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Disclaimer: Before I start this blog I can not stress this enough "DON'T COPY ME". You risk death when you open and work on electronic equipment. Do not do it, do not try it. I am not condoning anything or telling you what to do. Please stay safe. If you are in North Hampshire, Surrey or Berkshire then contact me and I would be happy to help you.
When TVs break down the first places most people go are to companies like Currys / PC World, Very or AO however what they should be doing is hitting the local directories like Bark to find people that can repair their TV for them. For a basic 37" TV the cost of a new vs a repair should be an absolute no brainer and even if you are missing functionality and features or you want to scale up to a bigger screen or even scale down to a smaller one getting your old set repaired should be an obvious consideration. Think about having a spare or an additional TV set in another part of your home.
There was a time when TVs where huge cabinets that took out most of the corner of the room. Back in the days of CRT (cathode ray tube) TV sets it seemed that owners had way more respect for their TVs. A TV was something that you bought planning to have it for years to come and when I say years I mean years. It was part of the household, a member of the family. Many years ago in our house we had a TV that we ended up having for 27 years. If it started arcing my dad would re-solder the dry joints. This, however, was not something that just anyone should work on. The CRTs are like a huge capacitor and are capable of holding a deadly voltage however just by picking up the Yellow Pages and making a few phone calls you could easily get your set up and running in no time. I can always remember my cat sleeping behind the TV because of the warmth it gave out and I would give anything to be able to go back in time and sit in that same house with those same people, same cats and watch that same TV. My dad loved Hill Street Blues.
Fast forward to today and my Panasonic TX-L37U10B! I have not quite got 27 years out of this set, yet. So far I am at 13 years however there is an issue with it. As I have said before I am the last of the generations that repaired, I hate throwing anything away. There are some people to whom empty space holds more value than that which once occupied it but I can assure that this is not me. Our company motto is "saving the planet one repair at a time" and this TV is no different. Even if I hold it for spare parts I will not throw anything away.
When receiving a signal through the aerial for things like Freeview and celestial channels the TV works well. The picture is great and the sound is clear. Don't get me wrong, it is not a 4K display and probably not even close but for me it is perfect. Now the issue is that when I am using a device attached through HDMI like a Blu Ray disk player or Apple TV the TV will keep switching to standby and then back on. Anything that is connected through High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is affected.
HDMI is capable of bringing a lot of TV sets out of standby. If you switch on a Blu Ray disk player it can, in the right conditions, energise the TV set and bring it out of standby. In my case the TV is intermittently seeing the attached device as being in a standby and then active state and responding (or mis-responding) accordingly. This cycle goes on, seemingly random to the point where you give up trying to use the device. The TV is not seeing a clean signal through the HDMI interface or at least the part that signals the TV to come out of standby.
Where do we start ? The point of least resistance is often the starting point when troubleshooting. In this case the HDMI cable. Swap it for a new or a known working cable, takes a few seconds if you have one available. What about the device on the other end of the HDMI cable? try your Apple TV, Roku or Blu Ray Disc player on another TV. Does the issue follow the cable, does it follow the Apple TV or Blu Ray? using these obvious steps will help you narrow down the source. In my case all my devices and cables worked well on a different TV. I was able to rule out everything but the TV set.
In Flatscreen TV sets there are multiple circuitboards. The one on the photo below is the power supply.
The circuitboard we are interested in is this one.
This is the TV mainboard. There is a chip missing right in the centre, which I desoldered and I believed that this chip was causing my issue. So now I need this chip right. So where do I get it from?
What is a donor board? A donor board is a board that has been left over from a prior repair or a circuit board that has been sourced from somewhere like Ebay. iLogix Computer Solutions have a lot of donor boards in stock. Not just for TVs but for laptops, tablets and phones also. Over the years we have accumulated boards from various sources and like we said we throw nothing away. Sadly I do not have this board in stock therefore I can try and source the chip and solder a new one on, however there is another way to go about this. While I was searching the Internet I found the exact same mainboard listed in working order on an Auction site and it was not expensive. This means I can buy the replacement board and keep the old board as a donor ready for the next Panasonic TV.
Here is the mainboard back in the TV.
We now have a solution. We have a working TV which we fixed with used parts which we sourced for just £20.00 saving money and of course the environment We have kept this TV out of landfill. I could have bought a new one for around £300.00, but why do that when I do not have to ?
All we need to do is test the set and bingo, job done. Everyone is happy, except maybe the companies that make new TVs.
Here is a scene from Futurama which I streamed through an Apple TV while testing.
Repair !!!!!
Before we call it a day on this blog let me show you one more pic. The pic below is a BBC test card. This was back in the day when all your TV could pick up was three channels and one of these would only broadcast for a small part of the day. There was no Internet, no Netflix, No Cable or Satellite. Just three channels. As a result kids were fitter and the bicycle industry boomed. The point of the test card was that if the colour signals seemed blurred it meant you needed to adjust the focus on your TV. The girl who posed for this, in 1967, is called Carole Hersee. Although I am sure she is a lovely person I always maintained that this test card is one of the most creepiest things I ever saw.
If you have a broken TV let me know and I can help you ? repair or recycle they are both beneficial to the lives of everyone.
iLogix Computer Solutions are based in Yateley Hampshire. Our number is 01252 962898
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