Old JVC projection TV image dropping out - any obvious issues?
biggoombah
Unregistered guest
Posted on
Hello! You folks seem to be smart about these things, so I thought I'd gather some opinions. I have a 47 inch JVC rear projection TV from 1988 (don't remember exact model, but could look it up if need be.) I bought it used 5 years ago for $300. Picture is fuzzy, screen is scratched, but it's big and I've gotten a lot of use out of it for very little money.
A few months ago, I went into the back and cleaned some dust off the lenses, did a little realignment and vaccuumed up many years' worth of cobwebs. Shortly after I started noticing a flicker that stretched the width of the screen occasionally, like static only in color, horizontal stringlike streaks in the middle third. Over time it got more and more frequent, but still only occasional.
Within the last week or two, the flicker would result in a black screen for a second or two. Then that increased, and now it's a black screen with just flickers of the picture (still in full color) from time to time. Sound is fine.
One aside: During this same timeframe, I started running video out from an ATI 9600 video card on my computer - video in to a preamp, then down to the TV via RCA cables. I only used it sometimes, and would disconnect the regular TV line when I did that because I was getting some ground loop buzz. At first, it seemed like I got more of the black flicker when using the computer line, especially if there was a computer image (a window or control panel) on screen; when just video played, at first it seemed OK. But it went from flicker to almost all black screen over just a week or so, so it's not a large enough sample to say if it really happened more at those times; it could just be a coincidence.
It'll cost me $65 just to get it looked at, and I have to drag it in to a shop. I know JVC parts are hard to come by. And lets face it, it's an old (and not great quality) TV. But I don't have a ton of money to either fix this OR to replace it with something of similar size. Does this sound like something that will require new parts, or just a loose wire? And has anyone heard of PC to TV causing anything like this on projection screens? Do computer-driven signals put undue strain on TV tuners? (Don't want to blow up a new TV trying this if I get a projection TV as replacement.)