Minus Three... Correction... Four TVs

[90GTVert]

I just checked for myself and there is 58.5VAC if I probe ground at the wall outlet and touch the other probe to any metal part of the TV. Anyone know if some other component could fail that's plugged in and cause something like that? If so, I may go around unplugging stuff or just switching off breakers to see if anything changes. My logic may be very flawed here. I get by on scoot/auto electrical, but I don't mess with home AC.

EDIT : I went and checked the 60" TV that the HDMI ports don't work on and it doesn't appear to be hot touching metal from the chassis or any ports. I checked the TV in the garage and that one showed 60VAC. One that does is in the middle of the house, maybe a little closer to the garage end, and the other is in the garage. The one that doesn't do this is on the far opposite end of the house. Not sure if that means anything at all.

EDIT EDIT : I gave up on the idea of doing any troubleshooting myself. It's over my head and I don't need to fry anything else or end up with a fire, so I called the power company to check service to the house. If that's fine, I'll just get an electrician.

[90GTVert]

The power company came yesterday and said everything looks good all the way to my panel. An electrician will be here within 30 minutes. Hopefully that bit will get sorted.


I got the power supply board in and the TV still doesn't turn on and has no standby light. Some troubleshooting mentions the PS board and the only cause for that and some say it could be other cards or the panel. I haven't found anything specific to my model though. This TV only has 2 boards that I know of, the PS and the main board.

Initially I didn't get 3.5V of standby power at the end of the PS board. Now I do with the new board. I haven't seen info about it, but there are other outputs on that board labeled 12V and 24V and I don't get those voltages there. Not sure if that's an issue or could be related to other problems or because it's not on.

Now I'm not sure if I should replace the main board or not. I can only find used units pulled from TVs claimed to be working. Even used, they're the better part of $100. Initially I thought it would likely be worth that much since that would take care of both boards... but I learned a bit since. Now I've read that it could be the panel, which is not worth replacing. Again, not model specific info though. Something else I've read and seen in videos is that these salvaged boards many times don't work. One TV repair tech's vid said that his biggest challenge in TV repair now is trying to get a board that actually works. He said one seller told him that he lets the customer find out if they really work or not. That's not very promising and I don't know how to test all of this stuff with certainty. They have return policies usually, but then you're out shipping both ways and restocking fees at least.

This TV was $430 on Black Friday as best I recall, 1.5 years ago. I have been very pleased with it, and something similar now is $500-600. That said, I would have roughly $150 into it with the other board, and since I don't know how to test a panel, it could be all for naught. I've posted on 2 TV repair forums, hoping for more educated opinions than my own, and no one has replied.

[90GTVert]

The electrician came out and spent an hour checking things over. He can't find anything wrong. He can read the same 50-60V at the back of the TV as I could, but nothing at all is wrong with the house wiring. He said a big surge through the wiring should blow or at least trip GFI components and a lightning strike leaves obvious damage like burn marks, frying pretty much all electronics in many cases, and you may even see sparks or fire from outlets or appliances when the strike occurs, so there's no evidence that we took a direct hit. He assured me that all is well in the house wiring and that his best guess is that the hit came through coax (comcast) because everything damaged was connected that way. He said it's really odd that the TV that is showing this voltage is working, but it could be dangerous to use, at least because it could put voltage into any component it's connected to. The other TV that does it doesn't work at all, so that's not so surprising. He said the working Samsung is one tough TV, but still he'd get rid of it.

So make that all 4 TVs plus 2 phones (and a cable box that hopefully I can get comcast to replace now that I know it has no HDMI output and I have had the power company and electrician come out just as their tech said I should), but the good news is at least I'm not at risk of a house fire or anything.

[sumo210]

When i used to work for at&t as tier 2 tech support, We were able to check for stuff like that and we were "encouraged" not to let people know it was our fault and we would just send techs before the customer was able to get someone to investigate so when they would check our equipment again we would have everything fixed so then we wouldnt get blamed. or at least proven to be to blamed. shaddy business always happens when u deal with cable companies, dont even get me started on time warner, good thing is u have a electrician check the whole house so they cant blame anyone else.

[90GTVert]

Comcast at least let me swap every box in the house. They aren't on the hook for anything else because of their contracts. Honestly, I couldn't prove a damn thing anyway. I'm just glad they are at least not going to give me the runaround on this one, sending out more techs and all of that jazz.

Of course then I send someone to a town 30 minutes away to swap the boxes after looking up their hours online. They get there and the office has been closed for months according to a sign on the door, but it's still listed online like it's there. The other office is 30 minutes the other direction. Just when you're at least glad to be done with their BS, they find a new way to aggravate you.


Still no update on the TV repair. No responses on the 2 TV repair forums after a day, and both have their share of 0 response threads. I can't decide if the risk is worth it. If it were a new board, I'd have it ordered already. It's all the uncertainty that seems to be out there with these salvage boards.

[90GTVert]

Holy hell. I started setting up the first replacement cable box at 6:30PM. It's now 10:40PM and I just finished. I spent about 3 hours on the phone going through tier 1 and 2 support. They finally connected me to a guy in tier 3. He fixed it in 10 minutes and gave me a call back number for him in case I had trouble with the other boxes. The second box was done in 5 minutes. Third box had another error. I called him and he took about 2 minutes to get it going. All problems were on comcast's end, and all could be resolved so quickly if they'd just connect you to capable reps sooner.

[stepthrutuner]

Glad you were finally able to cut to the chase with those slimy bastards. Most of those road techs just know the basics and a few tricks. They're mainly installers (hookups and disconnects).

[sumo210]

congrats on getting the cable end fixed.. how the tvs going??

[90GTVert]

All 3 are replaced or in the mail. 4th was the garage, which I turned the cable box in for. I talked to a friend that has been a head tech of networking companies for the majority of his adult life. He was kinda with me on the 42" TV. I really liked the LG WebOS platform and the TV looked good, so he could see why I'd want to repair it, but said it just may not be worth a $150 risk. At least if the TV is replaced, it's guaranteed to work for a while so money won't just go down the drain. I still have the 42", with some delusion that I'll learn to better diagnose it and have a spare or sell it, but it probably won't happen because even if it's the main board, it's still a risk on if the used ones work or not.

He also told me to go check my cable service box and look for a ground. He said to make sure that where the line switches to one or more smaller lines, it needs to be grounded. It should be tied in right where the power and phone systems run into the ground. I forget the exact reason (he gets above my head with electronic and networking talk and then I'm trying to piece it all together later with my lousy memory), but said multiple grounds can also cause a problem there. I did have that. He also said every splitter should be grounded. I haven't gone under the house to look at that. I discussed some lightning protection stuff with him, but his thought was there is no one truly best way to deal with every situation for lightning strikes because of the potential to enter multiple ways, but this is good basic grounding. What he said and the electrician said agreed pretty much; if you get a direct/close hit, you can forget being totally protected with any reasonable solution because these things just aren't meant to deal with the extreme voltage and amperage that mother nature can unleash.