1. TV has run perfectly for over 3 years 2. A/C went out, house is 95 degrees inside (Florida) 3. Two days in a row, after TV on for a couple hours, noticed an odd burning/electrical/plastic kind of smell. Both times turned off TV immediately. 4. The TV worked fine, even during both events, and still works at this time.
Now I've heard all about the bad Korean caps from those years and about many Samsung failures of that time. My model was NOT in the settlement, but it does have Korean caps. After research:
4. Took off back cover, examined all the capacitors very closely, no evidence of burning, bulging, etc. All look great. Can find no evidence of burning anywhere. 5. Cap's are all from Korea: Samwha, Sam Young, etc.
My questions:
Could this be due to the 95 degree heat in the house?
Should I wait, try TV again with a/c fixed (keep house at 78 to 80 degrees),or would it be better to replace all the caps now on all boards? Personally I'd rather wait, but I don't want to tempt fate and cause further damage beyond bad caps.
No thanks to all who read, but didn't comment but being the good guy that I am, I will tell you the outcome anyway. Turns out this TV is fine. After my a/c was fixed and the house temperature was down to 80 degrees (it got as hot as 97 before), I ran it for at least 4 hours, and...
No issue, no smell, no harm, no foul. While I did have it open I cleaned it out with compressed air, removed the power board to view the underside (no evidence of burning anywhere).
Bottom line: the extreme high summer temperature in the house (high 90's) led to the beginning of overheating after several hours of use, and a mild burning smell. Turning off the TV and not using it again until the a/c was fixed was the answer.
BTW, this is a completely different subject than the multi-page thread on power supply cap's. Apparently this was missed by all the readers and non-posters. Oh well. Good luck to you all anyway...