Good morning,
About 6 months ago, a friend gave us his old TV as he was upgrading to plasma. At the time, he told us that there was a small problem with the TV that he described to us (I figured that for free, I'll live with it :-)). Occasionally, the picture would get fuzzy and grow much darker. Reds seem to dominate (at least on fleshtones), but other colors are there as well. Sound remains fine. His solution was to turn the TV off and on. He said it never takes more than a couple of tries. And so we did; life was good for several months.
Over the past month or so, other strange behaviors have surfaced. Shortly after turning on the TV, the picture will be lost, replaced by a series of B&W static bands (about 3 or 4, horizontally, go across the screen); these will then go to a full static screen, which gradually goes to black, and then the regular picture returns. At the same time this is going on, the sound also provides a wonderful array of what sound like test tones, which change with the picture, and which lower in frequency as the picture gets darker. It returns to normal as well when the picture returns.
Well, life is not so rosy for the past couple of days..... I'll still get the B&W test pattern thing, but now after that, all I get is the darkened picture with good sound. I can make out shapes and things, but that's about it. No number of on/offs have any affect. I've tried using the degaussing button on the front panel. I've tried unplugging the TV, letting it set for 10 minutes or so, and then plugging it back in. All of the input selections on the TV act the same way.
While I'm an electronics hobbyist at times, and am somewhat adept with a soldering iron, I have a feeling that a repair of this sort is out of my league, if it's even repairable. I know enough to keep my fingers out of the back, having no desire to meet a charged capacitor in close quarters :-).
So, my question is mostly about the likelihood of a successful repair at a "reasonable" cost. I'm not sure what reasonable would be, given I don't even know how much this unit would have cost new. (I believe the set is about 12-13 years old). But, having spent about $500 to repair our Mitsubishi projection TV, I don't expect it to be $25 bucks. Any idea where the problem(s) may lie and how extensive the repairs would be? Any chance at all it could be a DIY repair?
Thanks for any help you might provide.
Ron