e701i-a3 no picture but backlights

[CactusCat]

Re: e701i-a3 no picture but backlights

After almost a month of enjoying the almost free 70" Vizio (thanks to the folks who did all the testing, fixing, and instructions), I've noticed a slight anomaly on the TV. It seems to be there nearly all the time, however, its almost invisible during normal viewing and is more noticeable when the screen is dark. It varies a little in the brightness of the anomaly and runs all the way from top to bottom about 8" from the side on the right of the screen. It might be a poor connection and might be something else. I've included a couple of pics to see it better. The little rows of lines are moving from bottom of screen to top of screen. Hope I've explained it ok. Any ideas or suggestions? It does not make the TV unwatchable. It's hardly noticed except on dark screens. On the 2nd picture, notice how the lines show up on the back of the seat, but disappear in the sky background. Many times, football games for example, you can't even see them. All comments appreciated.

[budwich]

Re: e701i-a3 no picture but backlights

recheck your cabling on the tcon would be a good place to start.

[splatee]

Re: e701i-a3 no picture but backlights

I have sort of what you are talking about going on with mine. It is only seen in dark scenes. Like blacks and shadows are blocky and almost greenish. I have reseated the tcon cables and the ribbons going to the panel. I have even replaced the tcon with no change. Wonder if it is a panel issue now?

[CactusCat]

Re: e701i-a3 no picture but backlights

Thanks bud... I'll check those connections soon.

[Nightrider0614]

Re: e701i-a3 no picture but backlights

Thanks everyone, one more saved from the dump! Mine the left side was trashed.

The trick was to get the replacement transistors, the factory one burn out before you can pull the plug.

The right hand side was black when I pulled it’s cable, so I plugged it back and pulled the left, no bright lines but there was a problem.

[ewilli10]

Re: e701i-a3 no picture but backlights

Back from the dead!! A big thank you to all the contributors to this thread! Add me to the list of success stories! For those keeping track, it was the LEFT side driver board that was bad on mine. I opted to get a new T-Con board instead of trying to micro-solder new transistors on the original board. But, I also highly recommend ordering 2 T-Con boards, as it's essentially a 50-50 shot that the first one will fry on startup. Very happy she's up and running again!

[Budlady88]

Re: e701i-a3 no picture but backlights

Having similar problems with mine, but tv will actually power on with picture that flickers and then after varying periods of time, screen goes black but still have audio. Not sure if the fixing procedure would be the same since I can get an initial picture if its been off for a while.

[Higgster3776]

Re: e701i-a3 no picture but backlights

There is a huge shout out to all of those in this thread!!
I spent the past two weeks reading searching and testing with this forum as my guide.
I did the T con repair microsurgery and soldered the new chip in successfully twice. I bought 10 chips used 5 lost 3.... lol....
Glad to see I could recover this wonderful 70 inch pain in my ass .....
But well worth the trouble .
Again a huge salute to all that have contributed to this..... if not for you guys leading the way I would have one giant paperweight or a super cool coffee table !!!

[ToxicGumbo]

Re: e701i-a3 no picture but backlights

Just a couple days after posting my repair success, and after watching two feature films all the way through, a friend helped me hang my Vizio on the wall using a typical wall mount. We turned the TV on and I gave him a demo using a Roku via HDMI.

That evening, I sat down to give it another whirl only to discover trouble: No startup logo, only the bluish/black backlight screen I saw before repairing the t-con board and ripping off a side of tabs. After removing the power cord and giving it a cold start, I would get a screen of pixelated white/black grey like the original Macintosh background, but with a thick horizontal black line through the center (artist's rendering attached). That would fade after a few seconds into the bluish backlit screen. All successive warm starts began with the bluish backlight only.

I can't explain the strange cold-start screen and the t-con components measured perfectly. All the cables were re-seated multiple times and I even swapped the troublesome ribbon cable I mentioned earlier, but the symptoms remained the same. Despite the MOSFET measuring perfectly, I soldered in a replacement just to make sure something weird didn't happen during the original "which side is bad" tests. As expected, no change.

If not for the odd and consistent cold start weirdness, I'd write it off as the other side of the panel catching up due to some sort of major trauma before I bought the TV. And because of the fade before the display goes "clear" and only shows the backlight, I'm wondering if I should suspect something other than the panel and chock it up as coincidental timing. That fade makes me feel like there's a safety switch kicking in to kill video signal because of some sort of rendering failure.

Anyone seen anything like this before? Thoughts?

[smoothies862]

Re: e701i-a3 no picture but backlights

new guy here. thank you in advance for the info and help . 70" here. tested the transistor 500 + both sides. have good reading at the silver cap on t con board-12v on power board at cable that runs to main board. when I turn on nothing. flashlight test shows nothing while hitting menu button. when I turn on power button. I see a red light on main board. that's it. nothing has tested bad or looks bad. so I'm guessing its not the "fix" as on here.where should I go next? I touched it, so now its a mission. lol.

[gnatymmas]

Re: e701i-a3 no picture but backlights

Does this "fix" work with a VIZIO M701d-A3 as well?

[Charleyd]

Re: e701i-a3 no picture but backlights

Another new guy here working on a Vizio E701i-A3 with sound and backlights but no picture. Sorry if this was discussed in a previous post as I am still working my way through the entire thread, but I am wondering if just a single offending side tab could be removed (peeled from the LCD panel and separated from the side board), leaving all of the good/working tabs in-place (?). This would seem to save all but one of the driver chips on the good side from having to do double duty, with the corresponding shortening of their lives.

