TV Repair - $7 vs. $2000.

So, early last year I started having a problem with my TV. The TV wasn't brand new, but I had only had it for about 5 years and was a nice HD flatscreen TV that I spent considerable money on, and it was a little frustrating. At first the TV wouldn't immediately turn on, it clicked twice before finally starting. After awhile, it took two sets of clicking before it would turn on. It seemed like it needed to cycle through something before turning on, and over time the number of cycles increased significantly. The day before it finally stopped entirely, it took 20 minutes of clicking before it turned on. Needless to say this was frustrating, and I didn't want to have to deal with this problem again when I went to get a new TV. So I went online to look to see which brands were the most reliable. Frustratingly, Samsung (the brand I owned) was one of the highest rated televisions. I chanced upon Youtube, with a video with some guy with clicking problems with his samsung TV as well.

The thing is, below that video I saw a video on Samsung TV Repair. I was interested. After all, I am pretty cheap, and don't like the idea of throwing something out. Replacing the TV would have cost $2000, fixing it would have cost $600 to $800, and I didn't really want to do it. The thing about the video that I liked the most was the fact that the guy doing the fixing had his little kid on the video, kinda making it seem less finicky, dangerous, or cumbersome. Besides, I figured - can't break something more than broken, right? Nothing to lose.

I followed the instructions in the video, and voila! Fixed. Cost me less than $7.00 (as I had a soldering iron already). Here is a few pictures I took showing how it was done.

This is the issue

The issue is a number of capacitors on the power supply board on the back of the TV. These can burst and go bad. My guess is that when one is burst, the TV clicks once, when they are all burst, then it will not turn on. I needed to find the right kind of capacitor - a foolproof way is to take the old one to the store and get the ones you need that match. You shouldn't diverge too much from the factory version, but keep in mind that the factory specifications were what caused the problem in the first place. The guy at the electronics supply store was knowledgeable enough to help me get the best capacitor I needed. The just open it up, remove the offending parts, replace them, and close it back up again. This really doesn't take long. In fact, I had 40 minutes from when I opened the TV up before I had to be at a Hockey game. In fact, my wife needed to have the TV working so that she could watch the game herself. It just wouldn't be fair for me to leave her with a broken TV when I could fix it for her. Or at least try. Turns out, it wasn't very long at all. I wasn't late.

The TV waiting for me to open her up

Inside the TV

Close-up of the circuit board.

The TV with the circuit board missing.

Circuit board on the Kitchen Table.

The bulging capacitors.

As you can see above, the capacitors that are bad are bulging, and some (as you might be able to see) even have a small black dot on a few of them, showing that the capacitor had burst it's casing. This is what you have to remove.

Removing the capacitors

You should use soldering braid to soak up the solder coming off the back of the board. You need to unsolder it in order to make the space for the new capacitors.

My assistant is less than optimistic about the outcome.

Soldering the new capacitors back on.

Replaced capacitors

The board back onto the TV

Ok, here is a point where I almost ran into trouble. After putting the board back in, I turned it on and success! It worked!. Except for the fact that it didn't. The sound stopped working. Despair! So close!. So, I figured I might have done something wrong, so I opened it back up, and noticed that I had forgotten to clip in one of the wires. Clipped it back in, re-attached the wire (top left, btw), and THEN it finally worked.Ad it only took 40 minutes. With help, of course. 

It's back to working