In a TV, the Main Board is considered the brains of the operations. It takes in a signal via the tuner, converts that signal into video, and puts it out on the TV screen. The television is, indeed, a wonderful invention. Today, we're going to talk about how to identify the Main Board and point out some key differences on certain TV brands. As a general rule, if you see the tuner attached to a board with all the audio, video, and HDMI ports on the same board, this would be considered the Main Board in most cases. There are some exceptions, however. 

LG Plasma TV's (circa 1998-2004) have been known to break up their Main Board into two distinct pieces. On the one hand, they have the analog board, which contains the audio, video, and tuner. On the other, they have the digital board, which is the actual brain between these two boards. Note in the latter example that there are more "chips" on the board as opposed to the former board. Note again that there are three distinctly different chips plus one very "big" chip with the AMD insignia stamped on it on the far left. You may have seen these chips before, such as on the graphics card that you would ordinarily find in a computer. As you may have guessed, yes, those chips are the video processing chips. And the very "big" chip with the AMD insignia is the main processing unit. In computer speak, this would also be known as the CPU (central processing unit). Both are the same thing. They have the same function. The difference being that one is made for use in a computer and the other is made for use in a TV. 

Properly speaking though, both of these boards are considered the Main Board since it'd be impossible to process video without a signal coming in from the analog board, which has the tuner. But if the Main Board fails, it is the digital board that you would want to buy of the two, not the analog board. Some online retailers simply call both types the Main Board, while others may refer to them by other names. 

The analog board has been known to be called these names:

• A/V Board or AV Board
• Tuner Board
• Signal Board
• Analog Assy (short for Assembly) Board or Analog Assy
• Sub Analog Board
• AV Input
• Side AV Input

The digital board has been known to be called these names:

• Main Digital Board or Digital Main
• Main Digital Assy
• Video Board
• Video Processing Assy

There are certainly other variations but any time you see "video" or "digital" in its name, it's most likely the digital board, that is "the brain" portion of the Main Board, assuming it was broken up into two pieces. And any time you see any other name that's not the above, it's most probably the analog board. When in doubt, look at the pictures on the website and try to see if you can find the "main processing unit." It's usually a big chip, very distinct-looking, and it usually has some big brand name chipmaker stamped on the chip: AMD, LG, i-Chips, etc., and it may have a heatsink directly on top of it. The newer TV's (circa 2011 onward) typically have heatsinks directly on top of the main processing unit or there is a heat shield (a steel enclosure of sorts) surrounding the chip.

The following list is the vast majority of the big brands we've noticed where the Main Board were broken up into two pieces: 

• RCA
• Polaroid
• Element
• Toshiba
• Sony
• Panasonic
• Sharp
• Zenith
• Hitachi
• Pioneer
• Emerson
• Dell
• HP
• Gateway
• Sanyo

We've noticed that the older the TV was made (possibly 2009 and before), the more likely that the Main Board was broken up into two pieces while all the newer TV's (possibly 2011 onward), more and more TV's have been made with the Main Board as one singular unit. But there's really no clear cut and dry rule on this matter. It seems as though TV manufacturers switch up their designs every 3-4 years. But all the above brand names have, at one point in time, broken up their Main Board into two distinct pieces. 

Every other TV brand that's out there, however, seem to generally make their Main Board as one singular unit where the tuner, HDMI, audio, video, USB, and card reader are located on one central board. 

TV brands known to keep everything on one board are the following: 

• Westinghouse
• Mitsubishi
• Vizio
• Philips
• Magnavox
• Haier
• Sceptre
• TCL
• Seiki
• Hannspree
• JVC
• Maxent
• Olevia
• Syntax
• Samsung
• Sansui
• Viewsonic 

As you may have noticed, all the lesser known brands save for Samsung, Vizio, Philips, and Magnavox tended to follow this design while the more well known brands tended to break up their Main Board. Neither design is necessarily better than the other but in our experience, we've noticed that boards that had everything integrated together in one board tended to fail faster than those whose boards were broken up into two pieces. Now, whether this is necessarily an indication that the two board design is "better" than the one board design is certainly up for debate but no TV is perfect. Nevertheless, some brands just seem to outperform all the rest so far as longevity is concerned. Namely, the big 5 comes to mind: Sony, Samsung, Panasonic, Sharp, and LG. And there's a really good reason why they tend to outlast the competition, which we will cover in the next entry. So until then, stay tuned~