A friend brought by her daughter's dead LG Plasma TV. She said the company furnished her with a new set and told her to do whatever with the old one. She wants me to see if I can fix it. I would like to know is it ok to lay one of these on it's face (gently on a blanket) for servicing. I've heard that laying one face down will ruin them; but, I don't know for sure. It was brought to me laying face up in the back of a van.

She says it's dead; but, I have not checked it yet. The only reason I took it was because she gave me some old radios, etc. and I felt like I should at least look at it.

my son says that you can transport as long as it is wrapped with something -blankets,bubble wrap,etc. dead set is fairly common on lg-shorted cables in power supply. dex(the refurbisher he works for)gets those sets daily and that is most common. good luck and if you need any info,let me know and i will forward to him and his techs.

sampson,

Ask your son what causes random vertical stripes in LG plasmas. They are the vertical pixels gone wild and full on with varying colors. Large blemishes that just appear all over the display of varying widths. No pattern to the damage. Every set is different. I got bunches of them at work and are probably too old to repair. Just for my education.

Dave A

my son says that you can transport as long as it is wrapped with something -blankets,bubble wrap,etc. dead set is fairly common on lg-shorted cables in power supply. dex(the refurbisher he works for)gets those sets daily and that is most common. good luck and if you need any info,let me know and i will forward to him and his techs.

OK, I fired her up and it's not really dead. That's what I get for listening to the owner. I took a picture of what I got on the screen. When I press the menu key; I get no menu at all. There is also no OSD channel display. I am unable to pick up any signal OTA; but, I may not be tuned to a station since I can't see a channel display. The picture with the blank screen except for the right hand side is what I get when I press the channel up button. I get a normal "rush" in the speaker and the volume goes up and down. I also took a picture of the set with the small cover removed. Someone had already been inside (some back screws missing). Oh, it's an LG model RU-42PX11. Any help would be appreciated.

Here's a link to the service manual:

www.talonix.com/images/RU-42PX11_Service_Manual.pdf

One caveat - the wording is very hard to follow, as it's translated from Korean quite poorly. I'm of no help with Plasma sets - I've never worked on one.

I'll keep the link active for a few days. Post a reply once you've downloaded it. Usual disclaimer - I'm not responsible if you pull a no-no or worse....

Cheers,

Here's the parts list for the set:



Cheers,

sampson,

Ask your son what causes random vertical stripes in LG plasmas. They are the vertical pixels gone wild and full on with varying colors. Large blemishes that just appear all over the display of varying widths. No pattern to the damage. Every set is different. I got bunches of them at work and are probably too old to repair. Just for my education.

Dave A

Perhaps a problem from the factory - software upgrades seem to be the fix for numerous LG Plasmas. Attached PDF outlines one model.

Cheers,

Thanks for the information! I've got the information saved in the computer in case you need to remove the links. No, I won't hold it over your head if I blow the set up. Actually, I'd probably be doing the owner a favor if I did, LOL! This is my first Plasma and I must say that I'm not looking forward to seeing another one. There's way too much surface mounted stuff in there for my blood. I think I'll stick to older sets with nice, big parts inside!

Thanks for the quick reply - the service manual link has been deactivated. Best of luck in troubleshooting the plasma set!

Cheers,

I just washed my hands of this monster. I just told the lady there was nothing I could do for it and it probably would not be a cheap repair if she could find anyone to fix it. Now, I've got room to work on older TV's with real parts that can actually be changed with a regular soldering iron!

I don't know if that God's Eye-shaped thing in the middle of the image is a camera artifact, but if it's actually there, you probably have a bad display.

Charles

josh saw the pic and said trash it! screen damage and some loose joints or connectors. set may have been dropped or some kind of impact. sorry it wasnt a quick fix (we die for those days again) lgs have the worst track record at dex. he said he wouldnt take a working one if they gave it to him!!

Luckily my plasma started to go within the warranty period (little green sparkles all over the screen). A repair guy came out and replaced all the circuit boards in it, and when he turned it on...little green fuzzies. He said "bad screen" and boxed it up and gave me a brand new one (which was great, because the other one had been a store-display model). He said that if the plasma display goes that it's pretty much shot.


Oh yeah..he laid the TV face down to work on it, so for future reference, it doesn't kill the set.

There's something called "laser television" coming out that is supposed to be a much cheaper and a vastly superior technology. Lighter weight, more colors...who knows. We'll see.

-john

they also suffer from burn ins-images that have been on the screen too long. my boarder has a phillips 37 " lcd-what a picture! the best i ve seen yet. set died 1 month later.they brought out a loaner. 42 plasma. good,not like the lcd.many burn ins. not too noticable unless you are watching football for some reason. the store wants him to keep it.they called it an upgrade! everyday, those burn ins
increase. now they wont take his call.guess where the lcd went for "repair"? DEX! it is being refurbished for resale. the new technoligy is great,but is it reliable? i ll still watch a zenith or a roundie and be happy!

I forgot to mention that these people were planning on putting this 42" LG in the bedroom! Heck, all I've got is an el cheapo mid '80's 13" KTV complete with rotary tuners in my bedroom!

I did tell the owner of the LG that if they insisted on a flat panel, to go with LCD instead of plasma.

i know anything you need to know on those damn newfangled plasmas.

what causes that condition is failure in the HV driver controllers. and if the controllers fail into an "on" state, it will allow the discharge electrodes to wear and screw the screen up.

there is a LARGE array of PWM HV control registers that run the pixels in the display. there is a digital signal processor that serially shifts out all the bits to all of the HV driver ICs. (i used to build mono plasma displays for fun).

if any of the driver ICs fail, this will happen.

all of the newer plasmas use a BGA IC that drives up to 32,768 multiplexed pixles per IC.

but since the entire display is screwed up from this condition, most likely the serial output buffer IC that feeds the HV output ICs is bad. and will shift garbage in as bits. but most likely your logic supply to the ICs is low/noisy from bad caps.