TV Experts

[rufus]

What does it mean when your tv starts showing horizontal black lines across the screen, the picture is jittery and has ghost images at the top? I've done the usual things; re-set all HDMI connections, soft reboot, factory reset, etc, and it's still doing it. Happens with no connections to the tv at all, just power it up to a black screen.

I'm assuming it's toast, cause I don't have the skill or knowledge to start pulling boards from the internals and replacing capacitors and such, and any repair visit will probably cost as much as just getting a new tv.

 

[St. Clown]

Last effort before giving up the ghost is to unplug it for a couple hours. I’m not sure of the the amount of energy stored in the set’s capacitors, but a couple hours guarantees all the energy bleeds out. Normally, I’d suggest the usual 15 minutes for smaller computers, but TVs are computers with larger screens.

 

[rufus]

I'll try that. In had read that you can unplug it for five minutes or so, and depress the power button for 30 seconds to discharge the capacitors, and did that.

So right now, it's been working perfectly. But it did that yesterday for a while too, and then the problem returned. I'm wondering if it might just be a cable service problem, but the fact that it happens on the tv with nothing connected, or also while only watching dvd's has me assuming otherwise.

 

[WeAreNDHockey]

You might try googling the issues you see, along with the brand and model number of the equipment. Believe it or not, I did that with a TV 13 years ago that my dad had bought. It "died" about 2 months after the warranty ran out. By the time we started looking for a solution, my dad had said to hell with it and bought a new, bigger tv. But my brother-in-law and I were able to diagnose the likely problem and a fairly inexpensive fix after seeing a consensus about what was almost certainly causing the issue. I think the piece of equipment needed cost me about $75, including shipping. 13 years later, that TV is still going strong, and is the only TV I own.

 

[rufus]

I've done that, and aside from the steps I've already tried, quick views of YouTube vids says it's most likely cheap capacitors failing, or something similar to do with the internal boards.

I've already ordered a new one, but instead of trashing this, I might just hold on to it and tear into the internals to see if it is something I could fix myself. Bad caps are easy to see, and easy enough to replace, even for a bumbling idiot like myself. And like a $10 fix.

Other issues I've been having might be a bad wireless module,(or possibly my new phone just not pairing well, I don't know) so if I could track a replacement for that down, I could do that too.

 

[rufus]

Well, I had to take off for a while, so I unplugged the TV. Got back about three hours later, plugged it back in, and while initially there were a few small flickers to the picture, since then it's been working perfectly.

I'm now wondering if it might have been a power supply issue, as during my initial attempts at diagnosing the problem, I went to turn it on, and had no power to any of my system. Turned out the power cord to my line conditioner/surge suppressor had become unplugged. Perhaps it was loosened before, causing the initial issues. Letting the capacitors drain in the TV might have cleared up the problem. Maybe it was a problem in the power lines. Don't know. Anyway, fingers crossed.

Cancelled the order for the new TV for the time being. Now watch it start screwing up again.

 

[rufus]

And yep, it's screwing up again.

 

[rufus]

I also had this problem once

Did you fix it? What was the solution?

I've seen videos for similar issues where people just tape off a section of the ribbon connector on the TV board.