Yesterday, we had a local TV repair technician visit us at our warehouse in the City of Walnut looking for a part for a Vizio E701-A3E. He diagnosed that the problem laid in the T-Con Board. Well, what is a T-Con Board, you might ask? To put it in super simplistic terms, you can think of it as a sort of "assistant" to processing video to be displayed on a TV screen. We were under the impression that he had done all the relevant voltage tests to narrow down to that single board so we sold him the T-Con board. Later that day, he came back with our board claiming that it was defective. So we asked the tech, "What were the symptoms?" He goes on to explain to us that the picture worked fine, he could change the channels, raise & lower the volume, but the issue was that the picture "appeared" darker than usual as if someone put a shadow over the TV. 

We immediately knew what the problem was. This is a very common problem amongst LED TV's & LCD TV's.The problem laid in the actual LED lighting itself and not in any particular circuit board. Well, why is that, you might ask? Well, let's walk through this together. There is picture. This tells us a few things: Firstly, if the picture is working and can be seen, it means that the Main Board is working fine. The Main Board takes a signal from your cable provider and converts that signal into video, which gets put out on the screen. Secondly, the T-Con Board acts like an "assistant" to the Main Board in processing video to be displayed on the screen. If it wasn't working, video would not be possible and thus, would not be displayed. So we can rule out the T-Con Board as working and fully functional in this case. Thirdly, there is backlight, albeit, what remaining backlight there was left over. This tells us that the LED Driver (the equivalent to the Backlight Inverter Board(s) in an LCD TV) is working. As the name implies, the LED Driver "drives" power to the LED lighting filaments inside the panel (what the layman's would call the "screen"). Fourthly, the Power Supply works. If it wasn't working, the TV wouldn't even turn on. None of the above scenarios would have been possible without the Power Supply being functional. And this covers the gamut of all the major parts inside a typical LED TV: The Main Board, the T-Con Board, the LED Driver, and the Power Supply. The only thing left is the panel. 

There is an important lesson to be learned here. Fixing TV's can be quite complicated even for experienced TV repair technicians. And what may be a seemingly "easy fix" may actually turn out to be more complicated than originally anticipated. And that is why we, the TV Parts Guy team, always encourage our guests and customers to seek out a professional TV repair center when in doubt before trying to do any repairs yourself.

Not sure which reputable TV repair centers to consider? Check out our directory of TV Repair Centers that we've compiled and have great working relationships with!