Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: My TV Died Today

This is topic My TV Died Today in forum The Afterlife at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-14-2006, 06:12 PM:

Dang... and it caused a whole house power surge and reset my computer when it went.... [Roll Eyes]

. I am reluctant to get it repaired or spend any time on it myself since its 6.5 years old now (50" Mitsubishi 1st generation HD set), last time it set me back $450.00 for repairs. I'd rather put the repair $$ towards a new set.

What sort of flat panel LCD set would you guys reccomend in the 40" to 50" range? I have never really liked Plasma displays and they do suffer from screen burn in like a CRT set does. I have not bought a set now for about 2 years... last one was my Samsung 19" LCD for the bedroom and I've been fairly happy with that but alot has changed sonce that set was out.

Thanks in advance for any tips!

Mark

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-14-2006, 06:22 PM:

If you're worried about burn-in on a CRT, then I'd suggest un-pausing that porn DVD once every few weeks or so. Just wait for SED.

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 05-14-2006, 07:45 PM:

I was checking out flat-panels at Circuit City yesterday. It seems like the pickings are pretty slim above 40", and the prices jump way up. They had several in the 32"-36" range on sale. LG and Sony, probably a couple others. They were around $1600. The Sony Bravia looked the best to me, but differences are hard to detect in a showroom. I think the Sony Bravia was just under $1700. Those sets were all 1366 x 768.

If you want 1920 x 1080, the Sharp Aquos is about it. Oh yeah, there's also a Westinghouse 42" 1080p now. no tuner though. These sets are spendy.

I'd stay away from plasma too.

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-14-2006, 09:49 PM:

I would hate to be forced into buying anything "good" right now (read "good" as kind of expensive to very expensive).

The HDMI 1.1 input/output spec has serious limitations. It won't send a true 1080p video signal without some hacking. Perhaps worse, it won't handle new audio formats like Dolby TrueHD without severe limitations, such as doing no more than 2 channel audio.

If I absolutely had to buy a digital TV today I would get something kind of cheap that I could move over into another room -or even buy a used TV for even less.

I think once HDMI 1.3 compliant products hit the store shelves (which should be sometime late summer or more likely late fall 'cuz those guys are just going to drag ass) the serious limitations in TVs and receivers should be lifted.

Our local Sears store had a Toshiba HD-DVD player on display, along with a collection of HD-DVD movies. All the ones they had claimed "1080p" video format and Dolby Digital Plus audio. I'm wondering if they're not monkeying around with the terminology and if that "1080p" is real 1080p.

At any rate, I want a HDTV set that displays a real 1080p signal from sources like HD-DVD, Blu-Ray or even things like a Playstation 3 gaming console or signal input from a computer.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-14-2006, 10:59 PM:

Bobby-Dave,

I think you convinced me to wait a while..... Also I may have found the problem with the set. It looks like the convergence IC's have failed again. Apparently the set's safety circuits simply just shut it down because of convergence failure. This is a very common problem on all Mits Big Screen sets. I visited several TV repair web sites and these Sanyo IC's are like the black plague in big screen tv! There are no other bad transistors or diodes that I have been able to find nor are there any blown fuses. I think what took the set out was a power bump we had here... I thought it was the TV that caused the surge but it was more likely the incomming power. Since the parts total only 35 bucks I will give it a go. Will also replace the main power switcher drive IC as well. If I can squeek another year out of this set it seems that I might be better off waiting another year or so before getting something new.

Thanks!

Mark

Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 05-14-2006, 11:24 PM:

Samsung HL-S5679W DLP box with 1080p resolution and LED light so no color wheel.

Sharp AQUOS LC-45GD7U LCD 1080p, sexy styling, spendy $5k, looks good in stores. About $2K cheaper from the web.

These are my two picks for TVs at the moment. I hear that only the HP DLP Box is true 1080p compliant.

HP Pavilion MD5880n 58-inch 1080p Microdisplay TV The magazines are creaming themselves over this one. It's said to be the only one that will accept the 1080p signal right out of the box.

Then on the cheap front, head on down to Best Buy and check out the Westinghouse LVM-42w2 42" 1080p Monitor It's only $2.5K. The critics seem to like it. But I haven't been able to compare it to the Sharp.

Posted by Floyd Justin Newton (Member # 1316) on 05-15-2006, 11:13 AM:

Mark: No TV, eh? How about going out and enjoying a movie?

Posted by Paul Mayer (Member # 355) on 05-15-2006, 12:05 PM:

Except all the good ones are on DVD.

Posted by Floyd Justin Newton (Member # 1316) on 05-15-2006, 03:20 PM:

Paul, let me add to my above post... in a movie theatre.

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-15-2006, 03:36 PM:

You're assuming that they still make good movies or something.

Posted by Floyd Justin Newton (Member # 1316) on 05-15-2006, 04:33 PM:

... not really, Joe.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-20-2006, 12:35 AM:

quote: Floyd Justin Newton
Mark: No TV, eh? How about going out and enjoying a movie?

Well, there are no good theatres in Utah... [Big Grin]

the only decent place near here to watch a movie is in Casper, WY. So I only see movies when I am there servicing them!

I actually made substantial progress on the TV set tonight. I replaced both convergence I.C.'s and the vertical driver I.C. and I now have high voltage and sweep again.... Only thing left to find is why I don't have any green drive to the crt... only red and blue. I swapped the red and green drove leads around and the green crt came right up... So some signal tracing to do tomorrow to see where the green goes missing.

Mark

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 05-21-2006, 09:48 AM:

TV's fixed..... There was a cold solder connection on the green pre-driver transistor.

Posted by Floyd Justin Newton (Member # 1316) on 05-21-2006, 10:32 AM:

Good boy, Nark. Now you're back in TV Land! [Smile]

Posted by Floyd Justin Newton (Member # 1316) on 05-21-2006, 10:32 AM:

Good boy, Mark. Now you're back in TV Land! [Smile]

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 05-21-2006, 12:50 PM:

quote: Mark Gulbrandsen
TV's fixed.....

Good, now you can get up here and work on my @#%$* automation. [Wink]

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 05-21-2006, 01:39 PM:

Good boy, Narc. Now you're back in TV Land! [Smile]

Posted by Joel N. Weber II (Member # 3530) on 05-21-2006, 09:55 PM:

How does the HDMI 1.1 spec not deal correctly with 1080p? I thought the video portion of HDMI was pretty much equivalent to single data link DVI (modulo that HDMI requires HDCP to be supported by displays, and DVI does not), and a 1920x1200 LCD driven by a computer monitor at significantly more than 24fps works just fine on single data link DVI...

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 05-21-2006, 11:15 PM:

I'm not sure why 1080p isn't properly supported in the HDMI 1.1 spec. My guess would be that the I/O standard doesn't quite know how to treat data flagged as 1080p along with the higher amount of data. Nevertheless, that's just one of the issues with the current HDMI standard.

Basically this is another example of that stinking "good enough to get by" model in business. These clowns know full well what a HDTV set is supposed to do, but they don't deliver. Yeah sure, you can have a 1080p resolution HDTV monitor double as a monitor for your computer system, but damned near every one of them is limited to some stupid, puny desktop setting like 1024 X 768. What the hell is that? If they can't deliver a computer monitor function at full 1920 X 1080 then why bother at all? "Good enough" is why. They water down the quality and sluff off a bunch of other shit and then still try to sell it like its absolutely great. Blah.

There's a lot of other things I can be spending money on besides new HDTV gear. And until the laundry list of complaints I have with the product are finally solved I'll just do that.