Chosen Solution
Hello, The other day there was a storm coming through. Normally, if I hear any thunder I will turn off the tv and components immediately. However, there was just some light rain and no thunder or lighting. I was watching Netflix through the tv app at the time. Out of the blue, I heard a pop on the left side of the tv where the HDMI inputs are. Then there was an obviously close lightning strike. The power did not even surge–nothing turned off and Netflix just continued playing. Of course, I immediately turned everything off. Later, when the storm had completely passed, I resumed watching Netflix where I had left off and everything seemed fine. But later when I went to watch satellite through the HDMI the screen was black but the sound came through fine. So I switched to Blu ray and PS4 to try the other two HDMI ports and the same thing–sound, but no picture. I hooked the satellite receiver up to the tv via component cables and that works fine. Everything else works great. It’s just the HDMI ports. I have a Geek Squad plan that is active so I called and at first they said they were ordering a part which would be in tomorrow and the guy could come install in on Tuesday. Then they called back and said because the tv is no longer made the part is not available. So they said they would have to do an exchange for another tv. But I don’t want another tv–I spent a lot of time researching this one when I bought it and calibrating it when I got it. It’s awesome tv–one of the best pictures I’ve seen. So my question is, are there parts available for this tv still? I think it’s called a main board? BTW, I called back and asked them to send someone to at least look at it. What if it’s something else other than what they were thinking? I feel like they should at least take a look. I tried resetting it, unplugging everything, anything I could find online to troubleshoot. But nothing seems to work. Any ideas? thanks so much.
It would appear that there is a problem with the HDMI controller IC on this unit. All of the HDMI ports connect to a single controller IC that is located on the main board. Lightning strikes are always tricky for any electronics device. While I am a bit surprised that the source of the signal did not suffer any problems, that does not preclude the TV from being a bit more sensitive to the strike. You can either replace the main board which contains the HDMI controller circuitry (approx $180 for the part) or attempt to replace the IC. Dan
