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

In our upstairs living/family room we have a 32" Toshiba Cinema series flat screen HDready television. It was purchased about 4 years ago from American TV and Furniture here in Des Moines.

The TV has been great and provided a fabulous picture, especially when feeding it an HD signal with my seperate HD receiver.

Anyway, tonight when we turned it on to watch the news there was no picture, just sound. Also, the little red light next to the power button starts flashing versus being steady like it should.

Normally right after you turn the power button on, you can hear the picture tube firing up, not anymore. I need to find my Toshiba warranty info, but I'm worried it won't be covered anymore. It would be pretty sad if the darn picture tube would be out only after 3.5-4yrs...

Any thoughts? I suppose I will need to contact Toshiba.

Randy

Doesn't look good Randy, but as usual, unplug it for 15 minutes or so to see if something happens.

Thanks John,

I tried about 2-3 minutes and still the same. I'll give it over night to see what happens before heading off to church tomorrow. I'm just hoping the picture tube warranty, if that is what it is, will be about 5 years...

Yes, and if that doesn't work the next encouraging thought is that CRT tubes generally last over ten years, so maybe it's something less significant.

I agree, my dad still has 3 Sony Trinitron tvs from back in the early 90's that are still going strong.

If you can't hear it power up that would suggest no high voltage. I would suspect something in the HV circuit, or the flyback- same thing happened to my folks' set. It cost them like $125 or so. I would be surprised if it's the tube.(fingers crossed).

Randy,

Did you/do you smell burning? A flashing light would indicate an alarm probably as a result of a blown fuse (power watchdog circuit) due to something shorting.

nope, no burning or anything. I'm hoping the troublshooting guide in the manual will discuss the flashing light like my water heater manual did the other day.

That tv is so heavy, it took me and a buddy a lot of effort just to get it into the house. If it can be repaired I hope they can come to my place.

Randy, now you mean that your water heater went out too? As Tom mentioned a few days ago, this seems like an extraordinary series of occurrences and suggests the supernatural. Maybe a priest and an exorcism(do ministers do those too?)is more in order than a repairman.

funny stuff John and Tom

nah, one day we didn't have any warm water. A friend of mine showed me the last time this happened how to remove the igniter assembly from the bottom of the water heater for cleaning.

Over time, sediment particles fall on top of the burner plate and it gets dirty so it won't stay lit with the flame. You basically pull it out, give it a good cleaning, vacuum out the bottom area of the tank, put it back, and your in business again for another year or so..

Unless you allow evil into your life, all that super natural stuff is just a bunch of hokey pokey. Have faith, as I know you do Tom and John.

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.

Well they are an authorized Toshiba service center, so I would assume they would do accurate workmanship. I will check to see how long their work is covered and if I can get a guarantee/warranty on this new work.

Thanks, Randy

Thanks Hay,

I have had this same problem with Radio Shack gold cables on my Denon receiver, they are so darn hard to push on and I'm always worried about pulling them off, sure takes some effort.

I always twist on and off.....

A frustrating follow up.... Well, a few weeks back as you know I heard back the the flyback transformer needed to be replaced. I talked to the technician working on my tv and he said they have replaced hundreds of these through the years on various tv sets.

He said it would cost about $280 plus tax including labor and would take a few weeks to get the parts ordered.

Now this is where I get pi$$ed. Got home tonight and there was a message from the same guy that Toshiba says the parts are not available anymore. He wants to know if I want it back or have them dispose of the tv.

This tv was purchased brand new from American Electronics and Furniture about 3-4 yrs ago. We payed about $1500 after talking the salesman down. It is a nice 32" flat screen tube HDTV ready tv that had a great picture when hooked to my OTA HD tuner.

Now they say it is not available to be fixed, what the heck. Your telling me parts are only kept for 4 years after manufactured date?

Contact Toshiba yourself and ask them what you should do. For all you know, this guy may have not done anything, and is just lazy.

