Girlie Coloured Headlight

Alan Mills · #1 (**permalink**) 02-09-2005, 12:31 PM

Anyone any experience of knowledge of this issue?

My car's got those nice new type of headlights. The ones that look a bit blue from a distance. Can't remember the proper name for them. Xenon or something?

Anyway, driving into work this morning, bumper to bumper as usual, I noticed that one of them was casting a funny colour light onto the car in front. Sure enough, when I got to work and had a look one of the headlights is shining a pink light out and is not as bright as the other.

Any ideas? Is this just a bulb gone or what? Although I understand these bulbs can cost quite a bit :cry:

Jeez I'm having a crap day. :cry: And I'm desperately trying hard not to take it personally that I have a working RTX100, which I like, and appear to be taking stick for it!!!!!

Ian in Northampton · #2 (**permalink**) 02-09-2005, 12:47 PM

Sounds like one of your headlights has caught gay. Get it to a garage - or a counsellor.

DV_Ed · #3 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 12:36 AM

Those will probably be HID (High intensity discharge) bulbs - yes expesive but also not so common to go so quickly. It will most probably need looking at by somone who knows them. I cant think what would make it go a shade of pink, Does the bulb seem to start normally (they need a HV spike to get them going)

Andy Lockwood · #4 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 06:07 AM

Perhaps one explanation is that your car is turning gay?

Do you drive a Toyota?, we have a pink one on our street. Maybe its one of those? :lol:

Alan Mills · #5 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 08:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DV_Ed

Those will probably be HID (High intensity discharge) bulbs - yes expesive but also not so common to go so quickly. It will most probably need looking at by somone who knows them. I cant think what would make it go a shade of pink, Does the bulb seem to start normally (they need a HV spike to get them going)

Yeah, for the first couple of seconds the light is normal coloured then turns pink gradually over the next few seconds.
It's booked in for tomorrow. However, the light does work so the bulb hasn't completely 'gone'. It's just pink :cry: Hopefully i will be something simple like a dirty contact or maybe a bad earth in th wiring then it will be fixed under warranty and save me tons of cash on a new bulb.

Btw, what's an HV spike?

Ian in Northampton · #6 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 08:19 AM

High Voltage spike. Think of it as a bulb's first coffee in the morning - gives it a jolt to wake it up and get it going.

Mike Thorpe · #7 (**permalink**) 02-10-2005, 08:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Alan Mills

And I'm desperately trying hard not to take it personally that I have a working RTX100, which I like, and appear to be taking stick for it!!!!!

Come here and give me a big gay hug.

*hug*

I'm glad you have a working system, I'm not giving you stick for it at all - quite the opposite, I'm glad you have a PC working with the RT.x100 properly, I just feel sorry for those that have a spent a huge amount on such a specialist card, that don't have a working system, and annoyed at Matrox for treating all the other systems with total apathy and/or contempt, as if Matrox deserve to be treated as kings. I mean, why should they care that people have compatibilty issues? It's not as if the people that need realtime editing have any other option, so they don't need to worry that they're going to lose their business!

Bear in mind, PC Hardware is my job, and there's not much more annoying than spending ages putting a PC together, ensuring I find all the parts that are officially compatible, yet finding some bizarre unsupported incompatibility between the hardware that both manufacturers refuse to acknowledge the existence of. It also makes us look stupid to our customers, as if we don't know what we're talking about. This is why we're loathe to build systems with exact components that people have requested, and why we stick to Asus motherboards & graphics cards, Hynix or Samsung RAM, Hitachi or Western Digital hard disc drives and various other brands, because we trust them.