You get what you pay for yes TVs are made cheap but that’s your 500 dollar sets for quality you need to spend about a 1k and up. I have a Samsung I got on sale for 700 originally was 1300 it was a year old when I got it the things 10 years old now still fires up and have no issues. Don’t by cheap and you won’t get cheap
@@ryans413 I agree, I have a 77" oled from LG. But quite a few people are happy if their set lights up and they can see things moving around. And some of these sets can be quite decent
The shop I worked part time for, closed in 2007. A lot of our repair worked involved CRT based projection TV's, usually Mitsubishis; but customers stopped fixing them when you could buy a new flat screen set for what it cost to fix a CRT rear projection set.
I got out of VCR repair in 1994 because prices got so cheap, to many of my repair estimates were being declined. I started in 1984 doing repairs, worked on about 11,000 VCRs, made a good living at it. Then prices started falling, I got out. A year later I visited the shop and the tech I left my repairs to, he said he was only working two or three days a week on VCRs, he had a different full time job, at the post office. I think I got out at the perfect time. Edit to add, I started when vcrs we're a big seller. Their sales built big box chains like Highland Appliance, Fretters and ABC appliance, My boss managed to pick up all 3 stores, in-store warranties, manufacturers warranties and store stock repairs. It was as boom time for me.
I found a 50" unit a few years ago in a dumpster, and found the same problem with the backlight being open circuit. I took the panel apart and went thorough the LEDs one by one with a meter until I found the dead one. I bridged a wire across it and the rest of the LEDs came back. I used that set for a few years before giving it to a friend, never had another issue with it. Although it was a good exercise and provided a lot of understanding on how these TVs work, I would tend to agree that the labor required to repair it probably exceeded the value of a new TV.
I did the same thing with a 56 inch that was given to me for free. One bad LED. I jumped it, but it only worked for a few months before another one opened. I replaced the entire backlight kit for about 50 bucks, which of course with the amount of time and effort required on this unit would not be worth doing if you were running a repair business. Since it was for myself though, I figured it was worth the time and effort for a 50 dollar TV that was otherwise in excellent condition.
@@ShawnC22002 lols thats definetly true and glad to know fhat it was feasible to do so for somone to be able/to do so and was able to repair their own set/stuff etc instead of having to resort to default on replacement etc ykwis
I'm amazed at just how little there is to see inside these things. Just 2 printed circuit boards and that's all. I can just about remember my parents buying our first ever TV set, I was very young at the time, must have been end of the 1950s. We had that for about 15 years. Once in a while my dad had to change a vacuum tube, but it was still going strong when we finally replaced it with a color TV with a fancy remote control and a receiver with a multitude of TV stations. The old one had just three.
It's the first thing i thought myself haha. Plasma's DID get bloody heavy before LCD saved our backs haha, but yeah i always will remember tubes for their weight, the big old wood style ones, but between the casing and the guts inside those things, you could understand the weight haha And it might be nostalgia talking, but i kinda miss those things, the joy of finding channels amongst the fuzz with a couple of dials will always rival the auto search days of today when it comes to fond memories of simple tech. not to mention who didn't love being able to watch tv through a coathanger :D
Exacfly I thiught theres at least the several boards for the tuner, the backlight inverter board or like the video board etc of course im making a fool of mehself talking or sqauwkin and spouting abiyt what idk about lol ykwis
Even more circuits exist now. They are just much much smaller. And when i say more circuits exist now, i mean exponentially more. A tv with the amount of hardware you would think to be normal is called a desktop computer.
I will have to admit though ... sometimes I spend way more time repairing something than it's worth, but if it's your favorite and does what you need, why not !! - I'm a copier / printer technician by trade and have customers that hang onto older machines because they are simpler !!! not having to refer to a manual or make several decision before making a simple copy has it's merits. Believe it or not, very smart people like Doctors, Lawyers and Judges do this because: " push 5, push print" is easier than consulting the manual !!
This is true, there are many people who just want the machine to "do it's thing" or "just work" but they usually are those who have no real idea how it does it's thing. It's okay, there is nothing wrong with that unless you are trying to say that everyone should think like that and not have any way of repairing their own machine/device.
I had an older copier donated to me years ago. Having no understanding of how they worked, I tried studying up on them. Needless to say I failed because of my lack of knowledge. However I will say copy machines are incredible machines, and very fascinating in how they work. I learned in my studies about electrically charged selenium drums, corona wires and fusing rollers, etc. Indeed complex and very fascinating machines! My hat is off to skilled printer/copier repair techs. 😎👍
I once went on a service call (including billing 45 minutes of travel each way) to _plug in a pair of PC speakers._ The kicker? The client was a neurosurgeon. Rewire someone’s brain? No problem! Plug in two plugs? Too complicated! :p
I don't repair any tv's but I do harvest many usable parts from them before I discard them. Copper and aluminum are always valuable commodities for their metal content. I often use heat sinks from these old tv's for my projects.
I love playing devil's advocate regarding the flyback transformers. They're not actually real flybacks, either. The flyback comes from the tube it's attached to, not the flyback topology. But regardless.. it functions like a royer so it's exciting!
I got donated a big 60 inch telly a couple of months ago, can't remember the brand but it was your standard Vestel electronics in the back. Still working, but like you said, most of the LEDs had gone blue. Apparently it's because there's no such thing as a white LED, they're all blue LEDs with a phosphor coating that glows white, and over time, the phosphor burns off. Anyway, I ordered a new set of backlight strips for it - someone on eBay had a set he'd recovered from a TV with a cracked screen, and for £23 it was worth a punt. So one evening I'm there carefully removing the LCD panel, along with the various layers of fresnel and diffuser panels to get to the backlights. The old set comes out, the new set goes in, and success, it's working. Time to put it back together. Back goes the fresnel lens, the white diffuser, and then very carefully, the LCD panel itself. I'm just reconnecting the fragile LCD ribbon cables to the daughterboard next to the edge of the panel, when the LCD shifts out of it's mounting - only an inch or so - but enough to rip one of the ribbon cables off the edge of it. Damn it. So close, another couple of minutes and I'd have had it back together and working, but no, now it's landfill. I'm done with repairing backlights! Save the PSU and mainboard for future jobs, but that's the last time I attempt taking a screen to bits.
The bigger they are the harder they fall. Free stuff sometimes bites you in the arse! Just getting a new big screen is cheaper in the long run so I will never do a LED replacement job ever again either.
LOL I feel your pain. Got my 55 inch back together. Everything worked perfect. Look on the bench and there are the diffuser spacers. Back apart, spacers installed. CRACK, goes the screen on installation. Should have just left it alone. LOL All that for a $350 TV.
I don,t blame you mate. I used to be in the TV audio repair business back in the 70s & I could see then the way things were going with all the chips making it uneconomical to repair stuff .So I got out & totally changed direction into house renovation. I am retired now and very glad I did. Interesting to see how little is in the new sets compared with the old TVs.
Working on two CRTs given to me lol. One gets no power and the only had a horizontal white like. No real progress other than a replacement resistor though
I totally get your point. Backlight in my old LG TV was dying, 18 out of 32 backlight LEDs died so the screen was still working but was really dark. I decided to fix it myself just for fun and to learn something, but only because I was able to get complete set of new LEDs for $15. However taking TV apart, removing old LEDs an putting it back together after installing new LEDs took me over 3 hours, was pain in the a** and it was really easy to damage LCD panel while disassembling and assembling TV. If I had to do it for somebody I'd tell them it's not worth it and to get a new TV.
Absolutely I can attest. This is especially true for bigger TV's like the one shown in this video. They can be a nightmare to try repair. Just not worth it unless you have very specialized gear to make the job simpler. Even then, probably not worth it
yep.. did a 65" LED backlight TV, it took me FOUR hours. Got it back togther and it worked. It then sat on my bedroom floor for a couple months and then I decided i wanted to sell it. So I powered it on and one side of the screen was all screwed up. I figured out that the LCD ribbons got screwed up somehow, even though I literally had not moved nor touched it in those couple months it sat.
I completely share your opinion. These TV's are simply incredibly too cheap to repair, mostly because you can't afford spending highly qualified technician time to simply inspect these... Best case you can order a complete module or board, if available. But when it comes to screens, larger ones are simply a nightmare and an effective waste of space! And you now have a new generation of giant monitor screens with the same problem... We use here a French expression "ça s'fait plus!" you can translate in "it's obsolete or not made anymore", that implies your "consumer electronic" cannot be repaired and as your screen is too small and has no internet technology, you can have a larger new one for the same money, and the same for your handy, cause the new 5G technology or new Android, even if you're not sure to have any network where you live... And this is true for many things like washing machines, cars and so on. Note the new trend in cars that use giant touch screens interfaces, replacing switches, sliders and indicators. I imagine a (close?) future nightmare for all those having to replace or trying to replace it, because it's not available anymore, and simply can't be fixed practically.
I doubt that car manufacturers are taking any steps to future-proof their tech-heavy cars. It’s going to pretty annoying to have to figure out whether or not it’s possible to use your car when the control and display electronics fail after a few years. You can easily find a 50-year-old car that’s drivable today, but is there any chance that a 2020 vehicle will be drivable in 2070?
I worked in a tv repair shop back in the 1960`s when I was in high school....back then,tv`s had tubes and some transistors in them as solid state electronics were just beginning to come online.....who knew they would come to this.
I agree,if someone told me back in the eighties that toe tv would be on the wall and your gonna have to leave the shop and start a new career I would say they were on something
still tube tv and radios kicking around. i have fixed a few, and nost of the issues were just old caps causing raster issues, and the wrong voltage on the horizontal op tube causing it to go into a death squeal before it cooked itself
Back in the day, full wave bridge, metal oxide varistors,electrolytic capacitors, horizontal output, vertical outputs, sound ic was where most problems found. Low voltage shutdown circuit, then you had to have sam's to find anything.
@jdslyman It's a spoon. If it breaks, it's obvious why. If it works, and it looks fine, it probably is fine. There's not much about a spoon that can break.
Competition for sales among TV manufacturers these days is more about *PRICE* than quality -- but you get what you pay for! It's very unfortunate that these sets cannot be economically repairable so the user can get many, many more years of service out of them, unlike most of the CRT sets. It seems so wasteful!!
Here's the problem, it's Joe consumer that demanded lower prices. it's the Walmarts of the world that demanded lower prices so they could sell more TVs. Back when TV is worth $1,000 or more there was some quality that went into the construction and they lasted a long time but Joe six pack doesn't want to pay $1,000 for a TV he wants one for $299. If these cheap TVs had just been left to sit on the shelf and not sell and everybody kept spending their hard-earned cash on expensive TVs we would have seen the quality remain and the cheap manufacturers we'll be pulling the hair out wondering why people went buying their junk. but everyone wants to save A Buck everyone goes for the lowest common denominator as far as price and we get what we get that's just the way it is. Now as far as saying your CRT is superior well Syracuse have a lot going against them they're not that accurate they have geometric distortion they blanket you with low level x-ray radiation. Lots of reasons to not like CRTs. But televisions in general are down to just a couple of chips everything is all integrated into one big I see there are a totally disposable commodity these days and have to be treated as such
It is somewhat about the demand of lower prices vs. quality but a big factor is what your consumer data is worth to the manufacturer - it's eye opening that in many cases manufacturers almost sell at a loss based on what they will get back in selling your data to 3rd parties from those "SMART" Apps - even setting up your TV initially may "require" you to create an account to get to the point at which you can select an input. By the way HDMI is a good platform for transmitting all kinds of information (not just video / audio but ethernet which is part of the specs). If manufacturers offered non-SMART TVs my guess is they would be much more expensive.
@@TheRailroad99 Possibly worse (to repair) as they may add additional complexity in the form of "features" and video quality (higher density / localized lighting).
All the technology advancements goes into the display, and no where else. I attempted fix 24" Logik Television due to having perfect display, and figured out standby issue on the powerboard, and then learnt there were other problems such as the FPGA has overheated, and caused the solder to crack underneath which also may have caused a short and blew some other compoments including the ROM storing all the OS information for instance. So gave up on this junk, and brought cheap universal mainboard which connects to the LCD + backlight it had brought the panel back to life with a lot more inputs. (Btw, I had spent just £10 on the universal board).
I didn't know u could do that... it sounds cool. So when you did use the Logik, u essentially u turned it from an LG or Sony or whatever brand it was into a Logik TV while still using the OEM screen, power supply and drivers?... is that about the gist of it?
@@paulmorley1225 The cheap replacement is basically universal board that works in all kinds of models of panels, and essentially turned broke AF Logik into working monitor.
I agree with you there. I fixed my own Toshiba with LG/Philips backlight board. I did get a new board which was expensive. Later I did find a Chinese repair kit and fixed it and sold the new board. It was a horrible job fixing tracks and fitting the surface mount FETs, though years later it is still working. I wouldn't fix one for anyone else.
Hey, on the other hand, the small surface mount stuff has sparked its nieche too! I nowadays do a lot of graphics card board repair and other kinds of abused 'big' hardware. I do enjoy a good repair, where I'm moderately challenged to rely on my skills for troubleshooting. Even years later, it's still satisfying to feel proud of myself for figuring out something I would've never done ten years ago.
What happened to me. Bad led strip on an ONN tv. Wired in series so if one goes bad, the TV goes black. Was able to remove the screen, but it got bumped while it was out and that was the end of it. You think the leds could be attached from the back to make replacement easy without tearing out the screen, diffusers, and that white sheet, but instead, it is engineered to become disposable. Yes, it was a black fri walmart TV. Shouldn't have wasted time on it.
Screens this big are easy to work on. The layers are just stacked together and not glued. It's usually smaller screens that are all glued together and impossible to fix without breaking. The only issue I've ever found is dust. Pretty much need an actual "clean room" to fix these and not get dust in there.
@@timramich Well I tried once and the panel had bad lines afterward. Maybe it was already bad before, no idea, but I suppose some of the small flex around it got damaged or something during the handling, despite taking all precautions, moving these large things around is not that easy.
@@francoisrevol7926 i must have done 400 and only broke one panel and that was cause it was glued in and i got inpatient trying to cut down the back of the panel with a blade
I really can relate to this. New televisions are just so cheap and usually compared to that around 2009 you get double the resolution at around that just under 200€ range. This video just got my eye because I'm watching this on my 55" LG where I have changed all of the leds. Can't recommend, for emergency purposes maybe, but it's just too much work trying to get the prisms back perfectly and all the layers back without any dust inbetween.
I was an installer for an electronics retailer in Canada, so I had access to many TVs that customers wanted to dispose of when they bought their new TV, I didn’t attempt repairing any due to a lack of space to work on them (took an LG panel to bits in my Sprinter work van for fun but could not do real work / keep things from getting damage). Apparently the LCD panels all have a couple thin optical quality glass panels that have some value if recovered and one is coated with transparent conductive metal (ITO) that is super expensive and apparently worth recovering all on it’s own. I haven’t attempted any of that but I still have a few extra panels and I’ll be moving into a house that I’ll potentially have more space to work on projects, so I may give it a go, starting with a tablet LDC panel or maybe computer monitor.
