Hi!. What is the going charge to service the HDTV DIGITAL TVs? Bench Thank You Vince
I wasn't going to start servicing them but there isn"t anyone else in this little town that does it, they keep bringing them to me, so what do you do?
As soon as the crack s.e.r. mind-reading team determines where on the planet "this little town" is, someone may get back to you.
Duh!!! You set up an appropriate fee schedule for investigating the problem and giving an estimate. This will depend on the brand, because in many cases (Visio, Memorex, Westinghouse, Sylvania, many 'captive' brands) service literature and parts are not available.
In some cases, fixes are trivial (one particular line of Philips plasma sets blow a pair of $1.00 caps in the power supply). In other cases, expensive equipment is required.
PlainBill
Start thinking about what colour you want for your new BMW
David
Please tell me more about this particular Philips line. I have not yet come across any of these and if someone calls me for repair I would love to check these caps first and perhaps save some troubleshooting time. Please let me know the models/line, as well as the location/value of the affected caps. A tip like this could save a small repair company like mine some valuable troubleshooting time, and it would be greatly appreciated. Mike
The Philips 42PF7220A and 42PF7330A sets used a Samsung 'core' consisting of the panel, power supply, drivers, X, Y, and Z sustain boards, and perhaps some other components. The manufacturer (Philips in this case) added the small signal boards, I/O panel, controls, case, etc.
The symptom on the Philips set can take two forms: Turn the TV on and it appears to turn on, then instead of the green 'working' led you get a red led blinking in a 6 short blinks, short pause, 3 short blinks, long pause, repeat. Or the blink can be 7 blinks, long pause, repeat. This depends on the level of firmware loaded on the set.
In each case, the cause is a pair of 3300 µF 10 V caps in the power supply with bulging tops. Replace them with the best low ESR, long life caps you can find. I use Panasonic FM series. Then download the latest firmware from Philips and update the set.
The same power supply and same problem occurs on a number of other sets, including the Philips 50", and I believe TVs by other manufacturers including Samsung and Zenith.
The biggest problem I have found is removing the power supply. There are about 60 screws you have to pull to remove the back and pull the power supply.
PlainBill
Bill, wouldn't that be a routine "first step" these days with LCD TV's/monitors, checking for visibly failed (bulging/leaking) electros before digging any deeper? Takes litltle time, saves much.
It should be, but the level of troubleshooting ability varies widely, even among so-called professionals. For example, it is a given that switching supplies require low ESR, 105 °C capacitors. Any number of times I have heard of consumers discovering a service shop has substituted standard caps for low ESR caps.
This particular flaw in the Philips Plasma set is well known, and is obvious once the back of the set is removed (no a trivial task, admittedly). I recently assisted someone who had the same problem on a 50" Philips plasma. The TV had previously been taken to a service shop who had kept it for several months, then pronounced it 'too expensive to repair.'
PlainBill
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