Samsung LN37A450 C1D w/ bad tcon

[cashkennedy]

I bought a Samsung LN37A450 / LN37A450C1D on craigslist which turned on and displayed a picture, but it was almost compleatly white, and you could barely make out what you were looking at, reset the settings in the menu, check the power supply and brightness voltage, all were fine, so figured it was a bad t-con.

The difficulty was with finding the t-con, this model is apparently rather rare, or the t-cons go out a lot, so there arent many available. Though there are no online posts about replacing the t-cons on these, so maybe they just never break, or were a rare model. To further confuse things samsung uses at least 2 different panels in this model. The one i worked on had a AUO t370xw02 v.c panel, and the tcon was 37t03.c01, and although this is a very common panel that many manufacturers use, it appears the v.c revision is only for the samsungs.

At first i only found some chinese site, that i was leary to trust / and wait 20 days to get the t-con from, (why would they have working "used" parts for exspensive tv's in china, i could understand some like factory reject parts, or new parts). But i gave up for a day or two looking and in the mean time i found a greenchipparts.com had one, so i purchased it.

Fixed: Once i got the new t-con in, the tv worked perfectly.

[budm]

Re: Samsung LN37A450 C1D w/ bad tcon

I check shopjimmy.com but he is out of stock at the moment, main thing is what is printed on the sticker.
http://www.shopjimmy.com/catalogsear...t/?q=37t03.c01
Funny how Samsung makes their panel but went for cheaper quality panel by AUOPTO instead.
By the way, you said you get white screen, but can you see setup meanu screen OK?

[cashkennedy]

Re: Samsung LN37A450 C1D w/ bad tcon

Im not sure if the term is "washed out" but you could still barely make out what you were looking at, i was able to do a usb firmware upgrade / and factory reset. It was like 90% of the pixels were all white , but a couple were properly outputing. , or it was flickering from correct state to full open really quickly, and so appeared like white the majority of the time. Im not really sure, just know it was almost as white as a google page's background lol, but just enough of the actual images / menus were visible to be able to move around the menus, and know what channel you were watching.

Yep i found a bunch of stores online that were sold out of the exact part (v.c. / c01) revision of the tcon, so maybe thats a sign that these tcons fail a lot, and are in demand.

And yeah, ive yet to see a sony or samsung that had a real samsung-sony screen in it... Just work on a bunch of auo, and chunghwa stuff.

[tom66]

Re: Samsung LN37A450 C1D w/ bad tcon

Most new Samsung and LG TVs use Chungwa/CMO LCD panels. Despite the fact that Samsung and LG both manufacture LCDs. These cheaper LCDs have awful motion performance, poor contrast (which Samsung "fix" by changing display brightness, which just makes for distracting watching) and worst of all, they develop mura after a few years.

[cashkennedy]

Re: Samsung LN37A450 C1D w/ bad tcon

I just dont know where all the good panels are going! are they sticking them in vizio's or something? Cause vizios never seem like their priced really well to me...

[tom66]

Re: Samsung LN37A450 C1D w/ bad tcon

I just dont know where all the good panels are going! are they sticking them in vizio's or something? Cause vizios never seem like their priced really well to me...

Probably B&O (Bang and Olufsen), Sony, Panasonic (maybe), plus other overpriced nonsense, and maybe some of the large screen (>50") LCDs. Even Samsung LED LCDs are CMO from what I hear. Samsung are leaving the LCD panel market, citing falling profits. (But they will continue to manufacture TVs.)

At least PDPs are made by Samsung and LG, but plasma looks to be a dying technology - although it seems to look less bleak recently: you can get a ~55" plasma for almost the same price as a ~42" LED screen. But LED LCD prices are falling rapidly, whereas plasma is a mature technology, and prices are unlikely to fall further.

And Vizio TVs actually look very decent compared to other brands. One user on this forum had a 32" one: and the PSU was full of good Chemicon and Rubycon caps. The main board had a few cheap caps, but none in critical locations - nothing that would cause too many problems. Plus, it was really energy efficient (despite being a CCFL TV): average consumption of just 49 watts. (Compare 150 - 200 watts typical for a 32" LCD a few years ago.) You can't get Vizio here, so I wouldn't be able to comment on price, but maybe you're getting a good TV for a few bucks extra.