First thing I do when I see a broken LCD is to point a bright flashlight into the front of the panel from close distance. If the backlight is broken and the rest is working you'll see that the image is there. Instantly tells me if it's even worth opening it up 🧐
Had an apartment management company I was doing low voltage work for ask me if I could try to fix one of their 65" LCD TVs that went out. Told them it would be cheaper to just buy a new cheap one. They asked me to do it anyway. One bad integrated circuit and a trip to Microcenter later and I charged them $600 for a tv that was worth maybe $800 brand new. Got it working though. Their poor money management was my good fortune
I used to love working on older pre-flat panel CRT type Televisions. Now if it isn’t something obvious it isn’t worth the time to try to fix. Last one was a large Samsung flatscreen, and no schematics in the service manual. I was like “what the hell!” Worthless service literature! I’m used to component level fault finding from older equipment. Now so much is surface mount components that is damn near impossible to repair without all kids of special equipment incl microscope, even if you had the schematics. I’m focused now mainly on guitar amps. Even this equipment when all solid state, can be a SMD nightmare! I remember a Crown Monitor Amp CE1000/CE2000 that was of throw away design “module replacement only pretty-much” and since it was a lower tier model loaded with Mf’en SMD’s! Not worth the investment. Very sad electronics repair has gone this way, because it really was a love of mine doing component level repairs. 😩
If you are good at component level repair, schematics are not the holy grail - they're helpful, but not entirely necessary - if you struggle, there are many channels on here that show how to repair without schematics. A bench microscope is invaluable for the modern day tech, and in the scheme of things a second user one costs pretty much the same as the profit on a good repair job maybe two or three. You are only constrained by the limits you put upon yourself...
@@will_doherty Not when it's multilayered PCBs you should always have all the info before chasing red herrings down rabbit holes. Especially when doing live testing.
@@SlyerFox666 why do you think I refuse to do cap jobs on camcorders. Multivay airports leaky electrolytic that soaks into multivar boards and causes problems on the internal layers. I refuse 100% of them because he accept a job like that you charge somebody for the job and then two weeks later it comes back with another fault and then you're married to the God damn thing. in the end you end up having to refund because one probably leads to another and you've wasted all kinds of time. Forget it I just turned them away at the door. I don't care how much somebody wants that old handicap fixed I'll let it become somebody else's problem.
@@12voltvids Oh I feel your pain, been there myself, an not to mention the old camcorders where the mechanical strip down was a literal work of art unless you want springs sproinging off in all directions and you do all that just to get to the real surprise. I never liked it but alot of places I worked would charge for the initial diagnosis. Basically just to look at the extent of the damage first, and charge a fair amount for it. After a few of the gems like you mentioned you realise if your gonna go into business on your own this is exactly why they charge that look at fee, otherwise your out of pocket every time it crops up, but yea best bet if its in that state it's a full board replacement ... If you can get one in this day an age tho. 👍
Hi Dave, wal mart doesn't have any more tv's that are around $130 dollars, all the ones that I saw just the other day start around $378 dollars and up !! Hyperinflation!!
The main problem with LED screens is that if you turn the backlight on fully, LED bulbs do not have a long life. never turn the backlight on 100%. max 70-80%
I don't get how anybody could stand to run these at 100%, that just burns my eyes. The lowest setting is often just fine for me. It wouldn't surprise me if most people aren't aware of the brightness setting, and if they are they don't know its impact on component lifetime.
I found a fluorescent backlit tv in the trash a while ago. All the vents were packed with dust and it failed due to overheating. It would work normally for 2 or 3 minutes then the colors would go crazy in a psychedelic wavy way. Even if I had fixed it, one of the backlight tubes was way down on output and there was a heavy brown spot across one of the sheets of diffuser material. I only bothered taking it apart to separate the recyclables from the e-waste and because I occasionally find use for a big sheet of plastic.
Interesting fun fact about Sony Bravia TVs the early ones so there was a problem identified on the early sets of customers damaging their TV because uneducated people would spray Windex on the screen to ckean and the Windex would run down the panel into the drive ICS that were at the bottom and short out drive ICS on the flex tabs. Sony in their wisdom thought okay if people are going to get the panel wet and since the liquid is going to run down and short out the IC let's turn the panel over and put the IC on top that way if they spray any liquid on it it'll run down into the bezel but it won't hurt anything. they obviously forgot that heat rises and all those fluorescent lights generated a lot of heat so then they ended up cooking the ICS and creating yet another problem psychedelic colors as the icees started the short out. when you get that brown yellow kind of film on the inside and around the tubes and stuff that's generally an indication that the set has been used in a smoker's home because the cooling air with all that tire and nicotine tends to stick to everything and turn everything kind of a yellowish Brown gross color.
That intro montage threw me back to my mid teens. I did often open stuff up and successfully fixed a lot of stuff on my own. Not electronics Since that was over my head but a thing like a boombox was usually something mechanical. But I did have miscellaneous electronic boards that I would just apply voltage through in random spots on the solder spots just to see what would pop.
Back in my day, 70's, my dad planted into my thick head that a simple tabletop black and white TV will kill you quicker than you can do it yourself! Then he, a master electrician, showed me how! I've never even considered adjusting the horizontal set on one after that! Thank you for letting others know about this. Kudos to you sir. 👏
When i was in The final semester to become an electronic 3. Grade engineer, i stuck my fingers on The flyby trafo in a Big B&O (Danish Tv. I am from Denmark btw), by accident. All i remember was waking up on my colleagues table. All muscles had contracted, and made me fly. 24 years later, still have problems due to that Day. I need to get up slowly. My heart is still slow to get up in gear. Old CRT systems are DANGERous. I still work on them for retro, But i always Take care with two underlines.
I use to have a tv repair store, with seven employees. I got out before I lost too much money. The big fault is people don't want to pay for parts and labor. The new tv's are simpler, but schematics and parts are harder to find. No I don't want to go back into business, just keep my stuff running. I don't do repairs for others anymore. Example: try to find schematics for anything Insignia. Good luck! Yes! You can get books and books on how to operate them, but not one schematic. There are other brands just like them. The biggest thing I have always told people is if you found it in the trash there's a good reason to leave it there. Don't call me!
What alot of people don't realise is that the common cause of a failure in a TV is heat, so turning the backlight down ever so slightly and fitting it with a fan will make the tv last a very long time.
I had the blue backlight issue in a 6 year old 55" Hisense and bought a set of backlights from ebay for $32 shipped. Picture looks like new again. Saved me from buying a new TV and kept the old one out of the landfill.
I think screens like this have more potential than you realize. While the backlight might be bad, the LCD is good. If you shine a light into the screen you can actually see the display. If you have a mirror, you could place the LCD on top of it and get a display that turns into a mirror when it’s off. If you place it on a window they the sun acts as a natural backlight. Maybe you don’t want any of those projects, there’s still a use for these outside of projects like that. While it may be annoying to have one person ask if you can fix it, having multiple people donate TVs with the same model or manufacturer may be good. Some TVs will have bad backlights while others have bad LCDs or boards. Scavenging parts from one to fix the other could make a working TV that is decent. If you get newer TVs like that then it could be worth it given 4K TVs are upwards of $100 nowadays. Let’s even say 8K TVs come out and they have HDR and built in Dolby Atmos or something. If you got rich people who don’t want to deal with it give you these TVs for free then you could make a very profitable business refurbishing TVs. The problem is that they typically send it to the manufacturer who turns around and dumps them into land fills. I think that if you somehow get involved in that process then you could get the manufacturers to reduce e-waste and make a profitable business at the same time.
I drew inspiration from DIY Perks in repurposing the panel. It can be turned in to a light panel easily. Also there be some open baffle speakers there too.
My wife has a 13" Hitachi TV from 1985 in her craft room that still works great. She uses it all the time. God know how many hours of operation that thing has on it. Several hundreds of thousands at least.
Ha!! i have a 1983 13" TMK and the schematics! Have it in the garage to play Atari 800 games and a Digital Converter to watch over the air programs... beautiful color... This was my first color tv... lol..
I have a friend who fixes TV sets. He is of the older generation and he was fixing them back in the 50s, the old valve type and he still fixes such sets for collectors. He hates working on modern sets due to the fiddly components, very few sets nowadays are fixed at component level. TV sets in the old days were expensive but now there cheaply mass produced so fixing them in some cases is not worth the trouble or the expense, depending on what the set cost originally. The cost of repairs sometimes is more than the set is worth. His words were when cathode ray tube sets went out the world of the TV repair industry changed immensely. Sometimes modern sets can be fixed by changing the circuit board, in the old days it was capacitor's and resistors that were sometimes to blame for failure, also old TV sets had hot mains dropper resistors and these got hot and damaged other components causing failure. I can see your the older generation and you state the same reasons as my friend who fixes TV sets. He fixes very few modern sets now and is retiring but he still has a passion for vintage TV sets.
Yes old CRT sets are easily repairable. Thing is only gamers like them for vintage games. Don't see many watching CRT TV's. I use one here as a monitor for my security cameras.
Geez, I have nothing but good to say of LG, I don't know about their newer products, but I have an 11 year old LG TV (CCFL backlight) 37LH3000 with a daily use of atleast 3 hours haven't had a single issue and still going strong to this day. I have a 16 year old 5.1 Sound system the only issue with it is a dim VFD which is normal for the amount of hours on it. I have a 47 inch LCD Cinema 3D I bought 7 or 8 years ago and again, not a single issue. Can't say the same about Samsung, old Samsung TVs used to pop capacitors all the time, and newer ones I see around are either blue, dim, or full of spots from the LED diffusers falling of.
All the old fluorescent lit LCD panels were great. I got a sharp monitor that has well over 60,000 hours of use and counting it's left run 24/7 and a couple of insignia monitors that also have at least 60,000 maybe higher hours as they're used for viewing security cameras and I left running 24/7. The ccfl LCD screens last longer if they're left turned on because it's the starting that's hard on the fluorescent tubes. I have a Samsung 63 inch plasma which I've had to fix once when or the edge connectors getting loose just had to be reseated. I do have a couple of other Samsung's that have got bad panels on them however. One has a bunch of colored lines vertical another has a few thin red lines but it's also badly burned. I have an old LG plasma that's also still going strong and several Panasonic plasmas they just never seem to die. I also have an old Sony ccfl LCD that's lasted forever. Couple of Samsung DLP TVs from the early 2000s that still are going strong no issues however the more recent LED DLP suffered a bad DLP chip where the mirrors started to fall off so even though the TV works there's all kinds of little white dots on the screen and the cost of the chip is more than what the TV is worth. It's currently not being used at all but we'll get put back in service on a not critical application. Basically when the plasma in my bedroom finally craps out and going to put the LED DLP in place as I won't care that there's a few pixels that are stuck on it. Right now that plasma screen is so badly burned due to the local news station throwing all kinds of stationary graphics up through the entire broadcast. Watch anything other than the morning news and you can see the sidebar and ticker tape at the bottom that is burned into the screen. But hey that was a free TV and oh the screen has a crack in it too. That was one of the problems with some of the Samsung sets they had a buffer board failure and it would cause a hot spot to form on somewhere on the screen which caused the glass to crack internally but it's been like that for years and it still works so I'll watch it till it dies when it dies I'm tossing it
Your TV is from the golden age. The quality of practically all brands started going south around 2013. Samsung, LG, and Philips to be the most notable. I will stay with my Pana Plasmas Gen 2011. Once their loose screw problem is fixed they seem to run forever. The highest quality ever - besides the silly screws.
Yeah, I took color TV repair back in 1974. I worked on a few. I've adjusted purity, convergence, and focus. I've replaced speakers and added aux jacks. Replaced some modules and IC chips on Zenith & RCA. Some flatscreen TV's have replaceable florescent tubes. Newer TV's are throw away items. Most of the time you can't even get the parts. All of the electronic parts shops have shutdown. I used to repair traffic light controllers and detection modules with the city. I later got into burglar alarm, access, and camera systems. Also programmed fire alarm panels. I've repaired guitar amps, and even beefed up the wattage. I repair computers, phones, and tablets where the software had gotten messed up. I'm retired now at 67 and only mess with small engines & DJ equipment. Oh, and made a homemade power inverter. 🐀🐾
I _despise_ where technology is going. You couldn't give me a "smart" TV unless I knew I could effectively disable _all_ the spyware and pump UA-cam through HDMI via a web browser with AdBlock, without it 'pitching a fit' or sending telemetry on me. My response to any modern TV wanting to frot me with commercials baked into the firmware (Samsung, I believe), or refusing to play without connection to my network _and_ demanding my credit card number(?!): "Blow it out your ass! Here's a brick!" What will these manufacturers demand next, a DNA sample and direct access to my bank account, before it runs? I scored for free, an old 2009 "dumb" LG 47 inch; the picture is perfectly fine, she just does the LG thing once they get old, cycling off and back on again once warmed-up. I'm really hoping to isolate the errant cap and replace it, if it's not an IC problem. A smartphone is bad enough. I won't let a "smart" TV or any other of that IoT crap on my network.
@@Lyzzzander Only as a fashion accessory. They don't actually work lol. I acknowledge the comment read 'ranty' and paranoid. But I am flummoxed at how blase and benumbed the masses have become, not realizing how much of their personal data is being mined and cashed-in by scum-bag corporations, in exchange for (insecure) cheap or free spyware platforms that monitor and hustle the zombie hordes to buy even more useless shiny things. It's invasive, but I've learnt that there are large numbers of people out there who don't seem to mind taking it 'up-the-ass' if they get a 'reach-around.' Crude but appropriate analogy, for a crude and failing civilization.
@@midplanewanderer9507 i think you're overcomplicating some of the facts. Yes, there are google's AdSense, or any other analogues to it, but no one give a damn about you personally (until you want a murder someone for example). Your credit card, or any other information is just a water drops in ocean. Made fake accounts, use open source freeware instead of giving your info to other's, sit trough VPN or Tor. Everything isn't obligated
Chromecast is SHIT ,you get hit with ads, even if cast from laptop, let alone smartphone, I never had CC, from what I seen when my friends use it, I download vids to my laptop, then copy to 3.5" HDD, then play that through PVR with CRT TV
I have an LG c9 oled but I've never had an LG before and this TV doesn't even have 1000 hours on it. The picture is incredible though. The graphics in modern games really showcase the fidelity. I'm not privy to the lifespan of them though. I know the new ones only support 40gbps as opposed to the 48 mine does. The true 120hz in 4k on games is cool too. The input lag difference is really noticeable compared to older hardware that only run at 30hz in a 60hz container
You're the same as me.... Used to repair laptops,I don't for years becaus It's not worth my time. Been repairing TV's and backlight...I just Hate It so much,spending more than 7h repairing and loosing nerves-It's not worth It... Nowdays I'll stop repairing E-scooters. Li-Ion batteries are expencive and you said to a customer replacing cells will cost about 150eur,he comes to you and said "I can buy a brand new E-scooter from China for 250eur"... No one understands the time,nerves,repairing,buying material,flux,solder,electricity,parts,etc... I have a knowledge but I don't have nerves anymore...Best regards Sir!
I've seen quite a few flat screen sets that had the backlight replaced back before LED backlights were a thing and some of the fixed sets would have a dark place or an off-color area in the screen after being fixed. They used to use some kind of fluorescent light if I remember correctly. You might know exactly what caused this (I've never taken one apart to know what could go wrong in changing them that could affect the picture afterward). Edit: there is a TV in a restaurant near me that has a very blue color and maybe it is an LG panel. It is bluer than any TV I've seen.
