Thursday, 5 January 2012

My TV Died. RIP?

  Yesterday I came home to find that the main family TV had died after only 3 years of use. It is a Sony HD LCD (720p and 1080i) and it was not tuning into any digital stations and there was a wierd blue bar of colour going down one side of the screen. Other inputs such as scart and component were displaying an image but there was no sound.

  As a geek who realises that the average TV is just a computer with a tuner and a screen I began thinking "It's crashed" and my first geek instinct was "Reset it". Now that should be simple you would think? Nope.

  I needed to make sure that the hardware was fully reset. The only reset option I could find was to reset the picture settings. I pressed all sorts of combinations of buttons and no luck. I started googling, not much there but user manuals, that I had to pay for lol. I suddenly remembered that most TV's have a service menu where you could calibrate the colours on a more accurate level. Perhaps I can reset in that!

  Further googling found a youtube video showing me how to get into the service menu. I had to put the TV in standby and (this will work on Sony Bravia LCD TV's where the model number starts KDL)

  1. Put the TV in standby using the remote
  2. Press on the remote the following buttons: [i+], [5] , [VOL+], [ANALOG TV]
  3. After a sec a green menu should appear. BE CAREFULL IN TV SERVICE MENUS. You really really can bugger the thing up here.
  4. Now press 0 and 8
  5. The TV should reset.

Which it did. :-)

    That fixed the sound for the inputs :-) But the digital tuner still wont work. Looks like it blew and that caused the crash. Good thing the DVD recorder can be used as a tuner!

  Thankyou to the poster of this video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J6w8cHRKu0