Quoted from erak:Well you see, I noticed on the satellite dish art that you have 10 dots on the right of the beam. Well I hate to break this too you but it should be equal on both sides so your whirlwind has some issues.
Other playfields have much better artwork. Are you sure it's not a reproduction playfield?
You should totally just bail on whirlwind. And look for something else.
Look we get it. You started this thread to convince yourself there is no issue affecting your 8k purchase. I understand the motivation.
This is easier than going after the company or simply having to live with it.
Problem is the company THEMSELVES acknowledged the issue and promised a solution. After a month or so the "solution" was to dim the LED's with a sheet of plastic to minimize the poor printing on the inserts. The people stuck with the "lighter printed" inserts let out a collective groan at this half-assed solution but had to live with it. Most didn't want to threaten a lawsuit, test their CC return policy (as it took years to get the thing,etc)... they just wanted to get the SAME quality the earlier buyers got (what a concept).
You can't change the history. And simply proving that cameras don't photograph LED's well at all doesn't re-write history either.
It's not the end of the world. The effect can be minimized. I'd simply let it go at this point and we all learned a lot about the companies involved and their willingness to ship a PF that does not match their earlier production but "falls in the range of acceptance". Corporate weasel-speak to save themselves $$ from re-printing a batch of playfields.
The fact that they took all this bad press, came up with a somewhat ridiculous "solution" to save a buck, and now finally are STILL
shipping the same "bad" batch of PF's speaks volumes. It makes you wonder what they could rationalize in their next re-make. Remember that before MMr... we never even had the term "faded insert". I don't think this term was even in the pinball lexicon. Who could have predicted it? The earlier ones were done as well as the originals. Topdog will tell you that repeatedly
So I'd let it go... I wasn't going to say any more as my attempts to get people to demand the same product others got was just causing bad feelings. People can decide for themselves how pronounced the issue is and if it even bothers them.