On a Facebook site for a holiday venue someone was asking for a TV Repair bloke. I mischievously said that TV faults are in two categories now: Owner induced Setting Mistakes - or not worth repairing (commercially) and recalled the demise of the TV repair van.
I know DIY ers can replace power supply capacitors - but am I far from the truth?
JohnP formulated on Wednesday :
Spot on. They are so very cheap to buy these days and the features and tech changes so much, there is simply no point in attempting a repair, unless it is a self repair, where your time is supplied free. Even so, I would only find it worthwhile opening a set up to consider repairing, if it were a fairly recent one or a mega expensive one.
There are some modern TV repairers about... but far less common than once was a time.
DIY repairs on the common stuff like failed LED backlight strips are fairly easy and common.
I swapped out a blown power board in a Samsung TV for a used ebay one that cost £25 - it was an easy job that took 15 mins. Commercial repairers mostly won't touch used/refurbed components though and the new parts are often not available or too costly and there are liability concerns no doubt.
Repair clubs are good for this sort of thing.
It's not worth doing a component level repair beyond those capacitors (most of the functionality is in a few custom chips; BGA soldering isn't economic) but a board swap isn't infeasible to try. There are plenty of boards on ebay (and Aliexpress).
It would have to be worth the hassle over just replacing the TV - not worth it for a £100 model, possibly for a £1000 model.
If it's something gone wrong with the panel, beyond a simple broken backlight, forget it.
Theo
No. It is a question of economics. To spend a day repairing a set, ordering in parts and checking, even if parts are avialable, a repairman will want over £100 and probably £150. New TVs are not much more than that.
In short the low cost and high reliability are such that they are now essentially throwaway devices.
Its a shame there is no extra 4th R to the EU's 3 R's mantra,
Reduce, Re-use, Recycle AND *Repair*
Re-use is also frowned upon by business.
Councils have rules against folks dragging away reusable things from the rubbish tip, even though the BBC made a series of programmes championing the practice ;-(
There is - or would be - a simple way to encourage repair.
Remove tax on labour (income tax) and businesses (corporation tax) and premises (council tax) and put tax instead on new goods .
Socialist governments have taxed productive work in order to fund unproductive work, and driven it all abroad.
Adrian Caspersz used his keyboard to write :
My local council has a shop at the tip, selling such items. I have been in a couple of times out of curiosity. It is mostly over-priced tat - clothes, furniture, household goods and electronics. I guess they rely on people handing stuff in for the shop, rather than collecting it from the bin lorries.
My first record player was sourced that way ...
Yes, I was told that once something is thrown into a skip provided by an external waste/recycling company, it now becomes the property of the skip company.
So the practice of "Skip diving" for reuse is viewed to be theft from the skip owner.....
When my TV went wrong, as it was under guarantee the vendor sent a repairer round to assess whether it would be cheaper to repair, or supply a replacement under the guarantee. In my case it was the latter - the guy took one look at the screen and said that the TV was unrepairable.
Our local council "dump" has a "Re-use shop" in aid of charity.
I had a board fail on a five year old Pany, it would have been a straightforward swap for about £100 but not really worth it on a £600 TV especially as Amazon offered me £100 discount on a new one.
I did exactly the same. On a not that old Samsung, just out of warranty. I suppose the boards come from ones which have been dropped, etc, and the screen damaged.
I had checked all the caps in the original supply, but all showed good.
It's still working years later, but in the spare room, so not much used.
On my one you could see blackening on part of the board and my wife said it failed with a pop. I was away and she went and bought a new TV and I found the Samsung out the front when I came back - back in it went and part ordered - and it's now in the spare room!
Well, that is why of course so many services like bt and virgin etc say they will charge for a service call if it turns out to be user error. it must waste loads of time. The problem is that nobody reads the destructions or does not absorb them or in some cases, the instructions consist of a load of pictures of dos and don'ts which many people simply don't understand. It used to be Japanese English, now it no English, only pictures. I bet cave paintings are really instruction manuals for the tech on if the day!
Brian
and not a plasma whereby putting it face down knackers the screen if its more than a few months old. Brian
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