowledged the problem and took it to Apple techs who sent the following response.

"The screen appears this way because each pixel behaves differently there are 1280 x 854 pixels in the display for a total of 1,093,120, plus each pixel has three sub pixels, for a total of 3,279,360. Each pixel is slightly different in an
LCD panel, some may let less light through, some may display a slightly different shade of green.

The back light is one light source  (2 lights)  that runs horizontally throughout the back of the display and is  uniform across the width of the display, this means that it supplies the same amount of light to all the pixels, it basically has three states, on, off or dim(according to brightness settings), the states would not affect different sides of the display.

The behavior the customer is experiencing is likely normal and outside the realm of control because of non uniform pixel behavior.

It is also possible  that the enhanced brightness on the sides of the display is an optical illusion, because the center of the display would be the focal point, containing information or an image, with different colors, or patterns making the light appear less bright, and the outer edge would likely be one color or pattern as it is less likely to contain an image
or information. Presenting the illusion that it is brighter, when it is displaying one color, and the center is displaying several."  So ends Apple's tech response.

Now the problem with this assessment:

If it was an optical problem due to focal point then why do I still see the gray when I look only at the edges?  And further if I lightly rack the screen in one direction the grey gets brighter, and in the other direction is almost goes to black.  So I was wondering if any one else on our list has the same problem.  You can check by turning your screen to black in a darkened room.  I'll be curious to see if in fact this is normal.  Thanks,

MBurke