Yep. CCFL tubes. Until recently, I've been replacing them in certain models of restaurant order terminals because they were expensive LCDs and it made sense to recondition them with 10 dollar tubes. Horrible time consuming job, but the money was good. Finally, it's just hit the time where they are all LED backlit now and they are reliable to the end of life. I know what you mean about the dark patches. If you don't line up the tubes just right, they don't shine into the diffuser correctly. Some I had to just do the best I could. So fiddly. They were bright and readable, and that's what mattered with ordering terminals.
I regularly used to replace individual LEDs on the strips, obviously these the cold filament lamps you mention.. But I did make the mistake of fitting one of the covering lenses off centre to the LED. this resulted in a very bright spot on screen. recentred it and worked great.
The off color area is caused by replacing just the bad CCFL. As they age, their color temp changes, and sometimes it's just a matter of it not being an exact replacement. I used to keep all the backlights from sets with broken panels. I had hundreds. It took up a lot of room, but if I needed a backlight, I probably had it.
I always thought it would be easier to have designed the set to be able to repair from the rear for something as failure prone as LEDs are , but it's a throw away society with corporations that would rather you replace it not repair it.
I'd converted old LCD panels into soft lights for closets a long time ago. But yeah; (irrespective of what I keep telling myself) replacing/repairing a backlight was never economical for me.
Bringing back memories. In my youth, back in early 1990s, I was doing an internship at a TV sell and repair shop. Today any repairman needs to charge around 50-60 Euros per hour to keep business going. And a brand new set costs as low as 200-300 Euros. There are zero incitaments in present times to repair TV and similar electronics.
To be fair, it's done pretty well really. I do like the fact that most TVs now just run perfectly until end of life. When people ask me to look at them, I just tell them that everything in it will be near end of life and if you've had more than 6-8 years from it, you won't get much more from the rest of the components (with a few exceptions). I usually help them to check prices and all the new cool features and sharper pictures. They look at their sad old one, and it's a no brainer. Plus, like you say, who wants them cluttering your workshop, while worrying about cracking the LCD accidentally? Like you, it's a big reason I stopped working on them.
Also the fact that as smart TVs age, they disable the apps. I have a few pre 2015 sets that Netflix and other apps no longer update and dont work now. Just the sad message that the app needs an update to function but no update available. 😩
@@12voltvids Yeah, true. They try to tie it all in with the likely lifetime of that model (if even that long). If I had a dollar for every time a supplier asked "why is your customer still using this old model?", I'd be rich
@tenmillionvolts My CRT TV is at least 20 years old. Fixed it after a PSU chip literally exploded in it. Still works fine, I'm pretty sure it can do the other 20 I might have left, if I'm lucky...
Yeah, I changed the backlight strips in a 50" Sharp Roku TV I got for free. Works great, it's now at the beach place, but I never want to do that again. The only way I avoided cracking the panel while pulling it apart was to lay it screen-down on a cloth and lift the entire lightbox off the panel and bezel. I was sweating bullets trying to get it back on, centered in the bezel, without applying too much pressure to any of the panel edges.
I have broken a screen on a customer set of all things. I gave them the bad news that the back lights were shot and that they should buy a new TV and they were very insistent that they wanted me to try to repair. I said come on over I need you to sign a piece of paper that will release me from any claim should the screen break. They were reluctant to do so so I said okay come and collect your junk. they came over and after humming and hawing decided to sign a release that released me of any liability of something were to break. Sure shit trying to separate the screen from the glued on diffuser and yes I was applying heat with a hair dryer to break the bond but there was one piece that just did not want to release and I say lifted off the screen I heard a crack in the corner of the screen cracked that was it game over. I called him up and told him sorry the screen broke trying to separate it and the first thing out of their mouth was that I owed them a new TV. I pointed out that I had damn sign a release relieving me of any damages should something happen while I was attempting to service a non-serviceable part. Told them if they wanted any money they could see me in court but they would be responsible for all Court charges including my lawyer and that they wouldn't win because I had their signature on a document that I drew up.I never make promises that I can repair anything that is brought to me. anybody that makes such promises are stupid because not everything can be repaired. Needless to say nothing happened they called me up the next day and told me to throw it out which I did. But that's one of the reasons I won't attempt to replace LEDs on a customer set for that matter I won't even do it on my own they are such a pain in the ass. I guess I have done a few there are videos on my channel showing me opening the screen on maybe three or four different sets and changing out or jump ring the bad LED but that was in the past I hated it then and I certainly won't enjoy it anymore now so I just assumed stay clear of television.
This might be slightly off topic, but I recently bought a 70 inch tv. Got it home and it didn't work. Took it back and got a different brand, got it home and the screen was cracked to hell. Took that back and got a 55 inch. Finally got a good one. Those big ones are too fragile in my opinion.
I totally understand your reluctance to repair TVs. And it is even harder without their schematic diagrams too. I remember the days when I was repairing DOD aircraft black boxes, and everyone that knew I was working in such a field asked me to repair some type electronic something. I guess they think you can instantly repair everything because you repair electronics for the DOD. But you always have the schematic diagrams repairing DOD 'tronics...
after 40 yrs like you i exited tv repair when the cheap tvs showed up. my only exception would be my own 47" JVC. i would repair because its a 3D tv and i love it and they are no longer being sold.
When I left college (here in Ireland) people were asking me to fix the old style TVs with about 80KV on the tube. That was enough for me to never touch TVs again and I thought that might be the reason for leaving TVs alone in this Vid. 80KV will make you sweat if you lack experience. However, I can see all these new flat TVs have much simpler layouts and obviously lower voltages, but as indicated they sell for about the same as 2 hours of a repair techs time, so although it seems like a waste, the only solution is to the recycling bin! Circuit boards have become so concentrated that you can't even get a probe onto them, so replacement or scrapping is cheaper than spending hours. It can take an hour or two to just open some of the gear I have seen, e.g. a Roland Electric Piano had 137 screws to remove before getting to the PCBs. However, I did fix a Korg keyboard recently, where somebody spilt a pint of beer into it. It took me 2 days, but then again it had a value of $3K, and only involved cleaning switches. Cheers!
@@dan.documents I can't remember exactly, but I think it was a Roland D70. These would be made in about 1989 or so. After removing the mainframe, you have to remove the keyboard bed as well, and you're still not there. It's selling price second hand in Ireland is a few hundred dollars, but to the owner who has programmed it lovingly, it is invaluable. You daren't do a 'factory reset' or you're in deep trouble.
Great video as always. If I were in the market for a new TV can I ask what brand you would recommend based on your knowledge? Thanks and keep up the good work 👍
I am always amazed at how empty modern sets are. Maybe keep the psu board as a capacitor doner. There is a man in the u.k that only repairs lcd sets, the backlight fault is so common. Crappy leds i suppose.
Ive replaced CCFL transformers in older sets with much success, but the newer Hitachis etc are so fragile even putting the bazel back on can crack the glass.. real pita.
Harvey! that is so very true! were I am in the UK I live close to some areas with Large bins, a lot! of TVs get dumped. I take the codes/model etc & keep the boards. Mostly they all have smashed, broken screens. I don't waste my time taking the LED strips out, I used to then stopped to many failures involved.
Remember when they told us, "LEDs will last forever"? LOL! Maybe they should try 5mm LEDs. Or go back to mercury vapour backlights which seem to last much longer.
@@Ratchet_effect I don't blame you by ignoring the leds. They are driven hard for years and end up pretty worn out or dead. Sounds like you have a good supply of dead sets, a bit of musical chairs with the spares and you have a usable set :-D Less waste is always good.
Uh. I was a radio and TV, stereo and , yes, VCR repairman, beginning way back in the mid 60s. I started learning electronics theory in the basement of the Clarksdale MS Carnegie Library way back then. I spent 40+ years in that repairman's field. I was the tube guy! What do you want to know? I quit the business in 2000 before the flatscreens became the vogue. Unless you have positioned the "ion trap" on a 50's B&W TV, and converged the red/green/blue phosphors of a color cathode ray tube........I question your foundational authority. Gimmy something!
When replacing a pic tube in customer's home they would sometimes watch.A good time to put the yoke 180 out when brining the pic up, the customer would think the CRT was installed upside down.Good for a laugh...
My LG's back lighting failed and I swapped it out for around $60. This happened before the big drop across the board and a replacement TV would have cost over $400. Worth it to me? Absolutely. But then I knew it was back lighting when it stopped working as I could shine a nice bright light at the screen and still watch it. I get it...you want it to be something like a single component that you can replace and not have to disassemble the entire tv to fix it. Can you replace it for twice the cost of repair? Not where I live.
Hey, I fixed a few TVs in my life - mostly PSU failure, but one of them had a dead diode in the backlight and another one had a corrupted EEPROM. Recapacitulation is one of the easiest repairs, but it's not always what the TV needs... I definitely prefer working on tube amps and other audio stuff, or vintage gear restoration. Been doing it for almost 20 years.
I also work on the same myself, unless the flat panel is a cap job or a inexpensive board swap replacement. Thing about audio gear that has always irked me is proprietary pcb mount type turn pots, or no longer available sealed pcb mount slide type switches, “and I don’t mean common typical DPDT type either.” Ever heard of a reverse audio taper type gain control turn-pot on a mixer amp? I never knew such a pot existed until recently. It does bring a sense of great reward to hear beautiful clear music again after a amp repair. Been repairing since the late 80’ when I was in high school. 😎👍
@@repairfreak oh yes, all these proprietary parts... Makes the art of potentiometer repair (not replacement) very viable, and sometimes you still can't get it because the path is literally broken etc. Reverse taper pots were sometimes used in tube radios, but putting one in a gain control kinda makes sense since you adjust the amount of feedback over the opamp and you pretty much want the gain adjustment to match the way we hear things ie logarithmic.
The last tv I bought was a 55 inch Panasonic Viera plasma just after they announced they would stop making them and plasma disappeared from the market. I very specifically didn't want, and avoided, cheap led tvs at that time.
Those might be the last really good TV sets. I never see any of them with faults. Panasonic has learned from all older series defects and then they abandoned a perfected technology. So sad.
An excellent choice. Panasonic were masters of this sadly short-lived technology. Fortunately I'm not bothered about 4K. The picture provided by a properly set up Plasma is unmatched imho.
As you said, a bulging capacitor is a pretty low cost repair. I used to have a Samsung with bulging capacitors that I was able to fix myself by soldering new ones in, and I'm a total amateur at soldering. I think capacitors are made better now though. There was a period in the 2000s where capacitors went bad in lots of things.
Capaictor plague was an issue up until early 2008. a lot of electronics premature failed in this time period due to bad caps. In this video you could see 2 or 3 capacitors bulging on the power supply near the top connector.
Understand your point not to fix it. Did see one channel where the guy replaced about 10 LEDs on the backlight by soldering new ones on and saved the set. He bought a roll of 100 of them for $6.He said if more go out he will fix it again,LOL.Seems to be the cheapest way to fix this for under $10 just for someone who doesnt mind the time and labor. Me personally I would buy a new one .Great Video !
I have done several videos where i open the screen and bypass the single bad LED and it really isn't that noticable on the screen. I did a few for clients however they also had a limit of 50.00 on the repair. No way i can do it for that when buying new led strips. And no they are not 6.00 for them. Changing a single led or 2 results in a hot spot which is just as noticable as a dark spot. When you go over 50" screen you also need to support the screen with suction cups and a pulley system to lift and support the glass. Otherwise you risk breaking the screen. Nobody around here will pay a coue hundred to fix a TV. 50 to 60 to fix power supply perhaps. 150 to 200 for backlights forget it. If I had someone that said I'll spend up to 200 to fix this i would do it but those customers are just not there as there is s place up the street that sells refurbished TV's for less than that. I have seen 50" sets for 179. So nobody is going to spend money on TVs. Not in my market. I don't need to prove anything. I have done led replacements in past videos. I have also repaired tcon boards to component level. Don't need to prove anything.
The wife and I typically don't buy extended warranty on anything - except TVs. A while back we had a 52" LG that died - we called the place we bought it (Leons) - and they sent a tech out. He took off the back panel...poked around for less than a minute - then said, "Nope...we'll just be replacing the whole TV...no problem." It was just slightly past the factory warranty - and the extended kicked in and we picked out a brand new one at Leons. Comparatively, in the 1980s I owned a 28" Zenith console TV (CRT) that lasted me over 25 yrs. We eventually replaced it with a Sony projo TV and put the Zenith console at the curb. A local neighbour carted it away - and 2 yrs later I saw it again at the curb in front of his house. So he got 2 more years enjoyment out of it, which was cool. They definitely don't make'em like they used to.
I like to turn the LCDs into grow lights for gardening or just interior lighting. Also the polarizer sheets and diffuser sheets in them are so useful for everything. I've built a green house out of them. You can also use the shell as seedling trays they have nice drainage holes in them so they don't get too soaked if it rains on them. I like the magnets in the speakers also.. But the motherboard is usually worthless unless you want to make jewelry out of the chips I just scrape them off with a heat gun. The power supply can be useful if you convert it into a grow light
Very nice, making useful things from things people are conditioned to believe it is garbage feels great, I developed and built my soldering station like that but also many other different things and no, it doesn't look like garbage, actually there is no garbage but only resources, this is how the profit incentive and cost efficiency contradict real economic efficiency, as here, it is definitely economic to replace the LEDs thinking about how much resources and energy is needed to produce such a big device, the biggest parts can't even break on their own, it is just not cost efficient, like people throw away washing machines because there is an error in the control circuit, this is just absurd.
Thankfully i left the consumer electronics reapair trade before flat panel TV's arrived. To this day i still prefer the immage produced by a good CRT TV I still have one to watch my laserdiscs on, the major limitation of modern TV's is that they only give a good picture at a certain resoltion, move away from their native setting and the quality goes off. This is apart from the fact that repairing them is no fun anymore.
I watch my laserdiscs on my 2019 Samsung TV, is 4k at 55 inches. The image quality of the said source seems great to me. Some discs were recorded at inferior quality, others look very good. I have 4 players, and over 300 movies.
@@marcellachine5718 I have tried laserdiscs via a high end upscaler on a 4K TV and compared to a good CRT, they realy look soft, and far from the best that lasersisc is capable of. I have the best player that Pioneer ever made the HLD-X9 and even playing HD discs a 4K TV does the image no favours. I have compared the same movies on laserdisc with a Blu-Ray, and this shows the limitations of the format. The HD mastering and decoding was never fully refined, hence the less than perfect video, on a DTS soundtrack Laserdisc can still provide an excellent performace, far better than DVD.
I've been able to fix up a couple TV's with blown backlights with minimal cost and some patience waiting for the parts to arrive from China via eBay or Aliexpress. I've saved a few TVs going to the landfill that were dumped in my building's trash room.
Had one pop a MOSFET on me in summer on a 65 inch Hisense. Ended up finding a similar board that would work. Keep in mind it wasn't exact same board but it had the right pins to supply power and such. So I bought it in a gamble and it works. I find that the issue is using the smart TV function causes a lot of heat and power draw. Now I use a seperate dongle for the smart TV portion
The new flat panel technology TVs are complex in design. If you can have modules it would be the ideal way to service these types of sets. Most of the time I found bad capacitors, and oxidized connectors causing faults. I refuse to service TV sets. Takes too much space, and sometimes a lot of time involved. Going back to before the mid 1970s I was servicing a lot of TV set. These were mostly solid state. The older ones from the 50s through to the late 60s were using tube technology, and over time had more and more solid state circuitry. Back in those days I made very good money fixing TVs and radios. Back then parts were much easier to have from the manufactures.
yeah its large series string array of LED's, its a cheap way of lighting them by using higher voltage which requires less current. This design sadly leads to more prone failure and all it takes is for one to go open or shunt and its done...
they are in series.... so they are usually 28v per panel....with like 6 to 8 leds running at 3V...... I say the fact they are in series is why that sucks....over parallel 28v x 7=.....