Samsung continue using HEC, Capxon and Samwha in their TVs. Ugh. At least LG are using only Samyoung and Rubycon; Samyoung is an "okay" brand (wouldn't trust it too much, but it's supposedly a Chemicon in disguise) and Rubycon make excellent caps.

[budm]

Re: Samsung LN37A450 C1D w/ bad tcon

The high price SAAMSUNG TV's use SAMSUNG/SONY panel (Samsung and SONY were partner in making panel, but now SONY is backing out).
LG was partner with Philips, and now Philips is also backing out.

[tom66]

Re: Samsung LN37A450 C1D w/ bad tcon

Philips left a while back. Used to be LG Philips LCD, now it's LG Display.

Philips then went on to produce the infamous series of TVs full of bulging capacitors. And "Ambilight", which made you room look like a disco. Supposed to improve contrast - I'm not sure how?

And of course they used CMO and Chungwa LCDs.

[cashkennedy]

Re: Samsung LN37A450 C1D w/ bad tcon

Yeah this one vizio ive worked on had good caps, but they used some retarded DC-DC conversion scheme with like 30 caps on the mainboard, im pretty sure is some wierd way to save a few cents. Of course 1 of the regulators in that DC-DC conversion is what fails on that model for everyone...

And yeah im saying their prices arent good, so maybe they have better quality parts? They are mostly sold at Sams Club which is the cheapest place for everything, everything except LCD tv's which they sell thousands of per day, many more then the big electronics stores, yet their prices arent good at all on LCD TVs... They take them back if your not satisfied, and so have a large selection of used ones, and even those are so badly priced i dont know how they sell them. A lot of people go there and buy a TV for a important even / holiday / sports game, then return them right after...

Maybe im just unrealistic cause i only buy tv's on black friday, and broken ones on craigslist to repair. And if i wanted something new, or during the rest of the year id get it from amazon, cause i believe theyre consistently cheaper then any stores.

The black friday door buster deal ones are usually made with cheap components, but really really simple designs, and hundreds of thousands made, so you can find parts, and repair info easy

[asfaltboy]

Re: Samsung LN37A450 C1D w/ bad tcon

Hi cashkennedy,

I know this has been a while, but I'm having a very similar issue; white fog like very high gamma, only for me it starts with normal colors and then in a period of few minutes gradually shifts to higher gamma until it's all white like you described.

My TV is also similar at least in the name Samsung LE37A450C2 ...

Now I know this might mean completely different placements and parts but I thought I'd give it a try and ask you this:
Did you have trouble reaching the t-con board?
Mine seems to be hidden behind a metal shield which I cannot lift out of the way (it seems to have a metal lip behind the 2 t-con connectors at the bottom.

I've attached a photo so maybe if anyone knows how to deal with this, chime in?

Best Regards,
Pavel

[asfaltboy]

Re: Samsung LN37A450 C1D w/ bad tcon

Ok! I've finally done it, got the t-con off and it seems the model is the same like yours; a "37t03-c01" .. Now I'm not sure what my main board is, or if that really matter but searching for the part got me all parts with the name "T370XW02 VC 37T03-C01" .. so I guess this has to be it.

I currently live in Malta, so I don't think have the privilege of finding it locally (if anyone knows of a shop over here or italy that does it please let me know!).. but I did find a lot of options on AliExpress.com some of which do DHL delivery (3-8 days) and the price sound reasonable (€ 44,37 including the DSL shipping).

Thanks for sharing your info, you helped me a lot!

[flocko]

Re: Samsung LN37A450 C1D w/ bad tcon

A BN81-01911A will also work in your set and with the T370W02 VC the part number shown on the white bar code sticker can be 5537T03C01 or 5537T03C08 both of these will also work in your set, but as you say now hard to find ,you could also change the Gamma chip on your board Flocko

[shelby5041]

Re: Samsung LN37A450 C1D w/ bad tcon

I have same issue but is this a tcon issue or failing lcd panel issue.?

[shelby5041]

Re: Samsung LN37A450 C1D w/ bad tcon

Oh ....i see a tcon fixed the issue....