Samsung Television Black Horizontal Lines and Double Images

[beckyrenea]

My Samsung TV (Model UN32EH5000) has horizontal lines across the top 25% of my screen and is showing double of the displays. I have attached pictures of both below.

I have removed all inputs and it still is and issues and it happens whenever anything is plugged in to either hdmi port.

Anyone have any ideas as to what is wrong and if it is fixable?

 

[MaxHeadRoom78]

Vertical scan oscillator is running at twice the freq. by the look of it.
Max.

 

[beckyrenea]

Thanks Max. Is there a way to fix that or is it a loss?

 

[unclejed613]

main pcb failure. if it's out of warranty, the cost of repair exceeds the price of a new TV

 

[gophert]

Not worth fixing.
how old is it? 8 - 12 years?

 

[Ramussons]

I would say its a Vertical Sync failure causing it to to loose sync on a Interlace scan.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Obviously none of the previous replies were from TV engineers - as none are anywhere near what the problem is (although gothert's comment was perfectly true).

It's a VERY, VERY common problem, and is failure of the LCD panel - it 'could' be one of the PCB's that are part of the panel, but these are usually not available separately anyway, and even when they are, often need fairly complex reprogramming (software updating to match the LCD and the main board). Even if you get a replacement LCD panel, it's commonplace to have to do software updates on both the panel, and the TV, which again isn't trivial, and the details and files probably aren't available other than to authorised service departments.

So new TV time, even if a panel was available (which is unlikely) it would cost considerably more than a new TV.

 

[beckyrenea]

That's what I figured - just didnt want to go through the expense of a new one if I didnt need to. Online tv shopping it is. Thanks everyone!

 

[Reloadron]

That's what I figured - just didnt want to go through the expense of a new one if I didnt need to. Online tv shopping it is. Thanks everyone!

You have to love it. You point, you click and it just happens. You can also read endless reviews before you point and click.

Our living room TV is a Sony Bravia and I have forgotten how old it actually is but it pre dates the Smart TV versions. I found the invoice in a drawer with the set paper work, It was 10/2008 we bought the stuff. It has often run 24/7 for weeks or months at a time. I am waiting for it to die. I added an Amazon Fire-stick just to make it smart. I just don't have the heart to throw it away and you can't give TV sets away anymore. We bought the set and a new DVD Sony Blue Ray player and at the time the combined total was about $3,000 USD ($2,700 TV and $300 Blue Ray DVD player) . The set was a 55" screen. Today I can buy a Sony 75" Class 4K UHD LED Android Smart TV HDR BRAVIA 900F Series XBR75X900F for under $1,800. Go figure huh? I can replace the original 55" screen with better features for under $1,000 USD.

Ron

 

[MaxHeadRoom78]

Obviously none of the previous replies were from TV engineers - as none are anywhere near what the problem is (although gothert's comment was perfectly true).

That may be partly true, but I did service domestic electronics for a few years, some as service manager of a large retail electronics store, but I went back into the industrial electronics era before the advent of LCD TV's.
In the case of CRT versions, it was a sure sign of the vertical oscillator problems.
I initially cut my teeth on the old valve/tube versions and lastly the transistor models, still with CRT.
In this day of built in obsolescence I am glad it was only a relatively short stint.
Max.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

You have to love it. You point, you click and it just happens. You can also read endless reviews before you point and click.

Our living room TV is a Sony Bravia and I have forgotten how old it actually is but it pre dates the Smart TV versions. I found the invoice in a drawer with the set paper work, It was 10/2008 we bought the stuff. It has often run 24/7 for weeks or months at a time. I am waiting for it to die. I added an Amazon Fire-stick just to make it smart.

A Firestick is far 'smarter' than any TV - so even if you replace the TV, keep the Firestick for your 'smart' functions.

I worked for a (mainly in later years) Sony TV dealer, and did all our Sony warranty service - and a few years ago I went through all the warranty claims I'd done (many Sony LCD sets had manufacturers five year warranties), and I went through all our Sony TV sales figures. From these accurate figures I was able to work out the failure rate of Sony TV's over five years. Unfortunately, I've long since forgotten the actual number, but it was LOW - something between 1% and 2% as I vaguely recall over five years.

The VAST amount of claims were for changing LCD screens, there were hardly any other failures - and of those screen failures, I would estimate something like 30-40% were of the same issue as this thread is about.

 

[gophert]

A Firestick is far 'smarter' than any TV - so even if you replace the TV, keep the Firestick for your 'smart' functions.

