image of driver board

Todays televisions fail for common causes. Spraying the screen with cleaner and allowing it to run down into the bottom of the screen can cause a possible short on the driver boards, which are located at the bottom of the screen behind the plastic bezel on all TV’s.

It’s possible to lose an image due to back light failure. Loss of image can be caused by many different type of faults. LCD panels in certain brands of TV’s are know to have a higher than normal failure rate. Once a panel fails or is cracked, the only option is to replace the TV. A flat screen TV should never be transported laying flat. It should always be transported upright, well padded and secure.

Most TV’s have 3-4 control boards inside.  That usually consists of a power board, a main board, an inductor board, which is sometimes built into the power board and a timing control board (t-con). Each of these boards need to work in harmony with each other for the TV to work properly. Some smaller TV’s have an “all in one board” which has everything built into a single board.

Component Failure

cofs attached to driver board

TV panels are connected to the driver boards by cables known s COF’s (Chips on flex) These cable have many fine wires inside and can go bad. The cables are bonded to the LCD panel and once a COF goes bad, most often it cannot be repaired without very expensive equipment, making repairs cost prohibitive.

cof closeup

Each board contains a significant amount of components that are required to perform a specific task and when one fails, it kicks off a domino effect. An experienced technician knows how to track down the point of failure using various types of equipment and readings that are detected. Each Brand has it’s chronic faults in most cases. An experienced tech has his own method of trouble shooting and usually has a good idea where the problem is based on the symptoms and a visual search to look for anything obvious.