jakenaked
New User
Mar 12, 2013, 1:58 AM
Post #1 of 2
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Hi there, I apologize in advance for the length of this post. Please let me know if I left any relevant information out and I will update it ASAP. :)
I have a 55" Vizio VF550M that recently stopped working. The unit was originally purchased a couple years ago from a big box store as a display model for really cheap so I suppose I should just be thankful to have gotten that much time out of it. But, I am thrifty (read: cheap) and I need a new project so I was wondering what you guys think the odds of a lasting repair would be.
The problem first started about a year after the TV was purchased. Every now and then we my wife and I were playing XBOX the display on the unit would go black. You could still hear sound and the game would continue to play like normal but the screen itself would just be completely black (no backlight either). If we turned the TV off and back on after this happened, the screen would turn on and display the Vizio logo like normal but then after a couple seconds the screen would go off. There is a logo on the stand in between the speakers that lights up white while the unit is on and this would stay lit when in this state. When the problem first started, if we turned the TV off and on a few times and waited a minute in between each cycle eventually it would come back on and stay on. The TV was used pretty regularly for a few hours 2-3 times a week and in the year that followed the first incident it only happened maybe 15 more times total. The last time it happened though there was a audible Pop! and it wouldn't come on after that.
Being adventurous, I took the back cover off the unit and began poking around. I didn't see anything immediately wrong and I checked all of the capacitors I could see and they all seemed to be fine. The fuse on the power supply looked normal. I couldn't see any scorch marks anywhere and nothing smelled like it had been burnt. I reseated the backlight inverters and the TCON, sat the TV upright and tried turning it on. It came on without any delay at all. I left it on for a couple minutes and flipped through some static channels and it seemed fine. I thought maybe something might have just been making contact with something it shouldn't so I was hoping the problem was fixed. Once I got the back panel on again (which takes about 15 minutes, put the TV back where it was and plugged everything in I was greeted with a new problem (video below). The TV still turns on but now once the splash screen logo appears there is a buzz sound followed by a series of popping noises (video below). Still it does this every time now and doesn't seem to ever go from splash screen to black screen.
https://docs.google.com/...UWc/edit?usp=sharing
So, I'm pretty sure it's just time for a new TV but I do like tinkering so I was thinking about replacing the backlight inverters. I found them on eBay for about $15-20 shipped and it doesn't seem like too much of a gamble to potentially save $1,000 on a new TV. From everything I've seen online they are the most frequent part that dies on this model TV besides the power supply. The power supply seems unlikely from what I've read though.
Anyone ever tried their hand at LCD TV repair? I'm wondering what the odds of actually having a lasting fix are. Thanks in advance for any advice or help.
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