It’s a good thing that electronics evolve at a fast pace. This brings down the cost in a relatively short time. However, the cheap labor, design, and components assure that consumers would rather buy a new unit rather than repair the old one.
My 50 inch Plasma TV cost me $700 at Walmart in 2007. It was the thing back then. It is, or was since it has passed onto TV heaven, not a “smart” TV of today. I can replace it now with a 50-inch LED version for $269 on sale (standard no smart version). It decided to not come on the other morning, and then it started coming on for 20 secs, and turning itself off without producing a picture. A taunt?
Just for kicks though, and because I’m a glutton for punishment, I brought it into the
office to tinker. First I had to enlist the help of two people to remove it from the wall, the thing weighs in around 80+ pounds. Once in the office I treated it like the alleged aliens treat humans, I poked, prodded, probed and otherwise dissected its inner workings.
YouTube provided me with warnings of death, which I was already aware of, since my oldest brother had been a TV repairman in years past. The Internet provided me with Instructional YouTubes of others that like to tinker with these mammoth throw away’s. To narrow down what it might be, I had to wedge a screw in some prongs on the circuit board, Sounds real barbaric and crazy huh. Then I had to add a jumper wire, which if you don’t know what you’re doing, will produce plenty of noxious, stinky smoke, from all sorts of things. We all know once you let smoke out of electrical components they stop working, that’s my theory anyway.
So I gathered up my trusty poking around tools and set about checking it. The YouTube instructions placed it in a self-test mode which revealed most of the major parts were working, it could be the main board that controls all those parts. Checking online I discovered, 1.) The main board is $140. 2.) The board is half the price of another TV. So even though I could fix it, another computer board could go out at anytime since the TV is 9 years old.
Anyhow, I learned a bit, and will donate it to some repair shop so they can use the plasma screen and other good components.
On the positive side, I didn’t release any toxic smoke, melt anything, start a flame, or as the YouTube videos cautioned, “feel like you just held defibrillator paddles to your head and shouted Go!”
So in all the crazy Initials we use today I will say, RIP MCB that controlled PSB which maybe sent too much power from the PCB, ultimately killing the whole TV. Whew!
Comments welcome,