Osram Silverstar Not As Good As Sylvania SilverStar

What's so great about "white light"? I don't get what good "white light" does other than a poseur HID-like appearance.

The 9006 version of the 9006 Sylvania Silverstar has a rated life of 150 hours vs 850 for the XtraVision, 1200 for the standard, and

1600 for the long-life version.

This is very important for safety reasons, and should trump any other concerns.

First - you didn't mention what version.

"Osram bought the well-established American lampmaker Sylvania in the early 1990s, so Osram is now Sylvania's parent company. Sylvania also sells a line of automotive bulbs they call "SilverStar", but it's not the same product at all. These bulbs have a blue coating on them. Light output is of legal levels, but as with all blue-filtered bulbs, you do not get more light from them. The Sylvania SilverStar bulbs have a very short lifetime, because the filament is selected so as to be overdriven. This is necessary because the blue filtration coating "steals" so much light that only an overdriven filament can push enough light through the filter to be legal. The Sylvania SilverStar bulbs are also priced quite high. This is not because they cost a lot to make, and not because they're based on some exotic new technology. It's because the goal with this product is to take market share away from other overpriced bulbs like the PIAA line."

light" does other than a poseur HID-like appearance>This is very important for safety reasons, and should trump any other concerns>The 9006 version of the 9006 Sylvania Silverstar has a rated life of 150 hours vs 850 for the XtraVision, 1200 for the standard, and

1600 for the long-life version.

To which I say - so what? So you **think** you see better. I'd rather have **more** light from the Osram version than "white" light from the the Sylvania. A lot of people feel safer with fog lights on because there's this really bright light 20 feet in front of their car, but that's certainly not safer when the driver's eyes lock in really close when it would be safer to look ahead.

But there isn't more usuable light just because it's "white". To get the appearance of "white light", part of the bulb's usuable light output has to be removed. HIDs simply put out light in that tend towards blue, but they put out lots more of it.

Too lazy to disable them.

Yellowish lights are actually better in the fog.

I'll let him chime in.

Really? Mine got busted in an accident (need to reorder). They're H1 Osram Silverstars. I still have the package, which says "+50% MORE LIGHT" in the lower right corner. Upper left corner says H1/448SVS/55W.

I'd also point out that one of the fallacies of "more light" in a comparison is that new bulbs are often compared to older bulbs that have degraded with use.

Yes the osram version gives a lot of light. However the light is the same color as regular bulbs meaning it disappears on wet pavement and doesnt really improve vision compared to the whiter light of the sylvania version. Have you tried both? Or are you buying stern's crap without firsthand experience. I've actually used both and can honestly say the sylvania silverstars are the best choice for more effective lighting in a 2004 outback.

Yup.

More light (and less watts, to boot) than the

*tinted* Sylvania SS.

Also, the eye is mroe sensitive to glare effects in the blue-range of spectrum...making the Sylvania SS less effective in fog, etc.

They also burn out FAST...I've used both Sylvania and Osram SS, I'll stick with the Osram, thanks...and I can get em cheaper, too.

"Disappears on wet pavement"? The light "disappears" because the surface is reflective and the light is bounced away from your vehicle, not towards it, which is why oncoming lights on wet pavement have such horrible glare. Whiter light is not going to offer a remedy to this. The whiter light also refracts more in fog and rain.

And let me ask you this - why do these tinted-glass bulbs never come standard in any vehicle if they offered such improved visibility?

Have you tried the bluish tinted ones? Obviously not. I have. Te whiter light shows up more on wet pavement. I didnt worry about visibility with the sylavania silverstars. The osram are no better. Obviously car makers do not offer these bulbs is cost. However some offer HID lighting which is whiter than halogen the same as the sylvania silverstar.

This is purely an optical illusion. It is caused because of how light works.

The light you are seeing when you turn on your headlights is reflected light. Surfaces reflect light that is in the color of the surface, absorb it for all other colors. The silverstars reduce light in the spectrum that most surfaces are reflecting, and pass it in the spectrum that most things do not reflect (Blue normally does not occur in nature)

Thus for any surface and color you care to come up with except for a blue colored surface, you will get less light back from that surface when you shine a Silverstar on it than when you shine a regular light.

