What's a GOOD color, low cost, flat panel TV ...reliably work for a while?

You state one data point, something about "magnetics" causing a high price. Plasma sets are *cheaper* than LED lit LCD displays... if you actually look at prices rather than trying to guesstimate it from limited technical knowledge.

You are right, cost is not the same as price... who cares about cost? I care about price. If they really cost more to make though, they likely would already be off the market. Why sell an inferior product for a lower profit margin?

Yes, well you don't determine the market. The rest of the world has a clear preference for LED lit LCD displays which is why so few plasma sets are still in the stores.

Interesting. I've never had problems with an LCD screen but often had serious problems looking at CRTs. Unless the refresh rate was above

I probably will, sometime. I wanted to do them "in order". I ran across the book in an airport (used) bookstore, so snatched it up for beach reading. ;-)

I've seen the Shrugged movies, so far, which tends to ruin books for me (not so much the other way around). We'll see.

IME, caps, drive fets and, sometimes, cold solder connections (esp on things like transformers/coils).

Having a programmable multi-output lab supply on hand can make it easy to decide if it's even *worth* fixing many devices (e.g., discover the screen has been "invisibly damaged")

If you look, carefully, at the boards, you'll often see devices are not derated adequately. I've encountered several "disposable" devices wherein the components were actually *under* spec -- e.g.,

When recapping, always opt for 105C, ~5000hr parts (assuming you want to keep the device and not have to repeat the exercise, again!)

most people prefer the picture."

The one thing about plasmas is the viewing angle. The LCD sets vary in that , but like the old rear projos they are getting better.

There are also some people who cannot stand LCD. For some reason they will prefer the plasma, perhaps because it is the old familiar phosphor.

I have also seen abberations in LCDs like what could be termed "overtwist". Sure some of them clip whites more than I (and many) prefer, but some not only clip blacks, they invert them below a certain IRE. What's more, even i f most normal images look fine at a wide viewing angle, the overtwist abber ation can vary considerably at different angles.

Or, Samsung 'admits' it better than others?

Is there a 'recapping kit' for my Element? Element Electronics ELGFT401

Is there a 'recapping kit' for my Element? Element Electronics ELGFT401

You mentioned how youu 'listen' to a film on TV. We have two complaints with this Element's sound:

1. Volume control is weird! adjustable from 0 through to 100. sometimes films and shows are too loud at 1, and considering 0 is mute, not so good.
2. [may not be fault of TV, but could be the 'conversion' process] turn volume up to 18 or 20 and it still sounds like everybody is mumbling, barely hear the dialogue, hang on every word and THEN...music! or action scenes erupt! and it's like that ad for audio systems where your hair is blown straight back away from the set, big ouch! Instantly have to turn volume down to 2 or 3, then when dialogue starts it's back up to 20 to try and understand. Doesn't seem to be good sound balance in today's feature films.

The reason I suggest conversion process is because after changing to the Element TV and having become used to an old analog TV with the 'free' converter, the volume/sound seemed to have different characteristics. this sometimes included an 'echo' effect in those 'transition' scenes, not too close, not too far away, just transition scenes. Distinctly hear an echo in the sound.

Any comments about which produce better sound? Samsung, Vizio, or others?

There are several ways to interpret the number of repair kits. In this case, I suspect the vendor expects to sell a large variety of Samsung kits, which suggests a problem. For what it's worth, I rather like Samsung products will admit that all my previous office LCD monitors (Samsung 932B) have been recapped.

I couldn't find any kits. However, there are replacement boards available from the cannibals:

I bought a cheap PROSCAN TV , 43" 1080p from Tiger Direct 5 yrs ago for $900. it has been on every day as a 2nd computer monitor when not used for TV. Some day the CCFL backlights will turn pinkish and expire then I will replace them for $20.

Now you can get this refurb for < $500 LG 120Hz 47" 1080p LED/LCD

No, from what I heard the sets die or operation becomes erratic. The kits are aftermarket, usually from other vendors. To me this is not acceptable and I won't buy.

If you suspect bad caps it may be best to find replacements for all the big electrolytics in there. Low ESR, large enough ripple rating, the good stuff.

Another problem with some consumer TV gear is poor heat-sinking. Just had a modulator die. Someone thought it was a good idea to "heat-sink" a DPAK burning two watts into about one square-inch of Chinese 1/4oz copper that you could almost see through. Now there is a fairly massive copper plate and even that gets to almost 60C.

Sam's Club sells Vizio, my wife frequents Sam's club way to often and knows the staff well. She ask what brand to get and was told don't get Vizio because the get way more returns with Vizio than any other brand. I do need to qualify that with, I think they sell way more Vizio than any other brand. I think Panasonic has become a quality brand. It didn't start that way, when I started repair in 73" it was low end, but not anymore. There's always Sony, if you want to pay for it. Mikek

Very true 0.1% of 100,000 units looks far worse than 1% of 100 units. It would be nice to see 'failures per unit sold' number.

