Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Man, I hope my picture tube didn't just go out???

Hate to hijack but ,.......
My girlfriend walked into the bedroom the other day and while I was watching TSN and the highlights of DetroitRed Wings being eliminated the picture on the screen went puff and closed in to the middle and dissapeared. Now nothing at all ,it is an RCA 1.5 years old DOM is October 2005. I don't even want to try and call for warranty it is an RCA and probably better off dead. I feel sorry for her as it was her first big tv at 27" and she won it ...oh well, next day I got a 50 Toshiba

good luck. I checked my warranty and it is only 2 years on the tube. I really don't think it is the tube though after 4 years, unless they make them a lot cheaper than in the past. I've got tv's that are 20 years old and the tube is still fine.

Anyway, not sure this is something I will be able to troubleshoot or fix on my own, so I may call the place I purchased it and see what they tell me....

Picture tubes rarely fail by just going completely out. As someone else mentioned the most likely cause is a failure of a component in the high voltage circuit or power supply.

A couple of years ago my 32" Sony did the same thing and it was just a couple of transitors that popped. I would bet its the same for you.

Randy,
i think i have a very similar tube television to you, the Toshiba 36HFX71 (about 5-6 years old now). On occasion i have had the same problem, though it seems to occur only when the TV is already on and. It will go "poof" and then the red power light blinks like yours. Hitting the power button won't power it down, i have to physically unplug the set from the wall receptacle to remove power and then reconnect it. It always works fine after that. The problem seems to reoccur about once very 6 months or so, not often enough to even worry about getting it looked at but i have always been curious to know what the problem might be. Let me know what you find out about the set, hopefully it's an easy fix. Good luck.

Yep, mine is a 32hfx I believe, I'm at work now. I've tried the unplug thing, even over night. All I get is sound when we turn it back on, and the flashing light. I think ours is about 4 years old.

I talked to both Toshiba and American TV (which is a Toshiba authorized repair facility) today. Like some of the responses above, Toshiba said the flashing light tells you there is something with the power board, most likely a transistor. Worse case would be the power board needing replaced.

Anyway, it is 79bucks for someone to come look at it in my house, or 39bucks if I take it to American for repair. It is a heavy mother, but I think I'll find a way to take it back to the place of purchase.

Hopefully it will be an easy repair...

I spent the extra cash to have someone come out and repair it. I felt my time was worth more than the cost of the house call and all he did was replace the bad transistors and fixed up a couple of suspect solder joints. Took all of an hour and it was up and running again. Now I can't wait for it to die again, as that is when I get to buy my big screen.

Ok everyone, we finally got around to lugging the TV back to American Electronics where we purchased it a few years back. After spending $38 to have them look at it, which can go towards the repair cost, the repair guy said the High Voltage Transformer shorted out causing other multiple items on that circuit to fail as well. The cost including labor/tax will be $289 - our $38 bucks.

Do you guys think this sounds like their giving me a line of crap? I suppose we will go ahead with it since the tv cost about $1500 3 years ago and is HDTV Ready.

The second question I have is in regards to something I noticed after we dropped off the tv. When I unplugged the component cables that I had hooked up to the back of the Toshiba tv, I managed to pull out these little clip ends that were on the tv component terminals. I don't know what you call them, but they are just the outer cover of where you plug your cables into. They have some little clip ends that extend into the television and must be to keep them in tact. The problem is these dang monster component cables were so hard to push on anyway that when I pulled them off, these clips pulled out as well.

What do I do now? It looks like I can stick them back in the tv, but not sure if I'll have any quality issues with the picture now. I don't know if I should be mad at Toshiba, or monster for making there dang cable end tolerences to tight to fit on other equipment.

I don't know about your component cables but I can tell you a few things about the flyback transformer in your set. This is the component that is responsible for generating the 32,000 volts or so that your picture tube requires to display the picture. It also powers other systems in your TV.

These transformers are a short circuit waiting to happen. They're wound from very thin wire with thin insulation. The wire is practically invisible and it's wound into tens of layers with thousands of turns. If you breathe on this wire you're likely to break it because it's thinner than human hair. The whole thing is then potted with a resin. Any imperfections in the insulation or trapped air bubbles in the resin, coupled with the intense thermal stress that they are under, can cause these things to fail. So I am not surprised that it's toast.

You'll want to assure yourself that the repair place knows what it's doing. If they solder a new transformer in and apply too much heat to it during the installation process, they can significantly decrease its life. Ditto for the electronics unless they replace the whole board. And I presume for that price they will not attempt to re-wind the transformer which would be absolute lunacy.

If you decide to go through with this, try to get at least a three month warranty. Good luck.