So what is happening with the pavement scenario is that your eyes get less light back, you adjust to the lower light level, then when you look away from the road to the interior of the car (which is black) or the side of the road or anywhere else, since your eyes are more sensitized to the lower light, everything looks brighter.

The problem though with the human eye is that as the light level drops, the eye sees less and less fine detail.

So with the silverstars it looks brighter but you have much less chance of seeing that deer standing beside the road than with the normal lights.

Ted

that deer standing beside the road than with the normal lights.

You just see more glare, due to sensitivity in human eye in that portion of visible spectrum (bluish)...on of the reasons HIDs are also more annoying to oncoming traffic.

I've used both, I'll stick with the OSRAM SS.

They've also lasted longer than the Sylvania SS...possibly due to the fact the Sylvania SS were 5 watts "hotter", along with the tinted glass, which probably increased operating temp again...

I put Sylvania H6054ST Silveerstar lamps on one of my cars a couple of years ago. Wow! a lot more light, especially close-in in front where it blinded me from seeing at longer distances. There is, however, a fine spread of light off to the sides for seeing those deer you guys are so worried about - perhaps the best I've had with sealed beam headlights.

After a couple weeks of the near hotspot blinding me and other drivers flashing me for blinding them, I did some serious inquiry into how to adjust these monsters. And found I've always been doing it wrong.

I used a screen of some old drywall set out front so I could see the light pattern, car center line extended from measured centers of windshield and rear window and marked, headlight centers laid out on screen as 1/2 their distance apart from car center line and height projected with a laser level from lamp centers. The car was on a level garage floor.

Best lighting result is with the vertical adjusted so the low-beam top cut-off is horizontal (on the lamp center-line), and the horizontal set so the high-beam hot-spot is centered straight ahead. These reference points were poorly defined on the Silverstars.

This gives good low beam coverage, eliminates the near hot-spot, and puts most of the high-beam light up in the air, where it will illuminate an upcoming hill. I hate compromises...

However, these lights put an awful lot of low-beam light into the oncoming driver's eyes. I expected much more when I saw Osram's name on the box.

If they haven't changed their pattern,I'd say Silverstars kinda suck. Expensively.

The same aiming proceedure applied to the GE ordinary halogen lights in my other car gave excellent results, good coverage both high and low beams, virtually no glare to oncoming driver, a pleasant surprise. Seems there are no properly-aimed lights out there? Every oncoming car is an unpleasant, blinding experience, and testing of mine (the standard halogens) yielded no complaints.

Somewhere there must be some really good headlights, but they aren't these. Best I ever saw were in a BMW quad-light set-up, regular lamps in the high-and-low, flame-throwers for the high-only. Miles of light! Could really use that out here - our roads just go on forever.

Tom Willmon near Mountainair, (mid) New Mexico, USA

Net-Tamer V 1.12.0 - Registered

HIDs tends towards blue because of the xenon gas needed to help them fire up quickly. It would take a few seconds longer with bulbs that didn't use xenon, but they'd have the same performance advantages.

However - the performance advantage of HIDs isn't the color they put out, but the intensity. They literally produce 2-3 times more light than typical halogen gas/filiment bulbs using less power. Essentially they're a flourescent light for cars. Properly designed reflectors for HIDs will put out more light EVERYWHERE, including far distance and sides.

More than a few seconds! Ever watch a street light come up to full intensity once it's first energized?

Yes, and it's a light source efficacy advantage, not a headlamp performance advantage. The extra light from an HID burner, relative to a halogen bulb, can be put to good use if the optic designer is skillful (and is allowed to put those skills to effect without undue interference by stylists and beancounters). There are excellent HID headlamps, but there are also poor ones. There are excellent halogen headlamps, but there are also poor ones. Good headlamps are better than bad headlamps. But whatever technology is used to make the light, there's no visual benefit to blue light. It doesn't help you see better.

Well...no. They're a high-intensity discharge light for cars. Fluoro lamps are a completely different deal.

Yes (Well, properly designed *optics*, whether they be reflector or polyellipsoidal type).

DS

That's a good question, and the answer isn't what you think it is.

