Had my TV for 3 years then all of a sudden I get
Samsung and sony panels are mfctd. at the same plant in Korea. Tab Bonding Problem. I have same problem with my Samsung LN40A750. Read-on...I too have had this problem with the very same model, it is most often
improperly diagnosed as a t-con board issue by most who just want to
provide an answer for the sake of there own ego at various forums. This
is a manufacturing defect. I have been dealing with Samsung for over a
month now and have been offered a replacement model of lesser
quality(LN40C650L1F) at a prorated cost of $300.00 to me which I have
not accepted as of yet. My TV began having this issue almost exactly 1
year beyond warranty period. Typically it will only happen when TV is
cold(if temp in room falls to approx. 68 deg or lower). When cold due to
naturally occurring shrinkage as with anything, the tab bonding
contacts to the screen are broken and therefore gives you 3 thin
horizontal lines across separating the screen into four quadrants
vertically and blurry details of everything including channel info, menu
info, etc. It goes away after several minutes of warm up time, as the
unit warms up expansion of the panel resumes and contact through the
defective tab bond is made and picture is back to normal. A quick test
to determine this is if you gently squeeze the bezel(frame) around the
panel at the top left corner approx. 2 to 4 inches from the corner(this
is where the defective tab is located for this particular problem) the
problem will go away until the unit is turned off and has ample time to
cool off again. When you squeeze you are effectively forcing the tab
bonding back together and contact again is made. Another way to diagnose
would be to turn your thermostat in house up above 72 degrees or so and
wait a few hours for the TV to acclimate to the temp(expand) .This is
why if left alone for a few minutes to warm up the problem disappears.
Consequently people who keep there homes on the warm side, say above 70
deg. don't often see this problem, but the more heat-cool cycles the
units go through the more likely this problem will rear up its ugly
head.I believe this defect will pop up eventually on all samsungs
produced with the same tab bonding method or materials that were used
for however long they were manufactured that way. Naturally everything
moves(expands and contracts) through heat-cool cycles but proper
engineering methods or materials should prevent something like this from
happening for at least, lets say 10 years, the average life expectancy
one would expect to get out of a $1500.00 or more purchase depending on
screen size. Common sense would dictate larger screens would be more
prone to this problem due to more movement and smaller less prone.
Unfortunately there are numerous tab bonds all across the top of the
screen(panel) and different ones affect different functions of the
operation of the set, therefore there may be many other various problems
people may be experiencing with there samsungs due to a failure of one
of these tab bonds. They are often erroneously diagnosed as circuit
board failures due to laziness on the part of the tech. I would
recommend to anyone experiencing intermittent or any problems to gently
squeeze all along the top of the bezel to locate a defective tab bond.
As for dealing with Samsung, all I can say is good luck, it is difficult
to reach their corporate office and even more difficult to get a
resolution. I would gladly join in any class action lawsuit if brought
about as the one regarding their capacitor issue disappeared once they
sought to start addressing the issue and this was only after an absurd
amount of complaints to the NJ BBB and consumer affairs websites. I
think they realize that they have a huge problem with most models
manufactured in the last 3-4 years(primarily due to using cheaper
components as a cost reduction/profit boosting solution) and as with any
large corp., are not willing to issue any recall as it is cheaper to
just deal with angry customers on a case by case basis, very unfortunate
for them as their sales will suffer terribly because most people
research on the web before making major purchases in today,s world and
thank god for that.
