Ok, just about 2 months after starting the process, someone finally came out to look at my TV yesterday. The United Radio tech called me in the morning as arranged, ask me a few questions about the TV, and said he’d be out between 11 and 1.
He showed up at about 11:30 or so. He was very affable guy who came well prepared to tackle the problem. He started by trying to boot up the TV. Thankfully, the TV went into worse case scenario mode (the status LED blinking 6 times, the tube never fully powering up.) He asked for the TV’s remote (normally we just use the remote for the cable box); he punched in some codes, but the TV still wasn’t playing along.
He said if it came up at all it would make the diagnosis a lot easier. The alternative was to pull the back off and poke around. My hernia area twinged when he said that. Gulp.
At first we were going to try to slide the whole TV stand out a few feet with the TV on it. But being a cheapo stand from Target I was worried about the flimsy plastic feet snapping off and the TV taking a quick drop to the floor. So, we decided it was best to pick it up and put it on the floor. He gave me a great hint though; there’s some handles build into the case just behind the front bezel. You wouldn’t even know they’re there if nobody told you. They’re on the balance point for the TV, so you can pick it up with reasonable assurance its not gonna tip over. A quick 1-2-3 and it was on the floor.
Surprisingly, the TV was as heavy as I remembered. Moving it 5 feet wasn’t a problem. I still don’t think I’d wanna carry it down a couple of flights and into a truck though.
He removed about 20 screws that hold the back on and slid it off. Using a can of compressed air he cleaned up the 1/4″ layer of dust over all the guts and started poking around a bit. Turns out most of the electronics that drive the TV are on a logic board that’s on a sliding tray under the tube. After undoing some wire bunching, you can slide it out and get a good look around.
After poking around for about half and hour, he said that something in one of the logic boards themselves (ah, integrated circuits; no repairing, ’em;) and that he’d spec for replacement. With that he slid the logic board tray back in and buttoned everything back up. A quick heave-ho and it was back on the TV stand.
I asked what the time line looked like from this point. He said it would take a day or two to spec the replacement and generate an estimate. Then a week or so to get it approved by the warranty company. Then another week or so to get the parts. Then another few weeks to get a tech to make a return trip to do the install.
So, it’ll probably be another month or so before everything is fixed. I told him that at this point the timing really didn’t matter. We can limp along on Sandy’s old 10 inch TV/VCR gadget for a while longer. As long as its in the process and it’ll get buttoned up eventually, that’s really all that matters.
I thanked him for his time and wished him happy holidays.
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