OK, from what I've learned from three different sources is that the panel is indeed bad. And what was the largest clue was that the menu, when brought up, was distorted with horizontal and vertical bars as well as some ghosting during the freeze ups. Apparently the menu shouldn't be affected with a T-Con failure.
It looks as if the T-Con circuitry is part of the main board as there are two ribbons leading from the main board to the bottom of the panel in the image below. And then I'm assuming the small board at the top is just the LED driver board. Am I correct?
