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Success Stories If you have successfully repaired or restored a piece of equipment, why not write up what you did and post details here. Particularly if it was interesting, unusual or challenging. PLEASE DO NOT POST REQUESTS FOR HELP HERE!

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Old 1st Aug 2013, 5:56 pm   #1
AC/HL
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Default LCD TV Lives Again.

My latest 99p buy is a Grundig 15" LCD TV, described as "working, but goes off after 15-20 mins. I was surprised that there were no other bidders, but confident that a couple of caps would cure it.

It had a prominent red cast at switch-on which became white after a few seconds, then worked OK for over an hour, leading me to think that I had an unexpected bargain. Right?
Wrong! subsequently it would only stay on for a few minutes.

When I looked for the model number (GU15WDT) the cause is well known.Back light tube failure.
Many of you will be thinking that was obvious, but my TV experience did not extend to these new-fangled flat screen thingies.

As it happens, an earlier Freegle success, a 15" LCD monitor with a damaged screen, was waiting for my next trip to the recycle skip. With nothing to lose I stripped both screens and extracted the tubes. They looked very similar.

A couple of hours later, and a bit of fiddly reassembly, I have a working TV.
Not Vintage (yet) but it just goes to prove that you CAN teach an old dog new tricks, and that even rubbish has uses.
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Old 1st Aug 2013, 6:42 pm   #2
Lloyd 1985
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Default Re: LCD TV Lives Again.

I always keep broken LCD screens for this purpose!

I had a Philips monitor that needed new backlight tubes, unfortunately I had to actually buy some new ones, as I hadn't got anything with tubes the right size! The give-away that they were about to fail was the red cast when switched on from cold, it began taking longer to go away, until one of the 4 tubes overheated and cracked at one end, making hissing noises and the monitor shut down. I got it to come back on, but it was clear that something was wrong, as the screen was much darker along the bottom.

Well done sorting it out, they are quite fiddly to replace!

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Lloyd.
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Old 1st Aug 2013, 6:50 pm   #3
bobbyball
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Default Re: LCD TV Lives Again.

Well done Bill, more patience with these things than I would have!
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Old 1st Aug 2013, 8:13 pm   #4
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Default Re: LCD TV Lives Again.

Excellent stuff Too much modern gear ends up at the tip for the want of a couple of hours work and cheap/free/recycled parts.
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Old 1st Aug 2013, 9:41 pm   #5
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Default Re: LCD TV Lives Again.

The "new" tubes are about one cm shorter than the original, but fitted and worked OK. Also, the monitor had two, whereas the TV only has one so I have a spare one for testing If I ever get another faulty one.
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Old 1st Aug 2013, 10:21 pm   #6
mark pirate
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Default Re: LCD TV Lives Again.

Good work, I have just repaired a £2 tesco's 22" lcd telly, I knew it would be caps on the power supply, two 1000uF caps got the set working perfectly

There is a great satisfaction in getting these sets working again, I agree that too many sets like these are chucked for the sake of a few pence worth of components, I always look out for these faulty sets since getting a 42" plasma for £15!
It only needed one replacement cap, and is now my main TV.

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Old 2nd Aug 2013, 12:45 am   #7
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Default Re: LCD TV Lives Again.

42" for £15 is a brilliant find, even 22s are still popular.
LCD sets as small as 15" are relatively unloved in these status concious days, but the Grundig will be put to good use in our spare bedroom. It has just about every input known to man from Scart to HDMI, although the two overgrown earphones masquerading as speakers leave much to be desired.
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Old 2nd Aug 2013, 8:17 am   #8
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Default Re: LCD TV Lives Again.

I certainly agree that the speakers fitted to these sets are very poor, the speakers on my 42" set sound horrible and distort when turned up, so I use my set hooked up to my hi-fi.

I just picked up a Swisstec 15" set with built in freeview, the set works fine via scart but the freeview has a intermittent problem where it looks like the horizontal hold needs adjustment, at least this set came with it's remote!

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Old 2nd Aug 2013, 9:40 am   #9
Nickthedentist
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Default Re: LCD TV Lives Again.

The other "cure" for bad sound on these is a pair of amplified computer speakers. Again, these can be picked up for next to nothing, and some sound surprisingly good.

N.
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Old 2nd Aug 2013, 10:09 am   #10
lesmw0sec
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Default Re: LCD TV Lives Again.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nickthedentist View Post
The other "cure" for bad sound on these is a pair of amplified computer speakers. Again, these can be picked up for next to nothing, and some sound surprisingly good.
Spookily enough, I did the same. A little class D amp from a computer LS, but fitted out in a reasonable box with a decent speaker. The only problem with it is that it is a bit sensitive to RF and if I use the linear when TXing on 80 meters, it blasts out in the house!
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Old 8th Aug 2013, 10:21 am   #11
Paul Stenning
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Default Re: LCD TV Lives Again.

I do the same too. I have a pair of Creative Gigaworks T40 speakers connected to my main (48" LG) TV which sound vastly better than the built-in ones, and they don't look out of place sat either side of the TV.
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Old 17th Aug 2013, 1:27 am   #12
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Default Re: LCD TV Lives Again.

i have a Daewoo 19" LCD DVD-TV combo i got for free due to the DVD player refusing to play discs, but the TV still worked fine,

the built in speakers were tiny and useless though, so i wired up a pair of 70s music centre speakers to a stereo earphone jack and plugged it in, but the power going to the speakers was barely enough to make them whisper.

i took the set apart and found a resistor and a small capacitor in series with the earphone output, i bridged both of them and then got loud, beautiful sound from the speakers.
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Old 15th Nov 2013, 9:43 pm   #13
Neil Purling
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Default Re: LCD TV Lives Again.

I had a cheapo TV & the sound was , think of a mobile phone in a steel bucket.
I fed the sound from the SCART socket into my Mullard 3-3 and ultimately a 8" Celestion speaker.
I thought the set was faulty, or maybe the terrible sound was actually normal.
I 'skipped' a monitor & I reckon a handful of caps would've had it working again, a fact I realised a week or so later from this Forum.
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