This can't stay on the back burner forever. This is also new technology and with virtually no support from the manufacturer it is time to get resourceful.
The reason that I was not there for the first try is no concern right now. The light engine has been disassembled and reassembled and does work. A burnt up plastic filter of some kind was removed and the big splotch is gone from the center of the screen. The filter was red in color, but was way too pale to be a significant color filter. The new symptom was described to me incorrectly, and I was surprised because of the normal competency of these guys, they said it had no red. It must've been the source. Now that I have seen it I will describe it.
Originally the splotch was blue, and outside the splotch it was short on blue, or had no blue. You could not see the pixels in the splotch.
Now after they removed the burnt up filter, it is not modulating the blue. Everything black is blue, the blue screen comes up at turnon before unblanking. Most of the highlights in the active video are brownish, but in the menus it seems to be able to produce white on the selected item. In the blue, which now shows pixels on the screen, in the relatively white parts of the menu I can see the red, green and blue pixels.
I have a good eye for color, there were some white parts, even though it seemed like it couldn't produce white, it did in the menus. How is this possible ? It looks as if you have an HK short in a weak blue gun, but without retrace lines of course.
I strongly believe that the burnt up filter was a polarizing filter for the blue channel. The red tint was only a tweak of the coloimetry.
Now I am almost sure I can come up with polarizing filters, but then the problem becomes the orientation.
And this, I believe is the crux of the matter. I think what was removed was a pre-polarizing filter. A refinement. Perhaps the tint was a tweak, but then, it is possible it is not a polarizing filter. In that case, the real polarizing filte, which has failed, is buried much deeper in the light engine. This was a stick on filter, on a piece of glass I am told. I have to consider the possibilty that this filter was not the main proble, but a tertiary problem. That the people watched it screwed up for a while. We acquired the set when it started saying "Change lamp".
I simply don't think this is the only polarizing filter, if it even is one.
What I intend to do is to put a polarizing filter there, screw the tint. If the coloimetry is a little off, there are still many people who would be happy with it. I believe it is worth persuing.
Something has actually occurred to me though recently. What if, with the offending filter gone the light engine is fine ? What if the problem is in the signal processing circuits and there is nothing wrong with the LCDs at all ? I recite this point ; The menus produced white. Not much, but some.
If it produced any at all it must be working somehow. An LCD element requires both a pre and post polarizing filter to function.
The set reproduces red and green, and seems to able to kick up the blue for highlighted menu items. This leads me to believe that maybe the fault in the light engine is cured, and .......
You see the quandry.
Following through on my thinking, I cannot remember whther the menu was able to make the blacks black instead of blue. Right now I think this is the most important piece of information we need. If the menu actually reproduces black, anywhere, the light engine is fine.
If that is the case the next thing is to feed it with Y-Cr-Cb, or some component input. That would isolate it to the NTSC decoder or scan convertor if it worked right then.
So, sorry for being so longwinded here, but I was trying to be as complete and accurate as possible. Anybody out there knows anything about LCD etc., am I on the right track ? You don't throw away something that cost $3,000. And the whole set was $5,000 on average, new , and only a few years ago.
JURB