I haven't worked on too many. One of mine died last year and I wasn't in a position to replace it so I opened it up and after about 5 minutes I found that the trace that went to the neutral on the plug had lifted. No other damage to the board, no signs of stress on the connector or surrounding plastic or PCB. I just soldered a jumper wire in and it's been great since. Sometimes it can be worth fixing them, though yeah a lot of the time it's just easier or less expensive to replace them.
The modern TV is just relatively expensive LCD panel with relatively expensive backlight and some relatively cheap electronics. It also happens that the cheap electronics tends to be more durable than the really expensive parts. Similar story with old fridges. BTW, in old TVs the most expensive part was the CRT, it was practically indestructible. Also, a very large number of inexpensive parts inside. The majority of the repair cost was just the time.
I don't understand why the audio in TV's is sooooo bad. Let me correct myself, I know why the audio is bad; I just don't like it. They sure like selling add-on sound bars.
@@oldNavyJZ My guess is not enough room to fit speakers big enough. Yes, they have to be bigger to sound right. I have a good sound bar. It has a big ass subwoofer. The interesting thing is it sounds perfectly good without the subwoofer in a smaller room, gets lost completely in a bigger room. Anyway, the sound bar alone is way bigger than all the space inside the TV that could possibly be left for the speakers. In old, bulky TVs sometimes the speaker were not that bad, because they could be bigger. I'm surprised the other way - how could my TV sound that good as it does when it's completely flat? ;)
Not sure about their TV's, but my LG Nexus 5 is still going strong after 8 years and I dropped it about 3 meters onto gravel once, accidentally. Just ordered new camera and the "window"/glass that goes over it, for about 10 bucks with shipping and replaced the stuff myself. I'm at 3rd or 4th battery now. The only problem is the mic that wasn't working well from the beginning and I think I'll have to update to one of the newer OS's, since it's getting slow with all of those apps that are programmed to only work well on newest OS's. I guess they do that to make you buy new phone every year or two.
I'm 13 and have time to get and fix these old flat panels, I learn how by watching UA-cam. Lot of times it's the bl inverter board. I sell them after I fix them at flea markets. I also sell the working parts online 😉
idk I just stumbled onto your account and this video and I could listen you talk about why you don't like TVs for atleast a good 30 minutes. Also.. I love the intro, reminds me of 90's tech videos during elementary school.
I've come to the same conclusion. There isn't enough profit for the time spent doing the repair, and the risk of breaking the customers display when replacing the back lights.
That too. Then when you break the screen they expect you to buy them a new one. I only take on things these days that I have a chance to actually repair. I'm trying to simplify my life not create headaches for myself. I'll do this as long as it's fun and when it's not fun anymore I don't want to do it. LCD TVs are not fun.
@@12voltvids I am a primary school teacher now (only in the mornings) and in the afternoon I teach at a high school. I will retire at 60 (2 to go) and seeing the comments on your channel I forgot to invest my financial settlement in a Repair Shop. It would be nonsense (total madness). Thanks for opening my eyes, I was a fan of Norcal715, I met you when you made a post about a 130V zener diode used in a Sharp... ...heh. A fraternal greeting.
Replacement of these really BIG flat screen TV backlights are more of a miss than a hit. Components other than them are usually quite easy to fix but the time it takes to get replacement backlights, if available, and then replacing them you run into a risk of destroying the front end opening it up. The bigger they are the harder they fall. Can't blame you for trashing it.
Its a pity that modern TVs are more and more a throwaway product and so more than ever polluting than ever. As its always a chemical waste Alsi software designs of the smart technology are poor and not long lasting as the hardware. Also hardware designs are more designed for the eye of the buyer than the serviceability or possibility to repair. Decadent big 65+inch an screens are broken easily by accident and the many LEDs will also fail earlier. Why is a led strip so hard to repair and not as easy to change like a light bulb. Should be made in a design like a rail or so that you can slide in and out. Not damage the panel and risk for the repairman. More circular designs will sell better as consumers will want and need these more.
Back in 2007 I bought a 46" Sony Bravia for like $3k..... it has a beautiful picture and still works and I've definitely used it a lot. It's in my garage/shop now but it still works fine.
Nonetheless, I appreciate your video. Not worth the repair you say? I'm a recovering, former computer technician. Within a six month period, I picked up seven flat screens from the curb side just to see if I could sort them out and make them work. I'm at six for seven. But -- five repairs were popped capacitors and one faulty controller board. I agree completely. If they need only very simple repairs, I'll give it a few minutes, otherwise, off to the recyclers they go.
It's usually PSU or backlight. With PSU it's either some catastrophic failure or just dead electrolytics. With backlight, they drive these LEDs way too hard so they fail all the time. Having few more LEDs in the backlight would add very little to their cost but would make them last much, much longer. In fact, too long, from manufacturer's point of view.
Let's save the environment! While at the same time selling more junk that will end up in landfills!!!! (Except those that are recycled) Btw, interesting video!
@@TD75 true, but if your Refrigerator quit after a couple years, you'd have to replace it, unless it's feasible to repair. They add all of that microprocessor junk to make them more expensive to get repaired. I do not need microprocessors in my appliances. Give me a simple washer and dryer, refrigerator, and I'm happy. TV's on the other hand, we don't really need those. We just want them. And they're junk now.
I hear you! Much easier to replace a PC laptop screen than it is to fix the new LED TVs. I tried fixing a 24 inch one myself a few months ago. Not really worth it, so I ended up using an older laptop as a TV for a while until I got a replacement (via home cable Internet).
Quick tip. If the TV turns on but no screen and if possible in a dark room, take a good falsh light and place it up direct against the screen towards the center. If it it the back light you will see a dark image around where the flash light is. If you still don't see anything then it's not getting a display or could be both issues
What a joke. Do you see how lithium is mined for the batteries in these cars? Do you know where the majority of that stuff is mined? Do you think they are doing it in a "green" manner (lol)? You know, for the cars the burst into flames for no reason and need charging every hundred miles or so? Or the massive "wind turbine graveyards" after the non-recyclable wind turbines are finished after their very short life (they are also the #1 killer of bald eagles)? Everything "green" uses massive amounts of "fossil fuels" to produce. People believe they are "going green" by "buying an electric car" (what do you think powers the electrical grid?) The current electrical grid can not handle what these clueless (and mostly un-qualified) politicians are trying to push everyone into. You know they can shut those cars down? You may not want to participate in "no car Sunday" but you will be forced to because they will shut you down. Don't think so? They already locked you in your house, forcing you to cover your face and forcing chemicals and experimental drugs into you and your children's bodies. Just sayin.
I fixed an LG TV that had probably the same problem first generation PS3 had, of the CPU/GPU delaminating or with bad solder joints, so.. just pumped some flux, heated the chip with a big hotgun, and it reflow/just heated up, and it fixed. I don't know if it was hot enough to reflow , so, i guess i just fixed it by semi melting the solder on the chip, but still... changed the thermal paste, and it's working as good as before
My employer used to have a few TV repair contracts and we rarely touched panels. I think I did maybe 2 total in my 10 years so far. We mainly just changed the PCBs in the back. Thankfully we dropped TV accounts during COVID.
Most flat panel TV's are a race to the bottom. I've had the best luck with Samsung and LG - usually only the usual capacitor related faults in those. Our 32" LG TV did suffer from backlight failure, but it only cost about £12 to get a set of replacement LED strips from Aliexpress to repair it. Vestel made stuff (many supermarket brands, but also some big names such as Toshiba) is usually shite. The power supplies are usually overcomplicated and if they dont fail, it's poor heatsinking of the system processor, or bad FLASH memory... of course once the FLASH has failed, the firmware has gone and as you cant usually get the firmware image files, the TV is scrap.
I have had quite good luck with my vestel lcd crap still going after 1000,s of hours of being left on and its over 12 years old my sisters old vestel asda shop brand tv lasted 11 years before the psu caps started to go they carried on using it and it done more damage .i am put off by samsung i know quite a few people that had samsungs fail at 4 and 5 years old that said my best mates samsung is well over 10 years old and i have only replaced one faulty cap no doubt my panasonic cap cost more than all the others in the psu but he has been using it for a good few years after and still going strong .I really want a sony set but they dont look to reliable ,
If You can find the firmware you can easily flash it with ch341a without soldering, try to search mainboard model + lcd model, there might be a tv with the same ones so you can use that firmware
@@jaycee1980 i know, i found the firmware for my sharp tv but now i can't record tv anymore, it has copy protection so it's not readable on pc, i also tried blaupunkt firmware with same specs and works fine so i'm using it, sadly pvr is still encrypted
I repair them back in the 80s when it was component level repair only and to me it was fun, but without proper schematics and info you were shooting in the dark and by the 90s it just was not worth it.
LG was the best rebranding in history, and I don't mean in substance. Lucky Goldstar made crap, everyone knew it and it was priced very cheap. Suddenly LG emerged and was positioned or portrayed as a quality brand.
Little lesson on LG. Once upon a Time there was a company in Korea called goldstar. they made lots of cheap black and white TVs that were sold under various house brand names along with Samsung. There was another company in Korea called lucky appliance. They made things like refrigerators and air conditioners and ranges. Lucky appliance and gold star electronics merged and changed the name to Lucky goldstar. Decided just to drop their names and abbreviate with their initials like so many other companies did. Remember Kentucky fried Chicken and general motors becoming KFC and GM? Well lucky goldstar became LG.
@@catsbyondrepair and yet my folks had one made by Tricity (old British brand long lost to history) that lasted almost 35 years. Even my Candy fridge, made in 1995, ran until 2020. The unreliability of modern electronics and appliances is deliberate. I read that the average lifespan of a washing machine sold in the UK is now down to about 2.5 years. But hey, at least you can program it using your phone from the other side of the world (at least, until the cloud servers get turned off or updates are no longer available.)
I did tv repair for many years and remember having trouble getting components like flyback transformers. I could see it was a dying business in the 1980s.
While there is no market. I've taken free broken TV's and had good luck getting 1 working out of the lot. Prime example will be one with the bad backlight. I just ripped the strips out one with a bad board, and to my surprise it all worked. Although I have more fun using the plastic and diffuser sheets for random projects.
Just found your channel while trying to fix a no power to tube situation and you are clearly an expert and a cut above others on UA-cam. I'm having trouble finding the issue. I put a cap in backwards near the flyback and it vented. I switched it with a new one and it turned on, but had some arcing near the flyback onto a nearby resistor. I reflowed the flyback in case that's why it was arcing, but now I only get a standby light, but I do hear the relay click when I hit power. No tube juice though. Would you be able to assist me in any way? It's one of those Batman CRTs and I'd love to get it back up and running again.
Yup they should just send them from the factory straight to the dump and cut out the middle man (I.e. the customer.) I'm no eco warrior but I feel our grandkids won't forgive us for 'planned obsolescence' and the resultant Wall-E esque mountains of e-waste.
Only tv I ever went through the pain to fix was my pioneer kuro 60 inch 1080p plasma. Still in my main setup and theatre. It was some piece in the audio board that wouldnt let the tv turn on. Pulled the board and sent it to have the repair. 70 bucks. Prob took me a few hours in time to get apart and back together but I think it's still a great quality picture compared to most sets today.
Remember as a young boy. Helping my uncle fix older tvs. Was a great side hustle. Still remember his magnetic wand. Used to pull color back to center. Replacing transformers. And adjusting color. I quickly became the master tv fixer. lol we would get the tvs for free he worked for the city street dept. So brought used ones in every day. I’d fix them. And we would sale them for 50 to 10..00
Yep, we had a TV repair business that exited the market shortly after 2010 when flat panels where getting cheaper and cheaper.
Disposable basically. You can get a 70" dirt cheap so why bother? Like fixing clock radio
You get what you pay for yes TVs are made cheap but that’s your 500 dollar sets for quality you need to spend about a 1k and up. I have a Samsung I got on sale for 700 originally was 1300 it was a year old when I got it the things 10 years old now still fires up and have no issues. Don’t by cheap and you won’t get cheap
@@ryans413 I agree, I have a 77" oled from LG. But quite a few people are happy if their set lights up and they can see things moving around. And some of these sets can be quite decent
The shop I worked part time for, closed in 2007. A lot of our repair worked involved CRT based projection TV's, usually Mitsubishis; but customers stopped fixing them when you could buy a new flat screen set for what it cost to fix a CRT rear projection set.
I got out of VCR repair in 1994 because prices got so cheap, to many of my repair estimates were being declined. I started in 1984 doing repairs, worked on about 11,000 VCRs, made a good living at it. Then prices started falling, I got out. A year later I visited the shop and the tech I left my repairs to, he said he was only working two or three days a week on VCRs, he had a different full time job, at the post office. I think I got out at the perfect time. Edit to add, I started when vcrs we're a big seller. Their sales built big box chains like Highland Appliance, Fretters and ABC appliance, My boss managed to pick up all 3 stores, in-store warranties, manufacturers warranties and store stock repairs. It was as boom time for me.
I found a 50" unit a few years ago in a dumpster, and found the same problem with the backlight being open circuit. I took the panel apart and went thorough the LEDs one by one with a meter until I found the dead one. I bridged a wire across it and the rest of the LEDs came back. I used that set for a few years before giving it to a friend, never had another issue with it. Although it was a good exercise and provided a lot of understanding on how these TVs work, I would tend to agree that the labor required to repair it probably exceeded the value of a new TV.
Hey great job bringing life back to an old hunk of what would have been scrap
I did the same thing with a 56 inch that was given to me for free. One bad LED. I jumped it, but it only worked for a few months before another one opened. I replaced the entire backlight kit for about 50 bucks, which of course with the amount of time and effort required on this unit would not be worth doing if you were running a repair business. Since it was for myself though, I figured it was worth the time and effort for a 50 dollar TV that was otherwise in excellent condition.
@@ShawnC22002 lols thats definetly true and glad to know fhat it was feasible to do so for somone to be able/to do so and was able to repair their own set/stuff etc instead of having to resort to default on replacement etc ykwis
Reminds me of the old Christmas lights.
I actually do it for the entertainment value.
I'm amazed at just how little there is to see inside these things. Just 2 printed circuit boards and that's all. I can just about remember my parents buying our first ever TV set, I was very young at the time, must have been end of the 1950s. We had that for about 15 years. Once in a while my dad had to change a vacuum tube, but it was still going strong when we finally replaced it with a color TV with a fancy remote control and a receiver with a multitude of TV stations. The old one had just three.
It's the first thing i thought myself haha. Plasma's DID get bloody heavy before LCD saved our backs haha, but yeah i always will remember tubes for their weight, the big old wood style ones, but between the casing and the guts inside those things, you could understand the weight haha
And it might be nostalgia talking, but i kinda miss those things, the joy of finding channels amongst the fuzz with a couple of dials will always rival the auto search days of today when it comes to fond memories of simple tech. not to mention who didn't love being able to watch tv through a coathanger :D
Exacfly I thiught theres at least the several boards for the tuner, the backlight inverter board or like the video board etc of course im making a fool of mehself talking or sqauwkin and spouting abiyt what idk about lol ykwis
Even more circuits exist now. They are just much much smaller. And when i say more circuits exist now, i mean exponentially more.