Hmmm, someone else mentioned they had a Panasonic 2yrs [1 yr out of warranty] with a dead power supply which Panasonic repaired as though it were in warranty and they had to go some 100 miles to do so. GE did something similar for our built-in microwave: out of warrantee, but sent the replacement part, complementary. I lean toward the people who support post-warranty on products. I don't understand a 'rigid' cutoff. Why not help people who at least ask? has to be cheaper than those expensive advertising budgets and goes a lot further [in my estimation]

I shy away from Sony since the old 'beta' days, just seemed too greedy for me. Someone also mentioned Hitachi for supplying service manuals to dealers to provide support/service anywhere. I like the idea of being able to obtain a service manual just in case the thing lives a LONG time.

A friend has a Sony set and it has a buzz in the speaker, very annoying. I would have returned it for a refund the next day but some people just don't.

I'm no fan of Sony at all, not just because of this either.

Or, there are more Samsung sets than others. Or, more people want to hold onto their Samsung while other vendors products are freely discarded ("not worth holding onto"), etc. Or, the folks who buy the other sets tend not to be technically inclined? Or...

I had a gorgeous JVC CRT TV that I kept running for 20+ years. The picture was just fantastic -- esp the reds. Despite the fact that I could easily replace it with something "current".

All the recapping kit does is gather up all the components for you in a nice poly bag. With a (very) little effort, you can sort out which components *are* bad, are *likely* bad and will potentially *become* bad. A pad and a pen are your friends, here. :>

When I was recapping LCD's & TVs for a local nonprofit, I didn't even bother trying to "stock" common parts. Just gut the failed unit, get out a magnifying glass and write down component values. By checking manufacturer(s) of the failed and nonfailed components, you could sort out which

FWIW, having a place where you can *set* these things in their disassembled state is *really* golden! Trying to gather up all the parts and put them in a nice pile and HOPE they don't get lost (or mixed in with the parts from other units) just leads to frustration down the road: "Why is this one screw so much longer than all the rest??"

That would agree with my observations. I don't think I'd consider Vizio a "Cadillac". More like a Chevy (in terms of popularity and sterotyped quality). As to whether its a high-end Chevy or a sh*tbox Chevy...

I purchased two Sony products ~30 years ago. One was broken, "out of the box" (though we didn't notice that particular aspect of it until AFTER having mailed in the "registration card"). Some 90+ days later, we got it back from the depot (vendor wouldn't swap it out for us because we had already "registered" the purchase). By that time, the second device had also failed.

I've never purchased a Sony product since!

Their TV's (CRT) always used house numbered parts -- esp for the HOT, etc. Made them annoying to repair (hey, I don't do this for a living so I have no incentive to chase down "potential alternates"). So, I wouldn't touch a Sony product.

One thing in their favor is that they (used to?) make complete service manuals available for their products (not true of many vendors). So, you could look at a drawing and determine that it would likely be a waste of time to open the case on a product given a particular set of symptoms (and likely cause).

Keeping a customer is a lot less expensive than *getting* a customer! Companies seem to have forgotten that...

I loved all of my JVC kit (primarily video). Reasonably good quality ("value for money"). Reliable. Stood the test of time, etc.

They supported *customers* (not just service depots) by making service manuals available. *And*, you could call the factory and speak with a technician: "For that particular model, you should look at X, Y and Z. In fact, we have a service bulletin that suggests upgrading U23 on all warranty repairs so you might want to do that while you have the case off. We sell a parts kit for that or you can just buy the individual components from a local retailer. Thanks for calling!"

IIRC, the SM for my "HiFi" VCR was almost 3/8" thick -- lots of full color fold-outs, schematics, test/alignment procedures, etc.

When I purchased the VCR, I noticed a visual artifact that was always present in recordings I made. It would occur at the point where I "spliced" a second recording onto the end of an existing recording (i.e., the very short "overlap" portion of the media).

I complained about this and returned the unit. It came back a short while later and the "problem" still existed. I returned it again and they sent me a *new* unit (to replace my existing

OTOH, there is a bug in the Nakamichi Dragon's tape counter. Essentially, a race between two subsystems that can easily get out of sync.

The tape deck "reverses" the tape motion when it reaches the end of "side A" -- to play "side B"! Think of this as "forward play" and "reverse play" (there are actually two play buttons on the deck pointing in different directions)

So, while forward playing, the tape counter counts *up*. When it reaches the end of the "forward" side, it begins reverse playing and the counter counts back *down*. In theory, eventually reaching the same value that you started with when you began the "forward play".

However, if you manually eject the tape *after* it has reached the end of forward play, manually flip the tape over (so the "back" side is now ready to be "forward played") and manually press "forward play", the tape will MOVE in the forward direction -- but the counter will count in the *backward* direction.

Can you spell "bug"?

Talk to the manufacturer and they will tell you it's *supposed* to work this way!

