Saw my first trashed flat screen TV today
 

While out for my usual evening walk tonight, I happened to look at the trash area behind my apartment. There, in a corner between one of three trash barrels and a concrete wall, was a Westinghouse large screen HDTV. I didn't have my digital camera with me and my cell phone doesn't have a camera, so I couldn't snap a picture of the beast. I couldn't see much of the TV because of where it was located, but I did see the Westinghouse "circle W" trademark on the display bezel. The set looked like (I'm making a wild guess) 40" or thereabouts.

I have no idea what was wrong with it, but, again making a wild guess, perhaps the screen was cracked or even shattered. There could have been other problems with the TV as well, but knowing how old TVs are dealt with these days when they go bad for any reason, I wasn't surprised. I did not try to drag the set into my place for at least three reasons: one, its size, two, the power cord was missing, and three, the remote was missing. I suppose I can add a fourth reason too, that I have no room in my apartment for a very large flat-screen HDTV, unless I were to hang it from a wall. Since I did not know whether or not the set worked, there is a chance as well that I would have wasted my time bringing it in here if it turned out not to be working properly, or at all, not to mention the time wasted hauling it back out to the trash from whence it came if it turned out not to be working.

I hope this isn't the start of a trend around this neighborhood, although with the short life spans of most flat screens I should probably expect to see more such sets biting the dust as time goes on, like that Westinghouse did. I don't know how many people in this building have flat screens, but I would guess most of them do (with the possible exception of my next-door neighbor, who still, AFAIK, has an RCA 25" CRT TV that looks like my RCA CTC185 19" set), since CRT sets are no longer available.

I wonder just how old that Westinghouse set was. I don't know for certain, but I would guess it may have been perhaps four years old and probably cost $1K or more when it was new. The owner's heart probably dropped with a loud plop when the set finally quit, as $1K is not small potatoes to most people.

Westinghouse LCD TV's are plagued with power supply problems and main board problems. More than likely it had a Wii Accident that is all too common. Along with Polaroid(more like hemorrhoid) and a few others are the bottom of the barrel for flat screen TV's. Best to leave it in the garbage where it belongs.

Who actually makes "Westinghouse" branded LCD televisions? I don't think they are made by Westinghouse itself, if the company even exists any longer -- which I doubt as well.

You mentioned a "Wii accident" that can ruin these TVs. What harm can a Wii video game console do to the set? Do the consoles run the panel at such high brightness (much higher than normal video drive levels) that the entire video chain eventually burns out, or the panel itself is damaged or destroyed by image burn-in? I realize image burn-in is not as common with LCD televisions as it is with plasma flat screens, but I do believe it is possible to burn a stationary image permanently onto an LCD screen if it is bright enough and it remains motionless on the screen long enough, not unlike screen burns on old CRT TVs.

It's a common saying for cracked screens due to not strapping the controller to you wrist while bowling etc. The controller fly's out of your hand right into the screen. See it all the time. usually kids that do it. Wii "accident"

Westinghouse TVs are made by Tsinghua TongFang Company, which also makes Apex, Element, Haier, iSymphony, RCA, Sceptre, Seiki, Sigmac, and Silo. Tsinghua TongFang build more TVs for many different brands than others in the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsinghua_Tongfang_Company

Tsinghua TongFang Company currently rates 23rd most-reliable video electronic manufacturer in the world.

http://www.avsforum.com/t/1403415/wh...#post_21914558

23rd most reliable in the world ?!? Don't speak to well of Gesundheit Snotbag company, does it ?!? (grin)

The "death" of my 37" Viewsonic would have been three years ago if I wasn't determined to find a backlight tube for it. That is when it "would have" hit the trash if I was just some regular consumer. This is an LCD from like six years ago (so yeah....it lasted like three years). I replaced it with a Samsung 55" LED backlit set, one of those REAL thin ones...and THAT one has been doing okay so far (I hear often these will have power supply capacitor problems).

My 37" Viewsonic still lives....but only because I DID find a junked set (shattered LCD)..and I R&R'd one of the two backlight tubes (REAL scary job by-the-way). It lives a VERY easy life now as a 37" HDMI computer monitor for a Microsoft FlightSim setup I have in a computer room. I remember paying around $1700 for that set, and getting only three years out of it, and was PISSED. At least I have so far rescued THAT set from hitting the wheelie bin in the alley so far.

I've given at least 3 or 4 Westinghouse LCD's to a neighborhood scrapper. I asked him what he finds on the street most. His reply was "Phillips". My experience with flatscreens failures are Polaroid, Phillips and Insignia leading the march off the cliff!

I picked up a Westinghouse 20" LCD on recycle Saturday. There was four bulging electrolytics on the power supply board. It was built in 2006, so it doesn't tune HD frequencies. Picture is not very impressive. :thumbsdn:

I picked up a nice 2009 Samsung 32" LCD that had a single bad cap in the power supply, replaced it and it's been working since.

The Cap was the lone oddball brand, probably a substandard supplier.
Samsung has had a lot of Cap issues from what I read.

They are probably sourced from different manufacturers. I traded the repair of a Westinghouse LCD flat panel TV for some stereo equipment and found a Chi Mei Optoelectronics panel and Delta power supply board inside it. Listening to it clearly revealed that the power supply was in distress and replacing every bloated cap I found on that board got it working again.

That was probably two years ago and the TV is still running. It's used in a local thrift store.

As such, quality is likely all over the map.

No. The Wii controllers themselves are the problem. They work by sensing motion and come with a wrist strap to keep them "under control". Sometimes people don't wear the retaining strap and a controller goes flying. At sufficient velocity, this can break the panel display.

When the new digital craze began awhile back, people all around here were throwing out their CRT TV's left and right. Foolish, because the cable company here still supports the old system. Anyway, about a year later, you'd see cheap Chinese built flat screen TV's laying out on the curb. Probably failed backlights and power supplies. Kind of makes me laugh, because I'm still using my old 27" JVC.

Maybe there are only 23 or 24 TV manufacturers IN the world!

Also, that reminds me of a song... "Seymour, the 142nd fastest gun in the west". :)

I bought a Sigmac 15-inch HDTV at the Fry's store near hear a few weeks ago, for $70 brand new. A true bottom-of-the-barrel TV, the complete opposite of classic American-made fine-wood-cabinet sets. I only expect to use it for ham-radio digital-TV signal experiments, but even at that give-away price, since I can fix things, I can probably keep it running for years.

My parents bought a 37" "Westinghouse" LCD HDTV back in 2006, since they had good reviews at the time. They paid around $1800 for it back then. Within the last year or so, dark semi-transparent blotches started appearing on the screen, almost as if the layers of the LCD panel were separating with age. I guess you could call it the LCD version of a color CRT cataract.

They recently replaced it with a 40" 1080P 240hz LED backlit Samsung Smart TV. The bezel around the screen is so thin that it is actually smaller than the Westinghouse it replaced, and only about 2" deep. It has wifi, surfs the web, supports Netflix, and cost $800.
LCD prices sure have fallen in the past six years.