this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2024
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About a month ago my neighbor left a nice looking TV out by the trash for bulk item pickup with a note saying, "not sure if this works, but free if you want it." Cosmetically the unit looked to be in good shape, but sure enough when I bring it inside to test, none of the HDMI ports would pick up a signal. I tried different HDMI cables and devices to double check. All of the TV menus would work and there was static on the cable channel, so I knew the pixels themselves were fine. I opened the unit up to find 3 separate circutboards inside, a main board (with the HDMI ports soldered on), a power board, and I think a timing board or something like that (forget the acronym I came across researching). Well I decided to roll the dice and replace the main board with a $130 purchase for a replacement, took about 30 minutes to swap out. Sure enough with a new main board the TV, HDMI units and all, worked perfectly. Now I'm up a 60" Sharp AQUOS TV (~$1500 new) for the price of the replacement board. More importantly, the satisfaction of plugging in an HDMI and seeing a signal come through was priceless. Support right to repair, we have an obligation to preserving and reusing the resources we have access to.
btw with most modern tvs using side mounted hdmi on the pcb directly, it's bad solder joints causing these issues. Resoldering the connectors fixes it like half the time.
Interesting, I had ruled this out as likely because all 4 HDMI ports didn't pick up a signal, but I'll take a closer look at the board I pulled out.
usually you can get some form of signal flashing back at you if you jiggle the ports just right. And generally it should be pretty obvious when they have bad solder joints. They're usually completely loose and can be seen flopping about just a little.