That's a very general statement - Generation 1 firesticks are not as good as the newest Samsung Smart TVs. My Gen1 firestick was always locking up and tends to buffer a lot when watching action movies.

 

[unclejed613]

there's also Kodi on the Raspberry Pi, where you can get all of the "smart TV" apps you could possibly imagine. and then some... the RPi also has two HDMI outputs now... i haven't tried any uses for the second HDMI port, but i'm guessing the two ports can either be independent, or used for a two-monitor desktop...

 

[unclejed613]

Obviously none of the previous replies were from TV engineers - as none are anywhere near what the problem is (although gothert's comment was perfectly true).

i've recently worked as a tech in a service center, and at least for Samsung TV's, those symptoms are a toss-up between the panel and main board... one possible cause is a video source sending data as a 3D video stream, and the TV interpreting it as a normal 2D signal, or the video is sent as "progressive scan" when it's actually interlaced... some of those hiccups can be due to faulty "handshakes" between the TV and video source... so there can be other problems at work here, and not only a problem with the panel... but to answer the OP, either way, main PCB or panel, if it's not caused by some misconfiguration at the source of the video, it's time to buy a new TV assuming it's out of warranty...

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

That's a very general statement - Generation 1 firesticks are not as good as the newest Samsung Smart TVs. My Gen1 firestick was always locking up and tends to buffer a lot when watching action movies.

General but true, your latest Samsung will soon start to lose it's smart features as the providers close them down.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

i've recently worked as a tech in a service center, and at least for Samsung TV's, those symptoms are a toss-up between the panel and main board... one possible cause is a video source sending data as a 3D video stream, and the TV interpreting it as a normal 2D signal, or the video is sent as "progressive scan" when it's actually interlaced... some of those hiccups can be due to faulty "handshakes" between the TV and video source... so there can be other problems at work here, and not only a problem with the panel... but to answer the OP, either way, main PCB or panel, if it's not caused by some misconfiguration at the source of the video, it's time to buy a new TV assuming it's out of warranty...

Well I've never seen, or heard of, anything other than the LCD panel causing that problem - but we never sold many Samsung's as we weren't impressed with their poor reliability due to use of known sub-standard components in their construction, which they knowingly did for a good few years. However, with the programmability of the panel, and of the main board, it could always be down to the flash memory getting trashed?.

As with any of these sorts of repairs, what you really need is an identical set to swap boards over - when I've done that I always stick little labels on ONE of the sets, on all boards, the LCD, and the cabinet - so you don't get confused which parts are which

Obviously, you don't swap the LCD over, you simply swap everything from the working set instead - it's also wise to swap the other way as you do it, to confirm that the fault doesn't move to the other set.

 

[unclejed613]

Obviously, you don't swap the LCD over, you simply swap everything from the working set instead -

that's easy with a samsung, the power supply and main PCB are the only parts other than the panel (the TCON is built into the panel).

when they started building HDMI boards into AV receivers, it opened a whole new can of worms. these days an AV receiver has an HDMI switch in it, the receiver can strip out the audio parts of the HDMI data, as well as sending the video in it's original format or converting it to a different format for the TV. HDMI can be so cantakerous, and about 95% of the HDMI problems an AV receiver was sent in for, could have been taken care of by the customer, just by turning on the TV, AV receiver, and cable box on (in that order and waiting 20 seconds or so before turning on the next item).

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

that's easy with a samsung, the power supply and main PCB are the only parts other than the panel (the TCON is built into the panel).

That's pretty well an modern set

And the TCON has always been part of the panel, provided with the panel by the panel manufacturer, and not the TV manufacturer. In many (most?) cases they would both be Samsung (in this case), although there's no real connection between the TV part and the LCD part - but Samsung also use LCD's sourced from elsewhere, such as the new cheap crappy LG ones that don't have enough LED's and burn out.

when they started building HDMI boards into AV receivers, it opened a whole new can of worms. these days an AV receiver has an HDMI switch in it, the receiver can strip out the audio parts of the HDMI data, as well as sending the video in it's original format or converting it to a different format for the TV. HDMI can be so cantakerous, and about 95% of the HDMI problems an AV receiver was sent in for, could have been taken care of by the customer, just by turning on the TV, AV receiver, and cable box on (in that order and waiting 20 seconds or so before turning on the next item).

Rather a backwards step having to wait 20 seconds between items, and HDMI has caused more issues than it solved - whereas the old European SCART system was fairly flawless, with excellent auto-switching etc.