The SAE and ECE "white" boundaries were codified many decades ago, and are enormous. "White" light is allowed to show significant blue, yellow, orange or green casts and still be considered "white". There was, at time of codification, no incentive to promulgate a more restrictive "white" boundary, for the only light sources used on cars were tungsten filaments, all of which produced a comparatively similar light color.

When the first automotive HID headlamp was demonstrated by a major European lighting manufacturer to automakers, in the early mid 1990s, it was a very well-designed optic, given the infant state of the art at the time. It handily outperformed most halogen lamps, and of course consumed less power. It was based on modified HPS (high-pressure Sodium) arc chemistry, and had a very similar operating appearance when warmed up to a halogen headlamp.

The automakers reacted favourably to the increased performance and reduced power consumption, but rejected the lamp on the grounds that customers would be unwilling to pay any premium for a lamp that looked the same as the ordinary kind, regardless of increased performance.

Now, back to that very large "white" boundary: it was a very simple matter to rework the arc chemistry in the auto HID lamp to create high spikes in the blue and blue-violet. This created a markedly new/different appearance, which the automakers' marketing boffins pounced on. Here was something they could sell on appearance, something non-owners would notice and come in to the dealers to ask about. No visual benefit to the blue spikes, and the resultant colorimetry still fit within the legal "white" boundary: Voila.

Now, of course, NHTSA is getting snowed under with complaints specifically about blue light. Rigourous studies of the matter (e.g. Sivak and Flannagan) show that for any given intensity level, bluer light is significantly more glaring than white light without a blue tint, and that there is *no corresponding visual benefit* to the bluer light. So they're looking at ways of reducing the blue spikes in the SPD of auto HID burners. European ECE regulations have already been modified to limit the degree to which HID headlamps may emit blue light. Progress is slow, though, because the new EU EVOL directives phasing out the use of Mercury in automobile parts means HIDs are going to have to lose their Mercury. Amongst other effects on the beam, this makes the output spectrum...bluer!

DS

Well, a couple different kinds of "no" here.

First off, the light from blue-tinted bulbs is not "whiter" at all. It's bluer.

Secondly, bluer light does not "show up" any better or worse than any other color or tint of light on wet pavement. The reason why wet pavement seems to suck up light and make it disappear is that the water turns the road surface from a diffuse reflector (like a white sheet of paper) into a specular one (like a mirror). Light striking a diffuse reflecting surface bounces off in all directions. In the case of headlamp light striking a dry road surface, the critical bit is that some of the randomly-reflected light comes back to your eyes, and the road surface appears illuminated.

Light striking a specular reflecting surface, on the other hand, bounces off at an angle equal and opposite to the angle at which it strikes the surface. In the case of headlamp light striking a wet road surface, this means that almost all the light strikes the surface at an angular range of between 0.5 and 8 degrees downward...and bounces off at an angular range of between 0.5 and 8 degrees upward. Almost none of it comes back to your eye, so the road surface appears dark. On the other hand, this is why light reflected off the road surface is so much more intensely glaring for oncoming drivers when the road is wet than when it is dry.

Nope. HID headlamps are not "whiter" than halogen lamps in any real sense, and blue-tinted bulbs (e.g. Sylvania Silverstar) do not have an SPD anywhere close to that of HIDs.

I thought it was closer to the startup of a flourescent bulb. Oh well.

I was at a baseball game Saturday where the umps refused to start until they knew the lights were on. Game time was 6:05 PM, and the lights didn't really take effect until about past 7. I could see a few of them (weakly) flicker on, and in about five minutes they were pretty much all on. Would auto HIDs be like that without xenon?

Sorry - wrong choice of words. I was just trying to get across that as arc lamps, they're efficient in a manner similar to flourescent lamps.

The original poster was trying to get across that he believe he saw better because the light was "whiter", and that the "whiter" light really helped with rain, fog, and wet pavement.

Just take a look at the rated life of the H1 Sylvania Silverstar.

100 freakin' hours for the 64150ST, consuming 65 watts compared to the standard 55 watt bulbs. I don't know about the Forester, but I have to remove the battery if I want to replace the left bulb on my WRX.