this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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In the last few years I've fixed about a dozen TVs, they can definitely suck to fix at times (especially the really new ones) but in general the fixes have been simple. And all of them were snagged out of the dumpster at my apartment complex.
And that's just the TVs I've fixed. I like to fix things.
In terms of phones they're a nightmare though. I'm keeping an eye on HMD phones and Fairphone though as both of them are a LOT easier to fix than other brands.
In the event of my current phone breaking I'd love to get either one of those brands.
What’s the typical fixable issue you are finding?
For TVs it's usually really simple, like internal fuses or blown caps. And a few with bad backlights or mainboards that are dead.
For 2 of them it's been shorts in the LCD itself which meant I had to block the clock pin from the TCON board for the specific part of the screen with the short. Basically killing a line of pixels to get the TV working again. In general if the TV is 4k and smaller than like 45 inches you'll never see it unless you look for it.
That's a super involved fix (involving A LOT of trial and error to find the right pin) but it keeps it out of a landfill.
In general fixing a TV is always cost effective unless the actual LCD has physical damage.
hey, I'm getting into this kind of repair. I have good soldering skills and am great at taking things apart, but do you have any tips on how to find the fault? even it's just a blow capacitor, what am I looking for?
NGL I usually only do component level repairs on the power boards (or in the case of appliances most of the components are easy to find docs for and are much larger) but I usually find stuff by poking around with my multimeter or looking for obviously blown things. But my experience is more from the realm of appliance repair (and all from experimenting).
Testing capacitors can be done (and if they're big enough) something I'll do as well. I ain't gonna test capacitors that are smaller that a grain of rice.
There are times though that it's easier to just buy a new board rather than do component level repair.
Good news is that when it comes to TVs those boards are usually really cheap.
that makes sense. appreciate it!!
Blown capacitors are nice and obvious.
Most capacitors you'll find are cylindrical, with a flat side of the cylinder pointed up. They'll usually have a big X cut into that top side, allowing it to flex a bit. But if that top side is bulging a lot, that's a warning sign, if it bulged so much that it opened up and it either looks burned on top, or some kind of paste is actually seeping out, then that thing is way past done.
With capacitors a visual inspection is really all you need. You'd actually need more expensive specialized equipment than a standard multimeter to actually test their capacitance. But if you look at it, and your description might include words like "exploded" or "popped", or "wtf is this mess?", then it's bad.
got it, thank you!!