Samsung LCD TV Colour Distortion

Hi guys,

The TV set in my home that my gaming consoles are connected to, seems to have broken down.
It is a Samsung LA40B650T1MXXS, which was purchased sometime in year 2009. Since it's a six year-old set, it has already been long out of warranty.
The screen can display graphics normally, but the colours are very distorted.

We have contacted Samsung and a technician was supposed to have come over today to inspect the TV for S$160. But before he came, he dropped a call to confirm some of its symptoms before suggesting that it's likely a failure of its LCD panel. He gave us two options at that point: either consider a new TV or to still get him to come down to inspect the TV. If he comes down to inspect the TV, then he will have to charge us for the inspection fees, regardless of whether the TV can be repaired or not.

He mentioned that he was 95% sure that it's a LCD panel failure, so we opted to spend a few days to consider whether it's worth repairing or not. Just in case he's wrong or because the description of the fault was misinterpreted by him (because my mum is not very technically inclined), I'll like to ask the AssemblerGames community on their take on the actual problem.

If the TV has a failed LCD panel, we will opt to just replace the whole TV set for obvious reasons.

Basically, what I can see:
1. Certain colours are affected. The most obvious would be black, which seems to be replaced by green.
2. Some colours would show lines and dancing dots. The issue is not with just a few pixels because the glitches observed will change, depending on the colour being displayed.
3. All inputs (HDMI and component) and even the TV's OSD are affected.
4. Not very sure about this, but the colours look a little faded (compared to how I remember what this TV was like).





Thanks in advance!

 

How much would the repair be on top of the $160 charge?

Since it's LCD, another LCD TV shouldn't be too much, not sure how much they are where you're located. However here in Australia they start at $400, with the call out fee being $160 (I assume that's what it is, if the repair goes ahead or not), then I'd save up and put that towards a new LCD TV, possibly even larger since the TV you have is 6 years old. They're more power efficient too, some what of enough plus you can look at.
That's just how I see the issue here, and what would be worth it in the long run. If you replace the panel, what if next the speakers, or power blows. The repair usually isn't worth it for these type of items.

Someone with more tech background will explain the issue you're having though.

 

If you pick a 24 bit image on your computer and mask some of the bits on the RGB data (try it) you will get similar results.

It's possible that capacitors leaked and broke traces somewhere on the panel controller board. Interesting enough it's more common that you have mechanical failures on the actual panel drivers (cut lines from the circut board to the glass panel) causing either vertical or horizontal black or white lines.

Unfortunately without knowing the internal architecture of the device it's impossible to say if it is worth or not ask the technician to inspect it.

It could be something simple as a broken joint on the image processor to something like a faulty RAM chip. Or even as the technician mentioned, the LCD panel electronics being faulty.

If you are curious, LCD panels use a dedicated standard for interconnection to the device main board.

I believe it's a called "FPDLINK" and FPDLINK means Flat Panel Display Link.

 

My living room TV is probably the same, LNB650, just the region differences in the code. My first suggestion is go to this site: http://www.digitalversus.com/panel-switching-samsung-tvs-we-know-so-far-n15170.html

There you can discover what panel you have. Mine is a SQ01, a Samsung made PVA panel with an extended gamut (92% of the NTSC colour space) and 10 bit colour, probably one of the best panels from that time. If thats your case as well, i would consider checking if the problem is elsewhere. Thats what i'll do if something happens to mine.

If it's some other lower quality panel, then i guess it would probably be better to consider getting a newer TV.

 

Could be a faulty T-Con board

 

Thanks guys.

I'm not going to repair the set myself because I do not have the skills and tools to do so.

This TV is huge (40"). A smaller TV would be cheap (a few hundred for a new set). So replacing this TV would probably cost about a thousand dollars.
If we're replacing it, we'll get a new set (one with LED backlighting) as it is our policy to always buy newer technology when replacing old hardware. To avoid all that (since it's expensive to us), we would hence like to have the old TV repaired.
We're not particular about the type of LCD it has. Even though it doesn't seem to be an outstanding one (Revision AA01), it's still a flat-screen TV to us that is usable.

We've requested for another Samsung technician, since it doesn't seem like a LCD panel failure to me as well. He said that it's a PCB failure, but also said that Samsung does not replace the PCB (a whole new LCD panel will be installed instead). So that explains why the first one said that it's a "panel failure" - since Samsung would replace the whole panel.

The LCD was taken to his friend's (3rd party) private service centre, where the guys there will try to replace the PCB for $200.