Hello and help with broken lcd!
 

Greetings earthlings. This is my first post here. I've been hanging around AudioKarma for a few years. Great place with great people and I suspect here is the same with likely many of the same people.

Someone gave me a Vizio va26L 10t hdtv with a bad display. It has wide colored bars running vertically through the picture. I'd have to hook it up again to get more specific as it's been awhile since I checked it out.

Is there any chance someone here can help me troubleshoot or determine if this thing is fixable? I can hook it up and post pictures if that helps.

If it's just a matter of buying a used good board and installing it, that's no problem. I'm a solder hound.

Whatcha think? Thanks in advance , Bobby.

Also, if anyone has suggestions on a better place to post this question, either here or on another forum, I would appreciate the advice. I'd really like to keep this thing out of the land fill.

try the t-con board(if it has one) first

Does it get better after it warms up. If you hit the menu button, does the menu loo the same way?

Thanks guys. Here are a few pictures. It does seem to improve a little after it warms up. When it's cold it has wide bands covering at least half the screen. When it warms up, it seems to reduce down to one band of distortion and dicoloration bordered by thin green or red lines.

The bands or lines are on top of the picture whether it's input signal or the menu screen.

I noticed there seem to be parts (boards) for this unit pretty frequently on the auction site. I'm hoping that's all it is so I can get it working. I just don't know how to narrow down what's causing the problem. I'm kind of an idiot when it comes to modern TV and Video.

I have seen several of that model suffering from lines like that. It's not easily fixed. It's a problem with the bonding of the ribbon cables on the panel itself. Most of us don't have the tools to fix a problem like that.

Be careful too, that model set has at least two different sets of boards for two different panels. So if you decide to order parts, make sure you match the part number of the board, not the model number of the TV.

Well, if that's true, I may as well just sell this for parts. I'm not about to go buying boards for this unless I'm pretty sure I know it's gonna fix it.

Would a problem with the ribbon cable like you mention cause the symptoms to change as it warms up? It's worse when it's cold.

That's typically a dead giveaway of a bad panel, that the lines change as the temperature changes. If you want to check the ribbon, take the back off the TV and turn it on. poke the ribbon cable and watch the screen. If the lines change (and I doubt in this case that they would) it would be the ribbon.