TV is about 6 or 7 years old and had been taking a while to come on for several days. I'd turn it on, the red led indicator would blink a few times, then it would take a few minutes for the picture to come on, sometimes accompanied by a loud noise.
Then there was a surge of some kind in the house, not lightning, the TV went out and would not come back on. The LED blinks, then it just shuts off.
Does this provide enough information to tell whether this would be worth repairing or should I just junk it and go out and get a new flat panel?
Don't get a flat panel. These are not only generally inferior in image quality, but more importantly often unrepairable due to high cost and extreme scarcity of parts! 600$ throwaway telly anyone?
anyway getting back on track. This could be a cracked solder joint (very common with Sony stuff!) in the line or power stage which has finally either let loose or stressed some other component as you nursed it along.
As the set is quite recent, I would at least get a tech to look at it as there should be plenty of life left in it. Diagnosing by internet is pure guesswork. best of luck, B.
Thanks for the suggestions. I'm going to have someone take a look at it and hope that I can get a few more years out of it for not too much money. Then maybe the reliability of the flat panels will have improved. Of course a 42 inch set will probably be $5000 by then...
ROTFLMAO!!! What a stupid piece of drivel. From the first sentence you are horribly wrong, then go on to compound the error. With one minor exception, flat panel TVs provide a vastly superior picture. (It is much less painful to watch a horrible picture on a CRT TV, I will admit). Granted, repairability will vary, however many manufactures provide full service documentation and troubleshooting charts. Under those circumstances, the only person who would be unable to repair one would be a dolt who is unable to determine which end of the soldering iron to grasp.
Oh dear - usual OMFG WTF LOL kneejerk Web 2.0 response. Ever put (even a cheap) CRT set next to the average LCD or plasma ? Thought not...a huge number (especially LCD) suffer from poor colour temperature, motion, and 'orrible digital processing, not to mention the lower lifespan. To get something better than the OP's current Sony CRT will probably mean spending quite a bit on one of the better Sony or Panasonic LCDs or a plasma - certainly, what he has now will blow most of what's currently around in the low -mid price range out of the water.
Your naive claim that 'many manufacturers supply full service documentation and troubleshooting charts' is somewhat dated to put it politely- you can probably count these on the fingers of the hand of a twice-convicted Saudi shoplifter! And most are very anal about who they supply it to, if and when you do find it. I have conversations daily with other techs who lament the increasingly limited service backup, especially from big and respected names, which has been in such steep decline in the past decade.
The sheer expense of repair for so many flat panels comes down largely to the fact that in many cases now, the tech's job is limited to being a board jockey, since these are simply pcb-swaps not component level servicing (with the exception of the odd obvious cap in the PSU or or inverter). In one recent case I had, the PSU and inverter were one and the same PCB - would have cost over 100=80 to replace, such a wasteful design, even though the PSU part was Ok. Owner declined the estimate....and let's not forget the Z-SUS and Y-SUS which usually both have to be changed at once....
Makes you long for the days or arcing Line output transformers!
Speaking of mindless drivel, you continue to prove my point. Yes, I have placed both expensive and cheap CRT TVs next to digital TVs - Plasma, LCD, and DLP. In each case I give digital points for resolution, brightness, and sharpness. A CRT will win on viewing angle, but what's the point? I've never heard a complaint about color fidelity, possibly because anybody with an IQ in double digits knows that any resemblence to the original is meerly at the whim of everyone in the signal path.
As far as service literature, I have used manuals from Samsung, Mitsubishi, Philips, Sony, LG Electronics, and Panasonic. Certainly more fingers than you have on your hand. I will grant that if you buy the cheapest Polaroid, Memorex, or house brand set you will find that schematics are unknown outside the factory (If they even exist there). That is why I warn people not to buy them. Still, even those are usually serviceable.
I've been servicing TVs for over 40 years, and I've heard the same crap, usually from someone who barely knows which end of a soldering iron to hold. It started with 'PC boards are impossible to service', then it was 'You can't service transistors'. Bonded deflection yokes caused another uproar, as did scan derived power supplies, and every other innovation that has come out of the factories in the past 4 decades.
So you're another proponent of the Y-sus / Z-sus myth. Yes, it IS a good idea to change the Y-buffers at the same time as the Y-sus IF there is any chance the buffer was damaged. The 'replace both Y-sus and Z-sus' drivel was probably spouted by somebody who thought CRTs were the highest point of TV perfection and didn't want to learn how to deal with the new technology. Tell me, do you also believe you cannot lay a plasma TV flat?
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