A tv with the amount of hardware you would think to be normal is called a desktop computer.
@@gravestoner2488 lol I guess thats true ykwis
@@gravestoner2488 Yeah, you're right. TVs are really computers these days. They even have WiFi, Bluetooth and USB
I will have to admit though ... sometimes I spend way more time repairing something than it's worth, but if it's your favorite and does what you need, why not !! - I'm a copier / printer technician by trade and have customers that hang onto older machines because they are simpler !!! not having to refer to a manual or make several decision before making a simple copy has it's merits. Believe it or not, very smart people like Doctors, Lawyers and Judges do this because: " push 5, push print" is easier than consulting the manual !!
This is true, there are many people who just want the machine to "do it's thing" or "just work" but they usually are those who have no real idea how it does it's thing. It's okay, there is nothing wrong with that unless you are trying to say that everyone should think like that and not have any way of repairing their own machine/device.
I had an older copier donated to me years ago. Having no understanding of how they worked, I tried studying up on them. Needless to say I failed because of my lack of knowledge. However I will say copy machines are incredible machines, and very fascinating in how they work. I learned in my studies about electrically charged selenium drums, corona wires and fusing rollers, etc. Indeed complex and very fascinating machines! My hat is off to skilled printer/copier repair techs. 😎👍
I left the business also. Not enough money to support the manufacturers..
I once went on a service call (including billing 45 minutes of travel each way) to _plug in a pair of PC speakers._ The kicker? The client was a neurosurgeon. Rewire someone’s brain? No problem! Plug in two plugs? Too complicated! :p
@@tookitogo Wow, I think I will pass on his brain surgery! 😮
I don't repair any tv's but I do harvest many usable parts from them before I discard them. Copper and aluminum are always valuable commodities for their metal content. I often use heat sinks from these old tv's for my projects.
I love playing devil's advocate regarding the flyback transformers. They're not actually real flybacks, either. The flyback comes from the tube it's attached to, not the flyback topology. But regardless.. it functions like a royer so it's exciting!
I always grab fans, LEDs, heatsinks, motors some capacitors and coils, speakers, resistors, diodes....
all handy stuff for little DIY projects.
I got donated a big 60 inch telly a couple of months ago, can't remember the brand but it was your standard Vestel electronics in the back. Still working, but like you said, most of the LEDs had gone blue. Apparently it's because there's no such thing as a white LED, they're all blue LEDs with a phosphor coating that glows white, and over time, the phosphor burns off.
Anyway, I ordered a new set of backlight strips for it - someone on eBay had a set he'd recovered from a TV with a cracked screen, and for £23 it was worth a punt. So one evening I'm there carefully removing the LCD panel, along with the various layers of fresnel and diffuser panels to get to the backlights. The old set comes out, the new set goes in, and success, it's working. Time to put it back together. Back goes the fresnel lens, the white diffuser, and then very carefully, the LCD panel itself. I'm just reconnecting the fragile LCD ribbon cables to the daughterboard next to the edge of the panel, when the LCD shifts out of it's mounting - only an inch or so - but enough to rip one of the ribbon cables off the edge of it. Damn it. So close, another couple of minutes and I'd have had it back together and working, but no, now it's landfill. I'm done with repairing backlights! Save the PSU and mainboard for future jobs, but that's the last time I attempt taking a screen to bits.
The bigger they are the harder they fall. Free stuff sometimes bites you in the arse! Just getting a new big screen
is cheaper in the long run so I will never do a LED replacement job ever again either.
Backlight replacements are super easy tho.
They only get mildly complicated when the TVs are 65 incher or bigger
LOL I feel your pain. Got my 55 inch back together. Everything worked perfect. Look on the bench and there are the diffuser spacers. Back apart, spacers installed. CRACK, goes the screen on installation. Should have just left it alone. LOL All that for a $350 TV.
the only thing that's servicable in TVs is the power supply, or swap the entire CPU motherboard, the panel/backlight are gone, its the end of the TV.
@@monad_tcp It's really not
Swapping LCDs and backlights is easy, especially on LG TVs
I don,t blame you mate. I used to be in the TV audio repair business back in the 70s & I could see then the way things were going with all the chips making it uneconomical to repair stuff .So I got out & totally changed direction into house renovation. I am retired now and very glad I did. Interesting to see how little is in the new sets compared with the old TVs.
I just bought two CRT monitors from the 80s. Lol.
Working on two CRTs given to me lol. One gets no power and the only had a horizontal white like.
No real progress other than a replacement resistor though
Chips are cheap and easy to replace. The difficulty is only in troubleshooting and knowing how to test transistorized circuits
I totally get your point. Backlight in my old LG TV was dying, 18 out of 32 backlight LEDs died so the screen was still working but was really dark. I decided to fix it myself just for fun and to learn something, but only because I was able to get complete set of new LEDs for $15. However taking TV apart, removing old LEDs an putting it back together after installing new LEDs took me over 3 hours, was pain in the a** and it was really easy to damage LCD panel while disassembling and assembling TV. If I had to do it for somebody I'd tell them it's not worth it and to get a new TV.
Absolutely I can attest. This is especially true for bigger TV's like the one shown in this video. They can be a nightmare to try repair. Just not worth it unless you have very specialized gear to make the job simpler. Even then, probably not worth it
yep.. did a 65" LED backlight TV, it took me FOUR hours. Got it back togther and it worked. It then sat on my bedroom floor for a couple months and then I decided i wanted to sell it. So I powered it on and one side of the screen was all screwed up. I figured out that the LCD ribbons got screwed up somehow, even though I literally had not moved nor touched it in those couple months it sat.
that is exaclty that the manufacturer want you to do.. not repair but buy a new one XDDDDD
TV repair as a viable profession died in the mid-90's.
I completely share your opinion. These TV's are simply incredibly too cheap to repair, mostly because you can't afford spending highly qualified technician time to simply inspect these...
Best case you can order a complete module or board, if available. But when it comes to screens, larger ones are simply a nightmare and an effective waste of space! And you now have a new generation of giant monitor screens with the same problem...
We use here a French expression "ça s'fait plus!" you can translate in "it's obsolete or not made anymore", that implies your "consumer electronic" cannot be repaired and as your screen is too small and has no internet technology, you can have a larger new one for the same money, and the same for your handy, cause the new 5G technology or new Android, even if you're not sure to have any network where you live... And this is true for many things like washing machines, cars and so on.
Note the new trend in cars that use giant touch screens interfaces, replacing switches, sliders and indicators. I imagine a (close?) future nightmare for all those having to replace or trying to replace it, because it's not available anymore, and simply can't be fixed practically.
I see modern technology hasn't reached France yet! "Handy" is what the Germans call a mobile (phone) [UK], cell (phone) [US] or didgeridoo [OZ].
I doubt that car manufacturers are taking any steps to future-proof their tech-heavy cars. It’s going to pretty annoying to have to figure out whether or not it’s possible to use your car when the control and display electronics fail after a few years. You can easily find a 50-year-old car that’s drivable today, but is there any chance that a 2020 vehicle will be drivable in 2070?
@@erikberg7891 that is why they are moving from analog or mechanic systems to full electronic.
I think it could be a new sector in the future of repairing business
I worked in a tv repair shop back in the 1960`s when I was in high school....back then,tv`s had tubes and some transistors in them as solid state electronics were just beginning to come online.....who knew they would come to this.
I agree,if someone told me back in the eighties that toe tv would be on the wall and your gonna have to leave the shop and start a new career I would say they were on something
still tube tv and radios kicking around. i have fixed a few, and nost of the issues were just old caps causing raster issues, and the wrong voltage on the horizontal op tube causing it to go into a death squeal before it cooked itself
Back in the day, full wave bridge, metal oxide varistors,electrolytic capacitors, horizontal output, vertical outputs, sound ic was where most problems found. Low voltage shutdown circuit, then you had to have sam's to find anything.
I love watching Shango066 vids on vintage TV and radio sets.
@jdslyman It's a spoon. If it breaks, it's obvious why. If it works, and it looks fine, it probably is fine. There's not much about a spoon that can break.
Competition for sales among TV manufacturers these days is more about *PRICE* than quality -- but you get what you pay for! It's very unfortunate that these sets cannot be economically repairable so the user can get many, many more years of service out of them, unlike most of the CRT sets. It seems so wasteful!!
sadly I don't think the pricy sets are much easier/better to repair.
Here's the problem, it's Joe consumer that demanded lower prices. it's the Walmarts of the world that demanded lower prices so they could sell more TVs. Back when TV is worth $1,000 or more there was some quality that went into the construction and they lasted a long time but Joe six pack doesn't want to pay $1,000 for a TV he wants one for $299. If these cheap TVs had just been left to sit on the shelf and not sell and everybody kept spending their hard-earned cash on expensive TVs we would have seen the quality remain and the cheap manufacturers we'll be pulling the hair out wondering why people went buying their junk. but everyone wants to save A Buck everyone goes for the lowest common denominator as far as price and we get what we get that's just the way it is. Now as far as saying your CRT is superior well Syracuse have a lot going against them they're not that accurate they have geometric distortion they blanket you with low level x-ray radiation. Lots of reasons to not like CRTs. But televisions in general are down to just a couple of chips everything is all integrated into one big I see there are a totally disposable commodity these days and have to be treated as such
@@12voltvids well said
It is somewhat about the demand of lower prices vs. quality but a big factor is what your consumer data is worth to the manufacturer - it's eye opening that in many cases manufacturers almost sell at a loss based on what they will get back in selling your data to 3rd parties from those "SMART" Apps - even setting up your TV initially may "require" you to create an account to get to the point at which you can select an input. By the way HDMI is a good platform for transmitting all kinds of information (not just video / audio but ethernet which is part of the specs). If manufacturers offered non-SMART TVs my guess is they would be much more expensive.
@@TheRailroad99 Possibly worse (to repair) as they may add additional complexity in the form of "features" and video quality (higher density / localized lighting).
All the technology advancements goes into the display, and no where else. I attempted fix 24" Logik Television due to having perfect display, and figured out standby issue on the powerboard, and then learnt there were other problems such as the FPGA has overheated, and caused the solder to crack underneath which also may have caused a short and blew some other compoments including the ROM storing all the OS information for instance. So gave up on this junk, and brought cheap universal mainboard which connects to the LCD + backlight it had brought the panel back to life with a lot more inputs. (Btw, I had spent just £10 on the universal board).
Logik is a good example of super cheap junk
@@jaycee1980
If you buy a tv screen for 1000 usd. or 5000 usd. it is not always the most expensive that has better durability and lasts the longest.
BGA not FPGA. but other than that i agree.
I didn't know u could do that... it sounds cool. So when you did use the Logik, u essentially u turned it from an LG or Sony or whatever brand it was into a Logik TV while still using the OEM screen, power supply and drivers?... is that about the gist of it?
@@paulmorley1225 The cheap replacement is basically universal board that works in all kinds of models of panels, and essentially turned broke AF Logik into working monitor.
I agree with you there. I fixed my own Toshiba with LG/Philips backlight board. I did get a new board which was expensive. Later I did find a Chinese repair kit and fixed it and sold the new board. It was a horrible job fixing tracks and fitting the surface mount FETs, though years later it is still working. I wouldn't fix one for anyone else.
Hey, on the other hand, the small surface mount stuff has sparked its nieche too! I nowadays do a lot of graphics card board repair and other kinds of abused 'big' hardware. I do enjoy a good repair, where I'm moderately challenged to rely on my skills for troubleshooting. Even years later, it's still satisfying to feel proud of myself for figuring out something I would've never done ten years ago.
Even if you find replacement LED strips you risk damaging the panel when removing it to access the LEDs… Painful indeed.
What happened to me. Bad led strip on an ONN tv. Wired in series so if one goes bad, the TV goes black. Was able to remove the screen, but it got bumped while it was out and that was the end of it. You think the leds could be attached from the back to make replacement easy without tearing out the screen, diffusers, and that white sheet, but instead, it is engineered to become disposable. Yes, it was a black fri walmart TV. Shouldn't have wasted time on it.
Screens this big are easy to work on. The layers are just stacked together and not glued. It's usually smaller screens that are all glued together and impossible to fix without breaking. The only issue I've ever found is dust. Pretty much need an actual "clean room" to fix these and not get dust in there.
@@timramich Well I tried once and the panel had bad lines afterward. Maybe it was already bad before, no idea, but I suppose some of the small flex around it got damaged or something during the handling, despite taking all precautions, moving these large things around is not that easy.
@@francoisrevol7926 i must have done 400 and only broke one panel and that was cause it was glued in and i got inpatient trying to cut down the back of the panel with a blade
@@reacey If "panel" were "patient", you would sound like a serial killer surgeon. Or are you?
Having grown up with CRTs, I winced mightily when you stroked an open TV with the back of your hand. 😮
Hehe, yeah, same here. I could feel my gut clinch in anticipation of that shock.
At least remove the metal watch @@MikaelIsaksson
I really can relate to this. New televisions are just so cheap and usually compared to that around 2009 you get double the resolution at around that just under 200€ range. This video just got my eye because I'm watching this on my 55" LG where I have changed all of the leds. Can't recommend, for emergency purposes maybe, but it's just too much work trying to get the prisms back perfectly and all the layers back without any dust inbetween.
yes easier for chinese kids to make then to repair
I was an installer for an electronics retailer in Canada, so I had access to many TVs that customers wanted to dispose of when they bought their new TV, I didn’t attempt repairing any due to a lack of space to work on them (took an LG panel to bits in my Sprinter work van for fun but could not do real work / keep things from getting damage). Apparently the LCD panels all have a couple thin optical quality glass panels that have some value if recovered and one is coated with transparent conductive metal (ITO) that is super expensive and apparently worth recovering all on it’s own. I haven’t attempted any of that but I still have a few extra panels and I’ll be moving into a house that I’ll potentially have more space to work on projects, so I may give it a go, starting with a tablet LDC panel or maybe computer monitor.
First thing I do when I see a broken LCD is to point a bright flashlight into the front of the panel from close distance. If the backlight is broken and the rest is working you'll see that the image is there. Instantly tells me if it's even worth opening it up 🧐
Had an apartment management company I was doing low voltage work for ask me if I could try to fix one of their 65" LCD TVs that went out. Told them it would be cheaper to just buy a new cheap one. They asked me to do it anyway. One bad integrated circuit and a trip to Microcenter later and I charged them $600 for a tv that was worth maybe $800 brand new. Got it working though. Their poor money management was my good fortune
I used to love working on older pre-flat panel CRT type Televisions. Now if it isn’t something obvious it isn’t worth the time to try to fix. Last one was a large Samsung flatscreen, and no schematics in the service manual. I was like “what the hell!” Worthless service literature! I’m used to component level fault finding from older equipment. Now so much is surface mount components that is damn near impossible to repair without all kids of special equipment incl microscope, even if you had the schematics. I’m focused now mainly on guitar amps. Even this equipment when all solid state, can be a SMD nightmare! I remember a Crown Monitor Amp CE1000/CE2000 that was of throw away design “module replacement only pretty-much” and since it was a lower tier model loaded with Mf’en SMD’s! Not worth the investment. Very sad electronics repair has gone this way, because it really was a love of mine doing component level repairs. 😩
If you are good at component level repair, schematics are not the holy grail - they're helpful, but not entirely necessary - if you struggle, there are many channels on here that show how to repair without schematics. A bench microscope is invaluable for the modern day tech, and in the scheme of things a second user one costs pretty much the same as the profit on a good repair job maybe two or three. You are only constrained by the limits you put upon yourself...
