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.

Quote:

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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.

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I had the same thing happen with my older 27" Toshiba tube tv as well. I was able to push them back in and use the TV. As it was still under warranty I had them replace the terminals.

Good luck