Just called them, they said parts are only kept for 5 years. This model was mfg'd in 2001. I was thinking it had only been 4 yrs, but looks like we purchased it in march 2002. So I guess we are $hit out of luck.

Randy,

You can find out the part number of the flyback and then do a search on the net for places that may carry it.

So your saying that if Toshiba stopped providing this part in 2006 and no longer have inventory, someone else will have it? My guess refurbished?

Even if I could find it, who is going to install it for me? I'm technical and can build servers and computers, but this most likely would be out of my experience.

Yes to your first question.

You could take it to the TV repair man who wants to feed your set to the garbage bin.

My tv is in Madison, WI and I live in Des Moines, IA. American TV's repair department is in their main headquarters in WI.

So first I would have to find the correct part, then drive about 6-7 hours. It may be time to look at LCD's and Plasmas.

Randy, I would say the best thing to do is weigh the expense and time of finding a part and replacing it vs. getting a new TV. Either way it's a no win situation (unless you get a really cool TV at a great price )

I had a similar thing happen with my 17 year old refrigerator last year, I was told by Sears that they could not find the parts that would normally cost around $500, the repairs if they had the parts would be another $500. The real problem lay in the fact that it would cost me close to $7000. just to buy a new frig. So in my case I was determined to find the parts and fortunately I did. I would have loved a brand new frig but cost wise it didn't make sense, there was to much of a price gap between repairing and replacing. As I said it will cost either way, just go the way that makes you feel the best about it financially and personally.

Why don't you just get the flyback shipped to where your TV is now?

Really not sure that is an option, I'm sure their repair department would only be allowed to use parts from their mfg's or suppliers versus a refurb place. I will call them and check tomorrow, however, I have no idea what to look for or order.

$7,000 for a fridge, that is crazy! I don't think I could find a place in town that has something that expensive, nor would I ever spend that much for a fridge.

Our last two Sears Kenmores lasted 10-15 yrs each.

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$7,000 for a fridge, that is crazy!

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Tell me about it . Our house came with a 48 inch designer built in Sub Zero. I wasn't even thinking about getting another Sub Zero since they run from about $9000-$14,000 depending on the model. The cheapest 48 inch refrigerator I could find when I thought I may have to replace ours was a $5800 KitchenAid that I wasn't all that crazy about.

I think I would take a play out of the Old Mojo Sony Playbook... Must have felt good

What in the world is your frig made out of????
GOLD?
7k for a frig...it better have enough food pre-stocked in it to last a few years.
I feel bad when I have to pay over $500.00 for a frig.

Randy,

Black Friday is coming up, you can probably get a pretty decent TV on the cheap.

>>Ask a repair shop in Des Moines what they would charge to try and find the part and install it for you. It may or may not turn out to be cost effective but at least you will know the repair shop has a greater incentive to fix your TV than convince you to buy a new one.

Second that. It's hard to believe, but there are still "real" TV repair shops around. I was amazed to find a competent one in Toronto -- they brought my parent's old TV back from the dead a couple of times when minor parts failed. They also tend to have a better idea re: where to look for discontinued parts. Typically the mfg doesn't actually "run out of parts" -- they usually dump them as surplus rather than keep them around.

EDIT -- the link below mentions both the part number of the transformer (I'm guessing yours is an HFX-71) and someone who might have one in stock.

Click me !! click me !!

Just to let you all know, I've checked with about 10 parts sources on the net and everyone says this flyback transformer is no longer available. So I guess Toshiba was not full of $hit.

So now the question is LCD, plasma or projector?

don't need another projector, the plex already has one in the HT room. This is for the upstairs living room, so possibly a plasma or lcd would be the ticket...

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Randy,

Black Friday is coming up, you can probably get a pretty decent TV on the cheap.

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I second the Black Friday idea! I got my Sony 60" A2000 on Black Friday last year for $2000, and a free core XBOX 360. Good deals are definitely to be had...