@@will_doherty Not when it's multilayered PCBs you should always have all the info before chasing red herrings down rabbit holes. Especially when doing live testing.
@@SlyerFox666 why do you think I refuse to do cap jobs on camcorders. Multivay airports leaky electrolytic that soaks into multivar boards and causes problems on the internal layers. I refuse 100% of them because he accept a job like that you charge somebody for the job and then two weeks later it comes back with another fault and then you're married to the God damn thing. in the end you end up having to refund because one probably leads to another and you've wasted all kinds of time. Forget it I just turned them away at the door. I don't care how much somebody wants that old handicap fixed I'll let it become somebody else's problem.
@@12voltvids Oh I feel your pain, been there myself, an not to mention the old camcorders where the mechanical strip down was a literal work of art unless you want springs sproinging off in all directions and you do all that just to get to the real surprise. I never liked it but alot of places I worked would charge for the initial diagnosis. Basically just to look at the extent of the damage first, and charge a fair amount for it. After a few of the gems like you mentioned you realise if your gonna go into business on your own this is exactly why they charge that look at fee, otherwise your out of pocket every time it crops up, but yea best bet if its in that state it's a full board replacement ... If you can get one in this day an age tho. 👍
@@SlyerFox666 live off the estimate fee.
Hi Dave, wal mart doesn't have any more tv's that are around $130 dollars, all the ones that I saw just the other day start around $378 dollars and up !! Hyperinflation!!
The main problem with LED screens is that if you turn the backlight on fully, LED bulbs do not have a long life. never turn the backlight on 100%. max 70-80%
I don't get how anybody could stand to run these at 100%, that just burns my eyes. The lowest setting is often just fine for me. It wouldn't surprise me if most people aren't aware of the brightness setting, and if they are they don't know its impact on component lifetime.
@@eDoc2020 Totally agree with you
@@TD75 in the country I live in we have smart tv. (Android) in TV tuners
@@ford1546 do you think people in other countries do not?
@@marcellachine5718 Most people don't know about this unfortunately
I found a fluorescent backlit tv in the trash a while ago. All the vents were packed with dust and it failed due to overheating. It would work normally for 2 or 3 minutes then the colors would go crazy in a psychedelic wavy way. Even if I had fixed it, one of the backlight tubes was way down on output and there was a heavy brown spot across one of the sheets of diffuser material. I only bothered taking it apart to separate the recyclables from the e-waste and because I occasionally find use for a big sheet of plastic.
Interesting fun fact about Sony Bravia TVs the early ones so there was a problem identified on the early sets of customers damaging their TV because uneducated people would spray Windex on the screen to ckean and the Windex would run down the panel into the drive ICS that were at the bottom and short out drive ICS on the flex tabs. Sony in their wisdom thought okay if people are going to get the panel wet and since the liquid is going to run down and short out the IC let's turn the panel over and put the IC on top that way if they spray any liquid on it it'll run down into the bezel but it won't hurt anything. they obviously forgot that heat rises and all those fluorescent lights generated a lot of heat so then they ended up cooking the ICS and creating yet another problem psychedelic colors as the icees started the short out. when you get that brown yellow kind of film on the inside and around the tubes and stuff that's generally an indication that the set has been used in a smoker's home because the cooling air with all that tire and nicotine tends to stick to everything and turn everything kind of a yellowish Brown gross color.
That intro montage threw me back to my mid teens. I did often open stuff up and successfully fixed a lot of stuff on my own. Not electronics Since that was over my head but a thing like a boombox was usually something mechanical. But I did have miscellaneous electronic boards that I would just apply voltage through in random spots on the solder spots just to see what would pop.
Back in my day, 70's, my dad planted into my thick head that a simple tabletop black and white TV will kill you quicker than you can do it yourself!
Then he, a master electrician, showed me how!
I've never even considered adjusting the horizontal set on one after that!
Thank you for letting others know about this. Kudos to you sir. 👏
RIP to your dad.
When i was in The final semester to become an electronic 3. Grade engineer, i stuck my fingers on The flyby trafo in a Big B&O (Danish Tv. I am from Denmark btw), by accident. All i remember was waking up on my colleagues table. All muscles had contracted, and made me fly.
24 years later, still have problems due to that Day. I need to get up slowly. My heart is still slow to get up in gear.
Old CRT systems are DANGERous. I still work on them for retro, But i always Take care with two underlines.
I use to have a tv repair store, with seven employees. I got out before I lost too much money. The big fault is people don't want to pay for parts and labor.
The new tv's are simpler, but schematics and parts are harder to find. No I don't want to go back into business, just keep my stuff running. I don't do repairs for others anymore.
Example: try to find schematics for anything Insignia. Good luck!
Yes! You can get books and books on how to operate them, but not one schematic. There are other brands just like them.
The biggest thing I have always told people is if you found it in the trash there's a good reason to leave it there. Don't call me!
What alot of people don't realise is that the common cause of a failure in a TV is heat, so turning the backlight down ever so slightly and fitting it with a fan will make the tv last a very long time.
One big issue are people operating the TV in store display mode, overdriving the backlight.
The TV is saving me from putting another lump of coal on the fire when it's mid winter.
@@twotone3070 The same for my Core 2 Quad Q6600, the fan doesn't cool the CPU but spreading the heat, the only reason why I keep it 😜
I had the blue backlight issue in a 6 year old 55" Hisense and bought a set of backlights from ebay for $32 shipped. Picture looks like new again. Saved me from buying a new TV and kept the old one out of the landfill.
As a repair technician I was the same way, I didn't like working on TV's, that's why I was known as the audio tech,car or home.
I think screens like this have more potential than you realize. While the backlight might be bad, the LCD is good. If you shine a light into the screen you can actually see the display. If you have a mirror, you could place the LCD on top of it and get a display that turns into a mirror when it’s off. If you place it on a window they the sun acts as a natural backlight. Maybe you don’t want any of those projects, there’s still a use for these outside of projects like that. While it may be annoying to have one person ask if you can fix it, having multiple people donate TVs with the same model or manufacturer may be good. Some TVs will have bad backlights while others have bad LCDs or boards. Scavenging parts from one to fix the other could make a working TV that is decent. If you get newer TVs like that then it could be worth it given 4K TVs are upwards of $100 nowadays. Let’s even say 8K TVs come out and they have HDR and built in Dolby Atmos or something. If you got rich people who don’t want to deal with it give you these TVs for free then you could make a very profitable business refurbishing TVs. The problem is that they typically send it to the manufacturer who turns around and dumps them into land fills. I think that if you somehow get involved in that process then you could get the manufacturers to reduce e-waste and make a profitable business at the same time.
I mean you could.... but if you were able to get them to give you the TV for free forget refurb just sell the parts more profit half the work...
So when you gonna get your warehouse for all those Tv's and panels and and and ???
You're welcome to! The dude said he didn't want to lol
I drew inspiration from DIY Perks in repurposing the panel. It can be turned in to a light panel easily. Also there be some open baffle speakers there too.
My wife has a 13" Hitachi TV from 1985 in her craft room that still works great. She uses it all the time. God know how many hours of operation that thing has on it. Several hundreds of thousands at least.
Ha!! i have a 1983 13" TMK and the schematics! Have it in the garage to play Atari 800 games and a Digital Converter to watch over the air programs... beautiful color... This was my first color tv... lol..
I have a friend who fixes TV sets. He is of the older generation and he was fixing them back in the 50s, the old valve type and he still fixes such sets for collectors. He hates working on modern sets due to the fiddly components, very few sets nowadays are fixed at component level. TV sets in the old days were expensive but now there cheaply mass produced so fixing them in some cases is not worth the trouble or the expense, depending on what the set cost originally. The cost of repairs sometimes is more than the set is worth. His words were when cathode ray tube sets went out the world of the TV repair industry changed immensely. Sometimes modern sets can be fixed by changing the circuit board, in the old days it was capacitor's and resistors that were sometimes to blame for failure, also old TV sets had hot mains dropper resistors and these got hot and damaged other components causing failure. I can see your the older generation and you state the same reasons as my friend who fixes TV sets. He fixes very few modern sets now and is retiring but he still has a passion for vintage TV sets.
Yes old CRT sets are easily repairable. Thing is only gamers like them for vintage games. Don't see many watching CRT TV's. I use one here as a monitor for my security cameras.
Geez, I have nothing but good to say of LG, I don't know about their newer products, but I have an 11 year old LG TV (CCFL backlight) 37LH3000 with a daily use of atleast 3 hours haven't had a single issue and still going strong to this day. I have a 16 year old 5.1 Sound system the only issue with it is a dim VFD which is normal for the amount of hours on it. I have a 47 inch LCD Cinema 3D I bought 7 or 8 years ago and again, not a single issue.
Can't say the same about Samsung, old Samsung TVs used to pop capacitors all the time, and newer ones I see around are either blue, dim, or full of spots from the LED diffusers falling of.
All the old fluorescent lit LCD panels were great. I got a sharp monitor that has well over 60,000 hours of use and counting it's left run 24/7 and a couple of insignia monitors that also have at least 60,000 maybe higher hours as they're used for viewing security cameras and I left running 24/7. The ccfl LCD screens last longer if they're left turned on because it's the starting that's hard on the fluorescent tubes. I have a Samsung 63 inch plasma which I've had to fix once when or the edge connectors getting loose just had to be reseated. I do have a couple of other Samsung's that have got bad panels on them however. One has a bunch of colored lines vertical another has a few thin red lines but it's also badly burned. I have an old LG plasma that's also still going strong and several Panasonic plasmas they just never seem to die. I also have an old Sony ccfl LCD that's lasted forever. Couple of Samsung DLP TVs from the early 2000s that still are going strong no issues however the more recent LED DLP suffered a bad DLP chip where the mirrors started to fall off so even though the TV works there's all kinds of little white dots on the screen and the cost of the chip is more than what the TV is worth. It's currently not being used at all but we'll get put back in service on a not critical application. Basically when the plasma in my bedroom finally craps out and going to put the LED DLP in place as I won't care that there's a few pixels that are stuck on it. Right now that plasma screen is so badly burned due to the local news station throwing all kinds of stationary graphics up through the entire broadcast. Watch anything other than the morning news and you can see the sidebar and ticker tape at the bottom that is burned into the screen. But hey that was a free TV and oh the screen has a crack in it too. That was one of the problems with some of the Samsung sets they had a buffer board failure and it would cause a hot spot to form on somewhere on the screen which caused the glass to crack internally but it's been like that for years and it still works so I'll watch it till it dies when it dies I'm tossing it
Your TV is from the golden age. The quality of practically all brands started going south around 2013. Samsung, LG, and Philips to be the most notable. I will stay with my Pana Plasmas Gen 2011. Once their loose screw problem is fixed they seem to run forever. The highest quality ever - besides the silly screws.
You, sir, are my salvation from boredom. Your channel is preciiiiisely what I been looking for all those yrs. Can't wait to leeeearn.
Yeah, I took color TV repair back in 1974. I worked on a few. I've adjusted purity, convergence, and focus. I've replaced speakers and added aux jacks. Replaced some modules and IC chips on Zenith & RCA. Some flatscreen TV's have replaceable florescent tubes. Newer TV's are throw away items. Most of the time you can't even get the parts. All of the electronic parts shops have shutdown. I used to repair traffic light controllers and detection modules with the city. I later got into burglar alarm, access, and camera systems. Also programmed fire alarm panels. I've repaired guitar amps, and even beefed up the wattage. I repair computers, phones, and tablets where the software had gotten messed up. I'm retired now at 67 and only mess with small engines & DJ equipment. Oh, and made a homemade power inverter. 🐀🐾
I _despise_ where technology is going. You couldn't give me a "smart" TV unless I knew I could effectively disable _all_ the spyware and pump UA-cam through HDMI via a web browser with AdBlock, without it 'pitching a fit' or sending telemetry on me.
My response to any modern TV wanting to frot me with commercials baked into the firmware (Samsung, I believe), or refusing to play without connection to my network _and_ demanding my credit card number(?!): "Blow it out your ass! Here's a brick!" What will these manufacturers demand next, a DNA sample and direct access to my bank account, before it runs?
I scored for free, an old 2009 "dumb" LG 47 inch; the picture is perfectly fine, she just does the LG thing once they get old, cycling off and back on again once warmed-up. I'm really hoping to isolate the errant cap and replace it, if it's not an IC problem. A smartphone is bad enough. I won't let a "smart" TV or any other of that IoT crap on my network.
Not gonna be surprised to find foil hat at your home.
@@Lyzzzander Only as a fashion accessory. They don't actually work lol.
I acknowledge the comment read 'ranty' and paranoid. But I am flummoxed at how blase and benumbed the masses have become, not realizing how much of their personal data is being mined and cashed-in by scum-bag corporations, in exchange for (insecure) cheap or free spyware platforms that monitor and hustle the zombie hordes to buy even more useless shiny things. It's invasive, but I've learnt that there are large numbers of people out there who don't seem to mind taking it 'up-the-ass' if they get a 'reach-around.' Crude but appropriate analogy, for a crude and failing civilization.
@@midplanewanderer9507 i think you're overcomplicating some of the facts. Yes, there are google's AdSense, or any other analogues to it, but no one give a damn about you personally (until you want a murder someone for example). Your credit card, or any other information is just a water drops in ocean. Made fake accounts, use open source freeware instead of giving your info to other's, sit trough VPN or Tor. Everything isn't obligated
Chromecast is SHIT ,you get hit with ads, even if cast from laptop, let alone smartphone, I never had CC, from what I seen when my friends use it, I download vids to my laptop, then copy to 3.5" HDD, then play that through PVR with CRT TV
@@Lyzzzander foil does nothing against ads and spyware
I have an LG c9 oled but I've never had an LG before and this TV doesn't even have 1000 hours on it. The picture is incredible though. The graphics in modern games really showcase the fidelity. I'm not privy to the lifespan of them though. I know the new ones only support 40gbps as opposed to the 48 mine does. The true 120hz in 4k on games is cool too. The input lag difference is really noticeable compared to older hardware that only run at 30hz in a 60hz container
You're the same as me.... Used to repair laptops,I don't for years becaus It's not worth my time. Been repairing TV's and backlight...I just Hate It so much,spending more than 7h repairing and loosing nerves-It's not worth It... Nowdays I'll stop repairing E-scooters. Li-Ion batteries are expencive and you said to a customer replacing cells will cost about 150eur,he comes to you and said "I can buy a brand new E-scooter from China for 250eur"... No one understands the time,nerves,repairing,buying material,flux,solder,electricity,parts,etc... I have a knowledge but I don't have nerves anymore...Best regards Sir!
I've seen quite a few flat screen sets that had the backlight replaced back before LED backlights were a thing and some of the fixed sets would have a dark place or an off-color area in the screen after being fixed. They used to use some kind of fluorescent light if I remember correctly. You might know exactly what caused this (I've never taken one apart to know what could go wrong in changing them that could affect the picture afterward). Edit: there is a TV in a restaurant near me that has a very blue color and maybe it is an LG panel. It is bluer than any TV I've seen.
