I have owned about a dozen of these through the years, all with pretty much the same failure - Symptoms - the LCD begins missing several segments. If a vcr+ code is punched in, the unit will go ahead and turn the vcr on and off, like it is supposed to, but the LCD is mostly unreadable.
I took one apart this morning. Found a dead 3 volt lithium battery inside. Replaced it with a good battery and powered the unit back up. Same symptoms. (The word VCR is displayed on the LCD, but several segments are missing). Next I checked the ESR on the four electrolytic capacitors and found everything within reason there. Next I ohmmetered the caps, just to make sure none were shorted, then I paralleled the caps with known good ones. No change. Checked all transistors and diodes, everything looks good. The circuit board is the double sided type so I resoldered every connection, just to ensure conductivity from one side of the board to the other, still no change. The only thing I have noticed, when I press on the back side of the LCD, and run my finger across it, the segments do flash on and off intermittently (but the text isn't correct), and when I stop pressing on the back side of the LCD the text returns to pretty much what it was when I started. I (very carefully) soldered a little bit around the microprocessor on the side that feeds the LCD, but still no change.
Has anyone ever worked on one of these and figured out what fails? It's apparently a pretty common problem. I had one of these that I bought brand new. It worked great until the low battery warning message appeared on the LCD. I replaced the batteries and from that point on the LCD has never displayed right. I called Gemstar and they said they don't service them (this has been two or three years ago).
Thanks for any help.