Our HDTV Just Died...

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We have a Samsung CRT HDTV model #TXN3075WHF. This set was made in '03. Laura had been telling me it was shutting off after running for a while. I only watch a little tv when I get home in the evenings and didn't have a problem with it.

I decided to just let it run for a couple hours, and finally, it went into its failure cycle: shut off, and try to turn on three times before shutting off completely.

It took a couple evenings to figure out how to drag a television that weighs as much as I do into the workroom, and to put it onto a rotating stand to let me move it about as need be.

Opening it up revealed the problem right away-a Samyoung branded cap 250v, 820 uf, was ready to explode. It sits right next to two fat relays that must be the ones I hear when the tv powers up (the first click comes right after I hit power, the second comes five seconds later and that brings audio and video up). I guess the power supply is getting hot and the tv goes into protection after that.

I saw another Samyoung cap of similar construction that seemed to be getting warm during operation. It was in a line of four other lytics so out they went. I always thought this set had kinda flaky HV regulation (I swear the width would change slightly, in the middle of a scene) so I removed the lytics from around the flyback and HOT as well. With a sample of about a dozen caps out now, I set to checking them.

I had three brands-Samyoung, Samsung, and Samwha. Both Samyoung and Samsungs test bad on my Heathkit checker. Samwha caps tested just fine. These were all larger value caps, testing any of the caps that were below 470 uf seemed to be okay.

So I'm gonna stop there. Before I put in an order to Mouser, is there anything else I should be looking for as far as trouble spots in a set like this? I did not fiddle with any of the caps on the neck board, BTW, just the ones on the main board. In spite of the crummy Chinese caps, the rest of the tv looks to be in great shape-no hot spots on the board, etc.