Ballpark estimate for LED TV repair

[nickf77]

I have a 39" LG LED tv - this, purchased through Newegg - that's about 15 months old (figures that the warranty's only 12 months...), and it recently bit the dust. Absolutely no physical damage to the screen, but one day while in use exactly half of the screen went pure white and the other half is interlaced with white lines. Again, absolutely no chance it was any kind of physical damage - my best guess is some kind of hardware malfunction.

My local tv repair shop is charging $50 to even look at it to see if it can be repaired - obviously I want to avoid that if possible.

Any idea what the price range could look like for a repair like this?

 

[poofyhairguy]

Any idea what the price range could look like for a repair like this?

Depends on if you plan to do it or if you want to pay someone to do it.

If you plan to do it, it might be cheap if you get lucky. Get a similar broken set off ebay (that was broke in a different way like a cracked screen) and replace your TV's guts with it. Could be sub-$50 if you get the right Ebay deal.

You want someone else to fix it? For a 40 inch 60hz TV the simple answer is any repair cost will be greater than the replacement cost. TVs for the most part are disposable items, and lower-end models like this are meant to be thrown away. When you consider that on Black Friday Best Buy is selling a 50inch LED for $200 its hard to do any repair plus labor for cheaper than that.

 

[heymrdj]

Typically it's always the panel and *if* they can find a donor panel, the total repair isn't cheap.

My local place is great and does the teardown for free. On my 55" Samsung though it was too expensive, they could only find one donor panel and the entire fix was going to be about 1200$. They gave me the part number and told me if I can find a panel myself in the future they'll install it for me for 100$. I later did find a few panels that came up, but they were all north of 800$, many over 1000$.

 

[nickf77]

Thanks for the insight guys. I found a replacement main PCB board on ebay for just $25 so I bit the bullet and bought it in the hopes that it could be as simple as that. I figure it couldn't be the power supply board that was an issue (no signs of any blown caps, and it seems unlikely that any power-board problem could knock out exactly half of the screen).

Typically it's always the panel and *if* they can find a donor panel, the total repair isn't cheap.

My gut feeling is still that it's a hardware/software glitch, but I could be totally wrong and it might be a busted panel that wouldn't be worth it - we'll see when the PCB gets here on Saturday. I guess if it's still dead after that, Black Friday / Cyber Monday are just around the corner... :biggrin:

 

[poofyhairguy]

Sounds like a plan. Good luck!!!

 

[keyed]

Assuming you used a credit card, check to see if your cc extends the warranty on purchases.