Sunday, March 13, 2011

Purple Line Problem with Samsung LCD TV


Samsung LCD televisions manufactured in 2007 can develop display issues when they are first turned on.  See image of small purple dots and vertical lines that appear throughout the picture.  If the television is turned off and immediately turned back on the display clears up.

The issue has been reported to Samsung service so I will see what their response is. They told me it was not the capacitors but maybe the computer display board. I did not pursue finding out how much the board costs.

Reading this web site, the problem appears to be with the capacitors in the television: http://www.fixya.com/support/t5448000-samsung

UPDATE (February 2012): Samsung has listed a TV Capacitor Settlement Notice on their web site so owners of these televisions might be able to get financial reimbursement: http://www.samsung.com/us/capacitorsettlement/

I did not see any pictures of this phenomena so I posted these images.  Last picture is close up of screen.

UPDATE: The problem was caused by three 1000 uF 25 V SAMWHA electrolytic capacitors. The tops had bubbled up but not begun to leak yet. Another Samsung television I worked on which failed to turn on also had a SAMWHA 2200 uF 10 V capacitor fail.  Whew!  I am glad this is fixed.  It took about 30 minutes to repair though I did have to order the capacitors which took about 3 days to arrive from Mouser Electronics.

The problem documented in this posting now appears fixed.  See this posting for the fix CLICK HERE