Vizio M550NV Line

[truep]

Picked this up today cause it was cheap and I could sell the parts.
It has a gray area but the menu letters look OK. Picture comes through but with a washed out look. Bad panel?

[tom66]

Re: Vizio M550NV Line

Probably water damage to that part of panel.

[truep]

Re: Vizio M550NV Line

Any hope that the tab bond fix will work? I would really like to keep this one!

[tom66]

Re: Vizio M550NV Line

I would be surprised, but worth a shot. My guess is when you get to that part of panel you will find corrosion on the tab bond area which will not be repairable.

[truep]

Re: Vizio M550NV Line

well, can't hurt to try! I don't see any external water spots but maybee I'll find something when I get it apart . Too bad, It's a nice LED set.

[truep]

Re: Vizio M550NV Line

Further work: I inspected the cable connections between the TCON and the panel. This panel has removable ribbon cables at both ends. They were cleaned with Deoxit. I then disconnected the cable from the affected side of the screen and got a perfectly white on that side. Reconnected the cable and disconnected the other cable and got the white screen there too.
How do I get to test patterns on this set?
I can get a TCON for $37 but everyone thinks the panel is bad and I dont want to waste money if there is no chance.Note? the TCON is on the bottom on this one.

[tom66]

Re: Vizio M550NV Line

Swap the cables around, does the white area move?

[truep]

Re: Vizio M550NV Line

No, I tried that first. also cleaned and reseated the LVDS cable.

[tom66]

Re: Vizio M550NV Line

99% panel then, very very unlikely to be t-con.

[truep]

Re: Vizio M550NV Line

As usual, Tom66 was right! Got the panel out of the frame and found the area on the board corroded. As a last hope, I cleaned the corrosion off, but to no avail. Guess i'll strip it for parts. Such a shame.

[tom66]

Re: Vizio M550NV Line

Out of interest, top or bottom tab bonds?

[truep]

Re: Vizio M550NV Line

The tab bonds looked good, the corrosion was on the board. Just because they "look" good doesn't mean much though. Pressing on either the top or bottom bond had no effect.

[truep]

Re: Vizio M550NV Line

The tabs were at the bottom of the screen.

[tom66]

Re: Vizio M550NV Line

Bottom bonds are vulnerable to water damage, that's why I was asking. Spill a drink on your LED LCD, good bye TV!!

[Eikon81g]

Re: Vizio M550NV Line

So I found this post a little bit too late. I am a newbie to TV repair but know just enough to get myself into trouble. I've repaired a few and I have my latest project, a Vizio M550nv that has the same issue as the one pictured above. I went with a blanket fix and ordered a $45.00US TCON board to see if that would solve this issue. My troubleshooting steps were almost identical to truep's steps and after installing a new TCON board I've got the same line on the screen still. I told myself it could be the panel but am pretty new to tv repairs so I figured the 45.00 fix would be great but knowing that if the TCON replacement didn't fix it the issue had to be with the panel. I will try to return the TCON board but if not I had the owner of the TV pay for it anyway. Tom66 mentioned that the issue with the corrosion on the panel is unrepairable so I am likely going to just tell the owner that any additional troubleshooting or repair attempts will likely cause this unit to be less usable or inoperable. Next question.. when you guys part these tv's out where do you sell the working parts? Ebay, Amazon, etc? OR is there a forum on this site that we can post on? Again, I am new but I am constantly finding projects to work on. Thanks for reading!