"Really? OK, let's pretend I'll buy that explanation. That there is some value to this. Then, why doesn't it *repeatably* behave this way? And, how could that possibly make sense if I have ejected the tape and placed some *other* tape in the deck? Why should the deck 'count backwards' for this other tape that I am playing 'forwards'? I.e., you've got a bug *somewhere* and you just don't want to acknowledge it..."

I beg to differ somewhat. I use an ESR meter to find bad capacitors. When I only replaced the few caps that measure "bad", I found that other caps on the same PCB would blow up later. I don't like rework, so I tend to replace everything that might be a problem. I'm not adverse to replacing everything as the additional time and parts cost are minimal. The bulk of the work is collecting the assorted replacement caps, and extracting the PCB so that the caps can be replaced. Buying a kit saves me the time necessary to collect the caps and allows me to easily replace everything.

How many did you get back after a few weeks? I gave up that practice years ago. Wanna guess which non-counterfeit capacitors are bad here?

In my never humble opinion, it's not the caps that are defective, but rather the design. Most caps are sized in both capacitance and voltage to be the absolute minimum necessary to make it though the warranty period. Details and conspiracy theory on request.

Ummm... take photographs as you go along? If you run into a giant mess, such as the typical large screen LCD display, I print the photograph, and place the printouts on a slab of styrofoam. As I remove the screws, I shove them through the paper and into the styrofoam in their original locations.

Careful. I don't know if the re-capping guys expend this much effort but sure hope so: Besides capacitance, voltage and size one must pay a lot of attention to things such as required ripple current spec and ESR. Since that can't be gleaned from schematics that are usually not furnished anymore this is not a trivial task.

I learned this the hard way as a kid. Had a major capacitor bank,

We're (philosophically) saying the same thing. If you *just* replace caps (fets, etc.) that "look bad" (or that "test bad"), you're throwing away all that "overhead" on a repair that you are likely to repeat some time later. All to save, what, the cost of a couple more components? *Look* at the board. It's fairly obvious that these caps are seeing high ripple currents; those are just bulk decoupling, etc. Common sense to sort out which ones will be failing that haven't *yet*.

Ditto for folks who buy hi-temp caps, but only rated for ~2000hrs. If you're planning on discarding the device a year or so from now, why bother fixing it? Just replace it *now*!

Actually, we recorded the S/N's of every display that went out the door (along with those that came in) This was helpful in prosecuting folks who would steal from the organization... either by smuggling items out the door *or* by literally breaking and entering after hours. When you've got thousands of PC's, hundreds of laptops, TVs, "stereos", high dollar medical equipment, etc. under one roof *without* 24/7 staffing, you're a prime target!

You would often see units that "tested good" come back some time later -- units that never made their way *to* me (for repair) because they "worked". They had a (far too!) liberal replacement policy so folks were often bringing items back for refunds/exchanges.

I never saw a unit that *I* had repaired come back. This is probably because:

- I only worked on the "better"/larger units (my pro bono time is limited) and, chances are, folks wouldn't want to return a *functioning* device to exchange for "something better".

- Units that "worked" without my intervention were more likely to be near EoL. So, more likely to fail after the sale.

- Units that I had repaired had most of the likely to fail components "replenished" and would tend to see much longer lifetimes after the sale (no. you can't return an item 2 years after you bought it!)

Yup. Folks who just do cookie cutter board swaps and component swaps are just kicking the can down the road, "a little bit". The biggest challenge with spec'ing replacement parts is often a mechanical one. "Larger" devices tend to be physically larger, have different lead spacings, lead diameters, component heights, etc. Most *boards* have just enough room (real estate and volume) for the components that are installed in them!

I use a sheet of paper instead of styrofoam. Doesn't have to be "full size" or "to scale", just "RELATIVELY correct". Label it with the model number, "this end up", "view from back", etc. Then, set it in the *back* shell of the display (the front shell has a large rectangular hole in it! :> ), then set it aside.

For a large "TV", I try to reinstall the screw in their original holes -- with boards/case parts/etc. out of the way. A piece of masking tape labeled with something ("L" vs. "R") to tag those plastic parts that are "slightly different".

But, you are still vulnerable to things getting tipped or falling out in transit. E.g., when I've done this at home (living room floor being the perfect "large uncluttered space" :> ), I have to *stack* the disassembled displays/shells lest I encounter the wrath of SWMBO! One small screwup and I end up with a pile of loose parts... Doing it at the non-profit's facility was far worse as some "nameless", unaccountable person would invariably move stuff around to clear a space to work. Then, returning a week or two later, I'd have to hunt for my "piles" and wonder how much got lost in the shuffle...

Most of the crud you will encounter in consumer kit "bottom feeds". So, just plan on buying "high quality" components and, chances are, you've got them beat. E.g., I tend towards 25 & 35V Panny FR & FM series parts (relying on memory, here, so I may have mixed up my alphabet soup). Seeing a 16V part usually raises my eyebrows a bit -- unless it's on a 5V supply, etc. Safer to just use 25 & 35.