[GTALUG] war story: fixing an LCD TV

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: James Knott via talk <talk at gtalug.org>

| FWIW, I recently took a 42" Sharp TV to the recycling centre.  I bought
| a new 43" Sharp for $349.  That's getting close to what a repair is
| likely to cost.  Much of my career has been in repair, though not TVs. 
| I've often realized it's better to toss & replace, than attempt to
| repair and I have experience in replacing large (over 100 lead) surface
| mount chips.
| 
| Incidentally, my new TV uses about 1/5th the power of the old one, so
| there's that to consider too.

Thanks for the datapoint.  I agree with your point.  I certainly
bow to your experience.  For example, I solder less than once a year
so I'm not very proficient.

Sharp used to be a very good brand for LCD TVs.  They pioneered in
that market.  But they essentially went broke competing with
inexpensive Chinese brands.  Since 2015 the Sharp TV brand was
licensed by HiSense (a state-owned Chinese enterprise) in North
America.  Since 2016, Sharp itself has been owned by Foxconn (a
Taiwan-based group).  In 2017 Sharp (Foxconn) sued Hisense for
damaging the reputation of the brand (since dropped).  Just this month
Sharp re-acquired the brand for TVs in the US (and eventually Canada).

So: before 2015, Sharp was an interesting brand.
Now: it is a low-end brand (often with good value for money).
Future: who knows.
But: there have been real improvements technology over that same time
period, so a new Sharp TV might be better than an old Sharp TV.

This is another example of how branding can mean something and then
stop meaning what one thought it did.

Power reduction: interesting.  Standby or operating power?  I wonder
why?  Fluorescent backlight vs LED?  How old was your old one?

I intend to buy a much better monitor (which might be a TV).  The
thing is that (1) I'm cheap, and (2) my idea of "much better" is alway
coming soon but never here.

Sharp is expected to put its high-end 8k TVs on sale in the US this
fall.  One more reason to wait :-)

(I have several models of Sharp Zaurus PDAs that run Linux.  Too bad
that line died.)