Last month my Samsung Rear projection TV decided to upgrade itself to 3D. Or at least it appeared to.
But alas, that wasn’t the case. Unfortunately for me the convergence chips broke, which was the source of that red ghosting effect. As it turns out, the problem is fairly common among rear projection TVs.
I had a couple of options:
- Buy a new one
- Get it repaired
- Repair it myself
I’ve had this TV since 2003, so I definitely have gotten my money’s worth out of it. But the 1080i picture still is pretty solid, and a replacement LCD or Plasma of the same size (55 inches) would have been very expensive. And getting it repaired probably would have cost more money than it was worth. So I figured I’d try to salvage it by repairing myself.
After some research, I settled on a repair kit from the aptly named site tvrepairkit.com. For $80 I got all the necessary parts I needed to make the fix. I won’t get into the details, as there are plenty of tutorials out there. But the general process was as you’d expect: I had to take out the board with the broken chips, desolder the broken chips, solder in the new chips, and reconnect the board.
My general takeaways from the experience:
- TVs are DANGEROUS. They have massive capacitors that store enough electricity to deliver a lethal shock, even after the TV is unplugged. Don’t even think about opening one up unless you understand the dangers and take appropriate safety precautions.
- I'm very glad I took pictures of the boards before I unplugged the 30+ wires. I strongly recommend you do the same.
- It wasn’t that hard, as long as you are comfortable soldering/desoldering.
- It was very tedious. It took me about 5 hours on a Sunday afternoon to perform the whole process. Unfortunately I couldn’t physically remove the board from the back of my TV, so I spent the whole time in a hunched position.
- It was definitely worth the effort.
To be honest, I'm not exactly confident that my repairs will last more than a year or two. Either way, I’m glad I did it.