Yep. CCFL tubes. Until recently, I've been replacing them in certain models of restaurant order terminals because they were expensive LCDs and it made sense to recondition them with 10 dollar tubes. Horrible time consuming job, but the money was good. Finally, it's just hit the time where they are all LED backlit now and they are reliable to the end of life. I know what you mean about the dark patches. If you don't line up the tubes just right, they don't shine into the diffuser correctly. Some I had to just do the best I could. So fiddly. They were bright and readable, and that's what mattered with ordering terminals.
I regularly used to replace individual LEDs on the strips, obviously these the cold filament lamps you mention.. But I did make the mistake of fitting one of the covering lenses off centre to the LED. this resulted in a very bright spot on screen. recentred it and worked great.
The off color area is caused by replacing just the bad CCFL. As they age, their color temp changes, and sometimes it's just a matter of it not being an exact replacement. I used to keep all the backlights from sets with broken panels. I had hundreds. It took up a lot of room, but if I needed a backlight, I probably had it.
lcd panels with the ccfl fluorescent lights have a inverter, that fails and you will get dim areas or a dim display or black screen.
I always thought it would be easier to have designed the set to be able to repair from the rear for something as failure prone as LEDs are , but it's a throw away society with corporations that would rather you replace it not repair it.
I'd converted old LCD panels into soft lights for closets a long time ago.
But yeah; (irrespective of what I keep telling myself) replacing/repairing a backlight was never economical for me.
It is absolutely economical, it is just not cost efficient in terms of money.
@@Wilson84KS Touche.
Bringing back memories. In my youth, back in early 1990s, I was doing an internship at a TV sell and repair shop.
Today any repairman needs to charge around 50-60 Euros per hour to keep business going. And a brand new set costs as low as 200-300 Euros.
There are zero incitaments in present times to repair TV and similar electronics.
To be fair, it's done pretty well really. I do like the fact that most TVs now just run perfectly until end of life. When people ask me to look at them, I just tell them that everything in it will be near end of life and if you've had more than 6-8 years from it, you won't get much more from the rest of the components (with a few exceptions). I usually help them to check prices and all the new cool features and sharper pictures. They look at their sad old one, and it's a no brainer. Plus, like you say, who wants them cluttering your workshop, while worrying about cracking the LCD accidentally? Like you, it's a big reason I stopped working on them.
Also the fact that as smart TVs age, they disable the apps. I have a few pre 2015 sets that Netflix and other apps no longer update and dont work now. Just the sad message that the app needs an update to function but no update available. 😩
@@12voltvids Yeah, true. They try to tie it all in with the likely lifetime of that model (if even that long). If I had a dollar for every time a supplier asked "why is your customer still using this old model?", I'd be rich
@tenmillionvolts My CRT TV is at least 20 years old. Fixed it after a PSU chip literally exploded in it. Still works fine, I'm pretty sure it can do the other 20 I might have left, if I'm lucky...
Yeah, I changed the backlight strips in a 50" Sharp Roku TV I got for free. Works great, it's now at the beach place, but I never want to do that again. The only way I avoided cracking the panel while pulling it apart was to lay it screen-down on a cloth and lift the entire lightbox off the panel and bezel. I was sweating bullets trying to get it back on, centered in the bezel, without applying too much pressure to any of the panel edges.
I have broken a screen on a customer set of all things. I gave them the bad news that the back lights were shot and that they should buy a new TV and they were very insistent that they wanted me to try to repair. I said come on over I need you to sign a piece of paper that will release me from any claim should the screen break. They were reluctant to do so so I said okay come and collect your junk. they came over and after humming and hawing decided to sign a release that released me of any liability of something were to break. Sure shit trying to separate the screen from the glued on diffuser and yes I was applying heat with a hair dryer to break the bond but there was one piece that just did not want to release and I say lifted off the screen I heard a crack in the corner of the screen cracked that was it game over. I called him up and told him sorry the screen broke trying to separate it and the first thing out of their mouth was that I owed them a new TV. I pointed out that I had damn sign a release relieving me of any damages should something happen while I was attempting to service a non-serviceable part. Told them if they wanted any money they could see me in court but they would be responsible for all Court charges including my lawyer and that they wouldn't win because I had their signature on a document that I drew up.I never make promises that I can repair anything that is brought to me. anybody that makes such promises are stupid because not everything can be repaired. Needless to say nothing happened they called me up the next day and told me to throw it out which I did. But that's one of the reasons I won't attempt to replace LEDs on a customer set for that matter I won't even do it on my own they are such a pain in the ass. I guess I have done a few there are videos on my channel showing me opening the screen on maybe three or four different sets and changing out or jump ring the bad LED but that was in the past I hated it then and I certainly won't enjoy it anymore now so I just assumed stay clear of television.
This might be slightly off topic, but I recently bought a 70 inch tv. Got it home and it didn't work. Took it back and got a different brand, got it home and the screen was cracked to hell. Took that back and got a 55 inch. Finally got a good one. Those big ones are too fragile in my opinion.
I totally understand your reluctance to repair TVs. And it is even harder without their schematic diagrams too. I remember the days when I was repairing DOD aircraft black boxes, and everyone that knew I was working in such a field asked me to repair some type electronic something. I guess they think you can instantly repair everything because you repair electronics for the DOD. But you always have the schematic diagrams repairing DOD 'tronics...
after 40 yrs like you i exited tv repair when the cheap tvs showed up. my only exception would be my own 47" JVC. i would repair because its a 3D tv and i love it and they are no longer being sold.
When I left college (here in Ireland) people were asking me to fix the old style TVs with about 80KV on the tube. That was enough for me to never touch TVs again and I thought that might be the reason for leaving TVs alone in this Vid. 80KV will make you sweat if you lack experience. However, I can see all these new flat TVs have much simpler layouts and obviously lower voltages, but as indicated they sell for about the same as 2 hours of a repair techs time, so although it seems like a waste, the only solution is to the recycling bin! Circuit boards have become so concentrated that you can't even get a probe onto them, so replacement or scrapping is cheaper than spending hours. It can take an hour or two to just open some of the gear I have seen, e.g. a Roland Electric Piano had 137 screws to remove before getting to the PCBs. However, I did fix a Korg keyboard recently, where somebody spilt a pint of beer into it. It took me 2 days, but then again it had a value of $3K, and only involved cleaning switches. Cheers!
137 screws is insane!! what model is it?
@@dan.documents I can't remember exactly, but I think it was a Roland D70. These would be made in about 1989 or so. After removing the mainframe, you have to remove the keyboard bed as well, and you're still not there. It's selling price second hand in Ireland is a few hundred dollars, but to the owner who has programmed it lovingly, it is invaluable. You daren't do a 'factory reset' or you're in deep trouble.
You could get over twenty years from a CRT. 480p but some were bomb proof, drop resistant and were serviceable. 👍🇨🇦loved my Trinitron
Samsung did a big screen hd crt tv. And sony did a huge twin power vhs player with 5.1 surround.
Great video as always. If I were in the market for a new TV can I ask what brand you would recommend based on your knowledge? Thanks and keep up the good work 👍
Props up to a guy who tries and fixes these tech nightmares.
Tech nightmare? You scare easy, LoL
I am always amazed at how empty modern sets are.
Maybe keep the psu board as a capacitor doner.
There is a man in the u.k that only repairs lcd sets, the backlight fault is so common.
Crappy leds i suppose.
Ive replaced CCFL transformers in older sets with much success, but the newer Hitachis etc are so fragile even putting the bazel back on can crack the glass.. real pita.
Harvey! that is so very true! were I am in the UK I live close to some areas with Large bins, a lot! of TVs get dumped. I take the codes/model etc & keep the boards.
Mostly they all have smashed, broken screens. I don't waste my time taking the LED strips out, I used to then stopped to many failures involved.
Remember when they told us, "LEDs will last forever"? LOL!
Maybe they should try 5mm LEDs. Or go back to mercury vapour backlights which seem to last much longer.
@@Ratchet_effect I don't blame you by ignoring the leds.
They are driven hard for years and end up pretty worn out or dead.
Sounds like you have a good supply of dead sets, a bit of musical chairs with the spares and you have a usable set :-D
Less waste is always good.
@@westelaudio943 Yep all lies, i wasn't surprised when leds didn't last very long in bulbs either.
Ooow aint i a moaning sod lol.
Uh. I was a radio and TV, stereo and , yes, VCR repairman, beginning way back in the mid 60s. I started learning electronics theory in the basement of the Clarksdale MS Carnegie Library way back then. I spent 40+ years in that repairman's field. I was the tube guy! What do you want to know? I quit the business in 2000 before the flatscreens became the vogue. Unless you have positioned the "ion trap" on a 50's B&W TV, and converged the red/green/blue phosphors of a color cathode ray tube........I question your foundational authority. Gimmy something!
When replacing a pic tube in customer's home they would sometimes watch.A good time to put the yoke 180 out when brining the pic up, the customer would think the CRT was installed upside down.Good for a laugh...
My LG's back lighting failed and I swapped it out for around $60. This happened before the big drop across the board and a replacement TV would have cost over $400. Worth it to me? Absolutely. But then I knew it was back lighting when it stopped working as I could shine a nice bright light at the screen and still watch it. I get it...you want it to be something like a single component that you can replace and not have to disassemble the entire tv to fix it. Can you replace it for twice the cost of repair? Not where I live.
Hey, I fixed a few TVs in my life - mostly PSU failure, but one of them had a dead diode in the backlight and another one had a corrupted EEPROM.
Recapacitulation is one of the easiest repairs, but it's not always what the TV needs...
I definitely prefer working on tube amps and other audio stuff, or vintage gear restoration. Been doing it for almost 20 years.
I also work on the same myself, unless the flat panel is a cap job or a inexpensive board swap replacement. Thing about audio gear that has always irked me is proprietary pcb mount type turn pots, or no longer available sealed pcb mount slide type switches, “and I don’t mean common typical DPDT type either.” Ever heard of a reverse audio taper type gain control turn-pot on a mixer amp? I never knew such a pot existed until recently.
It does bring a sense of great reward to hear beautiful clear music again after a amp repair. Been repairing since the late 80’ when I was in high school.
😎👍
@@repairfreak oh yes, all these proprietary parts... Makes the art of potentiometer repair (not replacement) very viable, and sometimes you still can't get it because the path is literally broken etc. Reverse taper pots were sometimes used in tube radios, but putting one in a gain control kinda makes sense since you adjust the amount of feedback over the opamp and you pretty much want the gain adjustment to match the way we hear things ie logarithmic.
The last tv I bought was a 55 inch Panasonic Viera plasma just after they announced they would stop making them and plasma disappeared from the market. I very specifically didn't want, and avoided, cheap led tvs at that time.
Those might be the last really good TV sets. I never see any of them with faults. Panasonic has learned from all older series defects and then they abandoned a perfected technology. So sad.
An excellent choice. Panasonic were masters of this sadly short-lived technology. Fortunately I'm not bothered about 4K. The picture provided by a properly set up Plasma is unmatched imho.
As you said, a bulging capacitor is a pretty low cost repair. I used to have a Samsung with bulging capacitors that I was able to fix myself by soldering new ones in, and I'm a total amateur at soldering. I think capacitors are made better now though. There was a period in the 2000s where capacitors went bad in lots of things.
Capaictor plague was an issue up until early 2008. a lot of electronics premature failed in this time period due to bad caps. In this video you could see 2 or 3 capacitors bulging on the power supply near the top connector.
@@oOignignoktOo1 Cheapo China Shitcaps.
Understand your point not to fix it. Did see one channel where the guy replaced about 10 LEDs on the backlight by soldering new ones on and saved the set. He bought a roll of 100 of them for $6.He said if more go out he will fix it again,LOL.Seems to be the cheapest way to fix this for under $10 just for someone who doesnt mind the time and labor. Me personally I would buy a new one .Great Video !
I have done several videos where i open the screen and bypass the single bad LED and it really isn't that noticable on the screen. I did a few for clients however they also had a limit of 50.00 on the repair. No way i can do it for that when buying new led strips. And no they are not 6.00 for them. Changing a single led or 2 results in a hot spot which is just as noticable as a dark spot. When you go over 50" screen you also need to support the screen with suction cups and a pulley system to lift and support the glass. Otherwise you risk breaking the screen. Nobody around here will pay a coue hundred to fix a TV. 50 to 60 to fix power supply perhaps. 150 to 200 for backlights forget it. If I had someone that said I'll spend up to 200 to fix this i would do it but those customers are just not there as there is s place up the street that sells refurbished TV's for less than that. I have seen 50" sets for 179. So nobody is going to spend money on TVs. Not in my market. I don't need to prove anything. I have done led replacements in past videos. I have also repaired tcon boards to component level. Don't need to prove anything.
The wife and I typically don't buy extended warranty on anything - except TVs. A while back we had a 52" LG that died - we called the place we bought it (Leons) - and they sent a tech out. He took off the back panel...poked around for less than a minute - then said, "Nope...we'll just be replacing the whole TV...no problem." It was just slightly past the factory warranty - and the extended kicked in and we picked out a brand new one at Leons. Comparatively, in the 1980s I owned a 28" Zenith console TV (CRT) that lasted me over 25 yrs. We eventually replaced it with a Sony projo TV and put the Zenith console at the curb. A local neighbour carted it away - and 2 yrs later I saw it again at the curb in front of his house. So he got 2 more years enjoyment out of it, which was cool. They definitely don't make'em like they used to.
My plasma sets have been great and they get a ton of use.
I like to turn the LCDs into grow lights for gardening or just interior lighting. Also the polarizer sheets and diffuser sheets in them are so useful for everything. I've built a green house out of them. You can also use the shell as seedling trays they have nice drainage holes in them so they don't get too soaked if it rains on them. I like the magnets in the speakers also.. But the motherboard is usually worthless unless you want to make jewelry out of the chips I just scrape them off with a heat gun. The power supply can be useful if you convert it into a grow light
Never thought of that, nice way to recycle efficiently
Very nice, making useful things from things people are conditioned to believe it is garbage feels great, I developed and built my soldering station like that but also many other different things and no, it doesn't look like garbage, actually there is no garbage but only resources, this is how the profit incentive and cost efficiency contradict real economic efficiency, as here, it is definitely economic to replace the LEDs thinking about how much resources and energy is needed to produce such a big device, the biggest parts can't even break on their own, it is just not cost efficient, like people throw away washing machines because there is an error in the control circuit, this is just absurd.
Thankfully i left the consumer electronics reapair trade before flat panel TV's arrived.
To this day i still prefer the immage produced by a good CRT TV
I still have one to watch my laserdiscs on, the major limitation of modern TV's is that they
only give a good picture at a certain resoltion, move away from their native setting and the
quality goes off.
This is apart from the fact that repairing them is no fun anymore.
I watch my laserdiscs on my 2019 Samsung TV, is 4k at 55 inches. The image quality of the said source seems great to me. Some discs were recorded at inferior quality, others look very good. I have 4 players, and over 300 movies.
@@marcellachine5718 I have tried laserdiscs via a high end upscaler on a 4K TV and compared to
a good CRT, they realy look soft, and far from the best that lasersisc is capable of.
