Television faulty - worth repairing ?

davidlizard

I have a 6 year old Toshiba 28" Widescreen Telly.

Recently, it has started "tripping out" (for want of a better phrase - it turns itself off, and needs switching off and on). It trips every 2-5 minutes two or three times, but then tends to be OK for several hours. Its perfectly watchable, but means I have to move off the sofa every so often.

A quick google for the make/model number indicates the fault could be due to a simple capacitor needing replacing. It would seem a shame to throw away such an item for the sake of potentially a trivial repair.

Ultimately, I would like a 37/42" HDTV Plasma, but ideally would like to wait a couple of years for the price to come down a bit and the HDTV technology to mature. Ideally, for me the solution would be for the Toshiba to be repaired f so I can squeeze a couple more years out of it, and then buy a new Plasma.

Although I fear the answer may be "how longs a piece of string?", what sort of cost would I be looking at for such a repair, and are repaired tellies generally reliable ? Or should I get myself down Comet via the dump ?

All advice gratefully appreciated.

Dave

deanos

Some repair people will have a look and give a quote for free, if its a simple capacitor cant see it costing more than £30 but it needs to be checked out first

Lord_Gardener

Yes, we had the on/off switch replaced on our widescreen which cost £40 including parts. Well worth the money 2 years down the road and didn't have the hassle of working out how to pull the TV apart! NB Took chap about 1 hour to complete job at our home.

undercover_elephant_2

First of all, if you don't know what you're doing, don't open up a TV. Even after they've been off for a long while, the capacitors can hold a huge amount of charge - and would be more than happy to discharge it into you. That said, most TV problems are dust related, if you do know what you're doing, and can safely discharge the capacitors, pop it open, then hoover the insides. Works in quite a lot of cases.

Sumostar

Unless you are desperate for a sleek, silmline screen I would stick with the old tosh. The technology on both plasma & lcd are both relatively new ( compared to a crt ) and should still have some room for improvement in the next few years.