Gotta love Craigslist's "free" section.

[Frigo]

I was looking through the "free" section of Craigslist the other day, and I came upon a posting for a free 50" television. The post didn't say what was wrong with it, but I decided to inquire anyway. Luckily, I was the first one to respond, and that evening, I picked the TV up. It's a Toshiba 50" RPTV, and when I plugged it in, the convergence was totally out of wack, and the picture appeared bowed.

The next morning, I called a TV repair center in the area to get an estimate, and was given a price range of 300-400 for time and parts. Not wanting to spend that much on a 2002 television, I started to see if I could fix it myself. Turns out, that it's a really easy fix, provided you know how to solder. I found the kit for 70.00 on www.tvrepairkits.com, and within 3 days it was in my mailbox.

One hour, a bit of solder and a dab or two of thermal grease later, I was the proud owner of a like new 50" RPTV that I plan on using for all my old school games. I already connected my Saturn and Playstation to it and they both look fantastic.

Yep, I'm extremely happy with myself. 

[drventure]

Fantastic!

I had a similar story with a Tivo I've had for ages. I'd upgraded to a 300gb hd and one day it wouldn't come on.

Did a little digging and apparently, the PS board is fairly susceptible to power glitches.

PS boards online were going for 70+ for just the board. So I found a Tivo on the free section of craigslist, picked it up, swapped out the pS boards and I was back in business!

I wish I could do what you did with a Panasonic HD project I have. It comes on, but the LCD driver chips appear to have overheated, and I can't figure any good way to resolder or replace the chips (even though I can find em online for 45$).

[Silas (son of Silas)]

Good score! 

[Howard_Casto]

I fixed my grandma's rptv like that.  It had a bad power supply and those are only around 70 bucks so I just ordered a new one and that was the end of it.  I also recently fixed a 42 inch lcd tv for around 40 bucks.  Of all things it basically needed a cap kit!  Modern capacitors often come from china and to be blunt they are crap.  Almost every television malfunction you'll find today is due to bad caps.... they are easy to spot...  look at a cap, if the top is flat then it is probably good, if it has a bulge in it, or worse yet is leaking then you need to replace it.  The trick is actually getting ahold of the parts.  You remember I said it cost my 40 bucks to fix the lcd?  Well I only needed 4 bucks worht of parts, but you generally have to buy most high voltage caps in bulk so I had to buy 10 of each. 

Long story short if someone offers you a nice tv but it's broken in some way, take it!  The worst that could happen is you find that it's beyond repair and you have to chuck it yourself. 

[leapinlew]

Modern capacitors often come from china and to be blunt they are crap. 

So your saying that some electronics come from China?! And sometimes it's Chinese crap? Does anyone else know this?!!
 

[Frigo]

Yeah, I'm stoked. I've been playing with it all day yeserday, testing various devices on it - DVD player, Wii, PS1, PS2, Saturn, etc., and they all look great. There's a bit og color bleeding with the blues, but I suspect that has something to do with the color saturation, because it's not always present. Now comes the fun part of moving it to its permanent home in my upstaris loft - Can't wait.

Luckily the caps and resistors looked fine on the convergence board, so I didn't have to replace those, as well (even though the company provided resistors for the repair as well - they're sitting in my toolbox for any potential future use). It's so nice to get stuff on the cheap and fix it up.

Thanks for all the comments, guys!