Sony KDL-52XBR4 HDTV Thread

[owa]

I bought a Sony KDL-52XBR4 TV in July (it was manufactured in April 2008) and it had been working great until late last night. It now appears to have developed some sort of contrast issue. The best way I can describe it is, it's like editing a picture in a photo editor and cranking the contrast. Skin/skin tones now look "chalky", white/light sources (especially on faces) overpower the details nearby (sort of like a chalky blob of white), and colors even look slightly off (a little too red'ish/purple'ish) although I mostly just notice that on faces. Nothing was changed, it just started happening. Tonight I tried resetting all the options, disconnecting cables and reconnecting them and tried more than just blu-ray playback. I see the issue with blu-rays, digital cable/HD and DVR recordings. DVR goes straight to the TV, PS3 goes through the receiver. Guess I should try a game as well.

Any suggestions? I sent an e-mail to Sony tonight but I'll probably try calling tomorrow. What worries me, is that I spent a while searching and can't seem to find anyone mentioning anything like this but I'm hoping I'm just not searching on the right terms. So, if you've seen this sort of thing mentioned somewhere, I'd appreciate it if you can point me in the right direction. Thanks.

Edit: Deleted other post and just combined it here. E-mail support didn't go anywhere so it looks like I'll have to have it serviced. Not looking forward to that since I'm leery of having to demo a contrast problem where it's harder to notice an issue in the rest of the scene. I'm afraid of the "it looks fine to me" type situation.

Edit 2: Having some doubts about it now.

Edit 3: Heh, still searching with google and got excited that I had finally found someone with the same issue and it ends up being my post. Oh well...