I have the best player that Pioneer ever made the HLD-X9 and even playing HD discs a 4K TV
does the image no favours.
I have compared the same movies on laserdisc with a Blu-Ray, and this shows the limitations of the format.
The HD mastering and decoding was never fully refined, hence the less than perfect video, on a DTS soundtrack
Laserdisc can still provide an excellent performace, far better than DVD.
@@Barbarapape I barely have the space for my laserdisc collection, there is no place in my home for a 32 or 36 inch CRT
Like I said I'm happy viewing them on my modern tv.
I've been able to fix up a couple TV's with blown backlights with minimal cost and some patience waiting for the parts to arrive from China via eBay or Aliexpress. I've saved a few TVs going to the landfill that were dumped in my building's trash room.
Had one pop a MOSFET on me in summer on a 65 inch Hisense. Ended up finding a similar board that would work. Keep in mind it wasn't exact same board but it had the right pins to supply power and such. So I bought it in a gamble and it works. I find that the issue is using the smart TV function causes a lot of heat and power draw. Now I use a seperate dongle for the smart TV portion
The new flat panel technology TVs are complex in design. If you can have modules it would be the ideal way to service these types of sets. Most of the time I found bad capacitors, and oxidized connectors causing faults.
I refuse to service TV sets. Takes too much space, and sometimes a lot of time involved. Going back to before the mid 1970s I was servicing a lot of TV set. These were mostly solid state. The older ones from the 50s through to the late 60s were using tube technology, and over time had more and more solid state circuitry.
Back in those days I made very good money fixing TVs and radios. Back then parts were much easier to have from the manufactures.
Right a tv won't kickstart if capacitor doesn't store a charge.
this is a major problem with modern lcd backlit displays. they always drive them LED's too hard. 275 volts from a string of led's wow that is insane.
yeah its large series string array of LED's, its a cheap way of lighting them by using higher voltage which requires less current. This design sadly leads to more prone failure and all it takes is for one to go open or shunt and its done...
they are in series.... so they are usually 28v per panel....with like 6 to 8 leds running at 3V...... I say the fact they are in series is why that sucks....over parallel 28v x 7=.....
not to mention there could be current or voltage mismatch accross such a long array
Planned obsolescence my man
I haven't worked on too many. One of mine died last year and I wasn't in a position to replace it so I opened it up and after about 5 minutes I found that the trace that went to the neutral on the plug had lifted. No other damage to the board, no signs of stress on the connector or surrounding plastic or PCB. I just soldered a jumper wire in and it's been great since. Sometimes it can be worth fixing them, though yeah a lot of the time it's just easier or less expensive to replace them.
I enjoy the candidness and seriousness of your diagnostic and commentary.
The modern TV is just relatively expensive LCD panel with relatively expensive backlight and some relatively cheap electronics. It also happens that the cheap electronics tends to be more durable than the really expensive parts. Similar story with old fridges. BTW, in old TVs the most expensive part was the CRT, it was practically indestructible. Also, a very large number of inexpensive parts inside. The majority of the repair cost was just the time.
backlight is actually cheap....leds are like 11 quid for 800 1w LEDs .....on a PCB....all cheap too
I don't understand why the audio in TV's is sooooo bad. Let me correct myself, I know why the audio is bad; I just don't like it. They sure like selling add-on sound bars.
@@oldNavyJZ My guess is not enough room to fit speakers big enough. Yes, they have to be bigger to sound right. I have a good sound bar. It has a big ass subwoofer. The interesting thing is it sounds perfectly good without the subwoofer in a smaller room, gets lost completely in a bigger room. Anyway, the sound bar alone is way bigger than all the space inside the TV that could possibly be left for the speakers. In old, bulky TVs sometimes the speaker were not that bad, because they could be bigger. I'm surprised the other way - how could my TV sound that good as it does when it's completely flat? ;)
Not sure about their TV's, but my LG Nexus 5 is still going strong after 8 years and I dropped it about 3 meters onto gravel once, accidentally. Just ordered new camera and the "window"/glass that goes over it, for about 10 bucks with shipping and replaced the stuff myself. I'm at 3rd or 4th battery now. The only problem is the mic that wasn't working well from the beginning and I think I'll have to update to one of the newer OS's, since it's getting slow with all of those apps that are programmed to only work well on newest OS's. I guess they do that to make you buy new phone every year or two.
LG Nexus 4 works great with LineageOS 17.1 which is pure Android 10. Try it.
@@koraypekericli Thanks!
I'm 13 and have time to get and fix these old flat panels, I learn how by watching UA-cam. Lot of times it's the bl inverter board. I sell them after I fix them at flea markets. I also sell the working parts online 😉
idk I just stumbled onto your account and this video and I could listen you talk about why you don't like TVs for atleast a good 30 minutes.
Also.. I love the intro, reminds me of 90's tech videos during elementary school.
I've come to the same conclusion. There isn't enough profit for the time spent doing the repair, and the risk of breaking the customers display when replacing the back lights.
That too. Then when you break the screen they expect you to buy them a new one. I only take on things these days that I have a chance to actually repair. I'm trying to simplify my life not create headaches for myself. I'll do this as long as it's fun and when it's not fun anymore I don't want to do it. LCD TVs are not fun.
I remember a requirement for my first job in a TV manufacturer on the US-Mexico border:
"used to working under pressure"... I won't say anything else.
@@12voltvids I am a primary school teacher now (only in the mornings) and in the afternoon I teach at a high school. I will retire at 60 (2 to go) and seeing the comments on your channel I forgot to invest my financial settlement in a Repair Shop. It would be nonsense (total madness). Thanks for opening my eyes, I was a fan of Norcal715, I met you when you made a post about a 130V zener diode used in a Sharp... ...heh. A fraternal greeting.
Replacement of these really BIG flat screen TV backlights are more of a miss than a hit. Components other than them are
usually quite easy to fix but the time it takes to get replacement backlights, if available, and then replacing them you run
into a risk of destroying the front end opening it up. The bigger they are the harder they fall. Can't blame you for trashing it.
Its a pity that modern TVs are more and more a throwaway product and so more than ever polluting than ever. As its always a chemical waste Alsi software designs of the smart technology are poor and not long lasting as the hardware. Also hardware designs are more designed for the eye of the buyer than the serviceability or possibility to repair. Decadent big 65+inch an screens are broken easily by accident and the many LEDs will also fail earlier. Why is a led strip so hard to repair and not as easy to change like a light bulb. Should be made in a design like a rail or so that you can slide in and out. Not damage the panel and risk for the repairman. More circular designs will sell better as consumers will want and need these more.
Back in 2007 I bought a 46" Sony Bravia for like $3k..... it has a beautiful picture and still works and I've definitely used it a lot. It's in my garage/shop now but it still works fine.
Nonetheless, I appreciate your video.
Not worth the repair you say? I'm a recovering, former computer technician. Within a six month period, I picked up seven flat screens from the curb side just to see if I could sort them out and make them work. I'm at six for seven. But -- five repairs were popped capacitors and one faulty controller board. I agree completely. If they need only very simple repairs, I'll give it a few minutes, otherwise, off to the recyclers they go.
It's usually PSU or backlight. With PSU it's either some catastrophic failure or just dead electrolytics. With backlight, they drive these LEDs way too hard so they fail all the time. Having few more LEDs in the backlight would add very little to their cost but would make them last much, much longer. In fact, too long, from manufacturer's point of view.
Let's save the environment! While at the same time selling more junk that will end up in landfills!!!! (Except those that are recycled) Btw, interesting video!
@@TD75 true, but if your Refrigerator quit after a couple years, you'd have to replace it, unless it's feasible to repair. They add all of that microprocessor junk to make them more expensive to get repaired. I do not need microprocessors in my appliances. Give me a simple washer and dryer, refrigerator, and I'm happy. TV's on the other hand, we don't really need those. We just want them. And they're junk now.
I hear you! Much easier to replace a PC laptop screen than it is to fix the new LED TVs. I tried fixing a 24 inch one myself a few months ago. Not really worth it, so I ended up using an older laptop as a TV for a while until I got a replacement (via home cable Internet).
Quick tip. If the TV turns on but no screen and if possible in a dark room, take a good falsh light and place it up direct against the screen towards the center. If it it the back light you will see a dark image around where the flash light is. If you still don't see anything then it's not getting a display or could be both issues
Goldstar from the 80's rebrands themselves "LG", but it's still the same old Lucky Goldstar crap that it was back then.
LG needs to go back to it's roots as a chemical company. They make good soap, bad TVs.
It is a good thing the politicians are going 'green' with new technology to 'save' the planet🤣🤣
What a joke. Do you see how lithium is mined for the batteries in these cars? Do you know where the majority of that stuff is mined? Do you think they are doing it in a "green" manner (lol)? You know, for the cars the burst into flames for no reason and need charging every hundred miles or so? Or the massive "wind turbine graveyards" after the non-recyclable wind turbines are finished after their very short life (they are also the #1 killer of bald eagles)? Everything "green" uses massive amounts of "fossil fuels" to produce. People believe they are "going green" by "buying an electric car" (what do you think powers the electrical grid?) The current electrical grid can not handle what these clueless (and mostly un-qualified) politicians are trying to push everyone into. You know they can shut those cars down? You may not want to participate in "no car Sunday" but you will be forced to because they will shut you down. Don't think so? They already locked you in your house, forcing you to cover your face and forcing chemicals and experimental drugs into you and your children's bodies. Just sayin.
@@jeremey2072 crude oil is 100% organic
distilled into gas diesel, oil
produces 99% CO2 plant food
it's 100% echo friendly
I fixed an LG TV that had probably the same problem first generation PS3 had, of the CPU/GPU delaminating or with bad solder joints, so.. just pumped some flux, heated the chip with a big hotgun, and it reflow/just heated up, and it fixed. I don't know if it was hot enough to reflow , so, i guess i just fixed it by semi melting the solder on the chip, but still... changed the thermal paste, and it's working as good as before
My employer used to have a few TV repair contracts and we rarely touched panels. I think I did maybe 2 total in my 10 years so far. We mainly just changed the PCBs in the back. Thankfully we dropped TV accounts during COVID.
Most flat panel TV's are a race to the bottom. I've had the best luck with Samsung and LG - usually only the usual capacitor related faults in those. Our 32" LG TV did suffer from backlight failure, but it only cost about £12 to get a set of replacement LED strips from Aliexpress to repair it.
Vestel made stuff (many supermarket brands, but also some big names such as Toshiba) is usually shite. The power supplies are usually overcomplicated and if they dont fail, it's poor heatsinking of the system processor, or bad FLASH memory... of course once the FLASH has failed, the firmware has gone and as you cant usually get the firmware image files, the TV is scrap.
I have had quite good luck with my vestel lcd crap still going after 1000,s of hours of being left on and its over 12 years old my sisters old vestel asda shop brand tv lasted 11 years before the psu caps started to go they carried on using it and it done more damage .i am put off by samsung i know quite a few people that had samsungs fail at 4 and 5 years old that said my best mates samsung is well over 10 years old and i have only replaced one faulty cap no doubt my panasonic cap cost more than all the others in the psu but he has been using it for a good few years after and still going strong .I really want a sony set but they dont look to reliable ,
If You can find the firmware you can easily flash it with ch341a without soldering, try to search mainboard model + lcd model, there might be a tv with the same ones so you can use that firmware
@@namesurname4666 the problem is you usually cant find the firmware...
@@jaycee1980 i know, i found the firmware for my sharp tv but now i can't record tv anymore, it has copy protection so it's not readable on pc, i also tried blaupunkt firmware with same specs and works fine so i'm using it, sadly pvr is still encrypted
I repair them back in the 80s when it was component level repair only and to me it was fun, but without proper schematics and info you were shooting in the dark and by the 90s it just was not worth it.
Mind if i ask, why do you check voltages? I almost always troubleshoot with resistance, checking switches, then back lights, then line generators
@12voltvids your awesome video reminded me of my attempt to make a pure sinun inverter using analog circuitry only (LC tank resonator)
We had a
LG was the best rebranding in history, and I don't mean in substance. Lucky Goldstar made crap, everyone knew it and it was priced very cheap. Suddenly LG emerged and was positioned or portrayed as a quality brand.
Little lesson on LG. Once upon a Time there was a company in Korea called goldstar. they made lots of cheap black and white TVs that were sold under various house brand names along with Samsung. There was another company in Korea called lucky appliance. They made things like refrigerators and air conditioners and ranges. Lucky appliance and gold star electronics merged and changed the name to Lucky goldstar. Decided just to drop their names and abbreviate with their initials like so many other companies did. Remember Kentucky fried Chicken and general motors becoming KFC and GM? Well lucky goldstar became LG.
10 years is normal for a fridge
@@catsbyondrepair and yet my folks had one made by Tricity (old British brand long lost to history) that lasted almost 35 years. Even my Candy fridge, made in 1995, ran until 2020. The unreliability of modern electronics and appliances is deliberate. I read that the average lifespan of a washing machine sold in the UK is now down to about 2.5 years. But hey, at least you can program it using your phone from the other side of the world (at least, until the cloud servers get turned off or updates are no longer available.)
@@catsbyondrepair It was less than 10 years, that's why I said "
I did tv repair for many years and remember having trouble getting components like flyback transformers. I could see it was a dying business in the 1980s.
Parts were not an issue till the early 2000s
While there is no market. I've taken free broken TV's and had good luck getting 1 working out of the lot.
Prime example will be one with the bad backlight. I just ripped the strips out one with a bad board, and to my surprise it all worked.
Although I have more fun using the plastic and diffuser sheets for random projects.
Just found your channel while trying to fix a no power to tube situation and you are clearly an expert and a cut above others on UA-cam. I'm having trouble finding the issue. I put a cap in backwards near the flyback and it vented. I switched it with a new one and it turned on, but had some arcing near the flyback onto a nearby resistor. I reflowed the flyback in case that's why it was arcing, but now I only get a standby light, but I do hear the relay click when I hit power. No tube juice though. Would you be able to assist me in any way? It's one of those Batman CRTs and I'd love to get it back up and running again.
The same reason I don't repair flat screen TV's there is no money in them to repair compared to a new one.
Landfill ready
Yup they should just send them from the factory straight to the dump and cut out the middle man (I.e. the customer.) I'm no eco warrior but I feel our grandkids won't forgive us for 'planned obsolescence' and the resultant Wall-E esque mountains of e-waste.
You are 100% correct. I hope recycling gets good use out of the parts
I really enjoyed see your investigative process. So good video!
Only tv I ever went through the pain to fix was my pioneer kuro 60 inch 1080p plasma. Still in my main setup and theatre. It was some piece in the audio board that wouldnt let the tv turn on. Pulled the board and sent it to have the repair. 70 bucks. Prob took me a few hours in time to get apart and back together but I think it's still a great quality picture compared to most sets today.
Electronic devices are getting disposable
Here in India no one repairs headset headphones because it's not worth the time
Technically leds are blue to start with, it’s the phosphor comes off and it exposes the led to oxygen, it then burns out, hence burns the track out.
Remember as a young boy. Helping my uncle fix older tvs. Was a great side hustle. Still remember his magnetic wand. Used to pull color back to center. Replacing transformers. And adjusting color. I quickly became the master tv fixer. lol we would get the tvs for free he worked for the city street dept. So brought used ones in every day. I’d fix them. And we would sale them for 50 to 10..00