[budwich]

Re: e701i-a3 no picture but backlights

nope... :-)

[aaron tatum]

Re: e701i-a3 no picture but backlights

Did you ever upload the video of repairing the Vizio E701i-A3 to youtube?
We bought a "refurbished" one from Wal-Mart in 2014 so i am curious what has already been done to mine.

[wpeej]

Re: e701i-a3 no picture but backlights

I found this video of a guy who repaired his 70" Sharp panel (same as Vizio) and he removed ALL the tabs from the bad side (not just one shorted tab driver). Which is the better method? Removing one tab, or all tabs on the shorted side? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiXhb_jGJKE

[Brentblosfield]

Re: e701i-a3 no picture but backlights

I just did one of these repairs with good success, what's the longest living one now, I apologise for hijack of the post and appreciate any info

[Charleyd]

Re: e701i-a3 no picture but backlights

I just completed a fix of a Vizio E701i-A3. I'd like to share a few lessons:

1) If you look up your T-Con board at www.shopjimmy.com, you will see that there is a whole slew of compatible T-Con boards:
http://www.shopjimmy.com/vizio-runtk...d-see-note.htm
You can use the list there to look for your best deal on ebay or wherever, however . . .

2) Based on the following info posted by freakaftr8 (page 32, post #634):

"It appears that the lower-end Vizio/Sharp/Sony that uses the e701's t-con board is the only board that seems to short out when failed drivers happen. All the Sony and sharp in Vizio 3D models seem to have more robust t-con boards that can handle the side drivers shorting. Also on a side note I would like to add that I ran across another customer with the common shorted-out t-con bad right hand side drivers on an E701. I was able to use the t-con board out of a Sony 70-inch 3D model and it worked perfectly."

I chose a RUNTK5489TPZA board (which, I believe, is from a Sony) instead of one of the RUNTK5261 boards which is what came out of my TV. [I did go through the trouble of trying to fix my T-Con and was very careful and the repair looked beautiful, but the board still did not work.] The lay-out of components on the 5489 boards is slightly different than the 5261 boards. It doesn't have the FET in the location shown in post #3 that everybody is replacing. I believe that the 5489 boards are more robust. This is based freakaftr8's info above plus the fact that I operated my TV for a good while (maybe a total of a minute or-so) with the incorrect corner ribbon disconnected while I tried to decide whether I had guessed correctly as to which side to disconnect first, and the TV kept working. [What I was seeing with the bad side connected and the good side disconnected was the bottom 4/5 of the screen had a halfway-decent picture and the top 1/5 was black (Keep in mind that there are five side driver tabs, so my top driver was the problem.). When I finally had the BAD side DISconnected and the good side connected, I saw a nearly-perfect picture on 4/5 of the good side and a dark image on the bad side.] So two lessons here: Choose a 5489 board (which will tolerate making the wrong guess as to which side to disconnect for much more than a few seconds), and when you see a ~perfect image on the connected side of the screen (over most of the height anyway), you can feel confident that your DISconnected side is the one that is bad.

3) A third related lesson is just buy a replacement T-Con board that is not one of the ones from the E701i-A3, e.g., one of the 5489 variety. If you are going to buy FETs, you are going to want to get several, and with shipping, it will cost you $10-$11. Plus, it is no trivial task to unsolder/resolder the FETs. And, when you are done, the T-Con may still not work. To clinch the deal, the 5489 T-Con that I bought cost me all of $7 with shipping.

4) When pealing the tabs off of the screen, if you peal them in one motion - either from the top-down or from the bottom-up, you will leave a little corner piece of the tab on the sceen. The last little bit of corner just wants to stick to the screen and tears off of the tab. So peal a little bit from the top or bottom first, then switch to the other end and tear the whole tab from there.

[tgharve]

Re: e701i-a3 no picture but backlights

Has anyone had issues with blown capacitor's on the power supply of a E701i-A3E series. I had a slight flicker in the picture shortly before it went black. Noticed the center capacitor of the three (450v 68uf) had blown out on one end causing it to make multiple pops as it smoked. I replaced all three capacitors and it worked fine for about 10-15 minutes before it flickered again and all three capacitors started to smoke. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[TxxxxxxxHxxxxx]

Re: e701i-a3 no picture but backlights

Hey guys, okay so I have this 70l" vizio that you guys are talking about, that has the same problem no picture but has sound. I've read quite a bit of this thread and I've been trying to fix it but I don't think I'm understanding properly. With the bad t-con board still in, I would turn the tv on and get only the backlight. So I went ahead and purchased a new t-con board from encompass.com and it arrived today.

(Looking at front of screen) With the old tcon board still in I was trying to trouble shoot which side had gone bad but no matter which ribbon cable I removed (whether from the tcon board or the side corners) I only got the backlight. I went ahead installed the new tcon board and tried to repeat the process, unplugging the tv right away every time I would start it up and not immediately see the vizio logo.

I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. So I'm hoping you guys can shed some light here for me.

[budwich]

Re: e701i-a3 no picture but backlights

I think you need to do some component / meter tests on the boards as others have done to check the transistor's health. Just because you got another board, doesn't mean its good. Lots of people, buyers and sellers are doing "fast swaps" hoping for a "miracle fix" which may not happen and may likely take out the tcon again... the buyer returns as it didn't solve the original problem and seller has limited / not way to retest and just puts it up again with "hope".