Good News / Bad News

Early Wednesday morning I received a call from the Geek Squad repairman that was coming later that day to work on the television. He was even nice enough to agree to call me 15 minutes before heading to my house to give me enough time to drive home from work to meet him. He mentioned that he had dealt with the same problem on the same television the day before and had called Samsung to ask about the issue. He said that Samsung was aware of the problem and that it was almost certainly an issue with the power supply board. He said that often the buzzing issue will return after the power supply is replaced because a lot of the replacement boards have the same issue as the one that shipped in the TV, but you just have to keep replacing the part until you finally get one that does not buzz. Once you find a good one, the problem should be solved.

I met him at my house around 2:00 and helped him take the set off the wall. He took the back off the television and replaced the power supply. I was amazed that there are only 3 main parts in the back of the set. It seemed pretty simple and luckily the buzzing issue went away. However, once the TV was mounted back onto the wall the picture began to freeze and streaks of bright yellow and orange would begin to appear on the screen. Neither of us knew quite what to make of it, but he figured that a connection in the power supply board wasn’t completely seated. We took it back down and he reseated the connections. He stuck around for 30 minutes to make sure this fixed the problem while wrote up a ticket for the job. After that, everything seemed fine and he took off. He was a great guy and genuinely interested in making sure the job was done right.

Unfortunately, the problem came back the next day. I’ve noticed that just after the television is turned on in the morning, there are some small popping noises as it warms up. Shortly thereafter, the picture freezes and turns to bright orange streaks. While this is happening there is also some slight audio distortion. Often, after about 5 minutes, the picture will return to normal for a while, but it usually happens throughout the day.

Hopefully there is simply an issue with the connections and the problem can be easily fixed. I’ll call the Geek Squad back today and see how it goes.