I've had 2 problems now with this set in the past 6 years. One thing I've realized about this set is that if you bought it when they first came out, there were several quality issues that were not debugged by the Japanese customers. I lived in Japan for 2.5 years and came to know that while Sony in Japan is a huge corp it is not seen as the quality vendor that US customers see it as. This is simply because Sony 'tests' new equip on the Japan market before launching in the US. They can't do this with the large rear screen TVs however because no one in Japan will buy them due to living space concerns. So once I realized that, I wasn't so disappointed in the problems I've experiences. All in all a good high end set that has lasted longer than most plasma or LCDs would have and I loath the front side projectors... The problems: 1) Some resistors on the board controlling the auto-shutoff feature for the 3 bulbs were out of spec. This took forever to debug and the Sony guy was 100% japanese and couldn't speak that much english. That's about all I could translate from his statements. 2) Just had a blue lamp go out on me and replaced it for around $600 bucks. It was an odd issue because the symptoms were very similar... As TV warmed up over about 15 minutes, the picture would start blinking out for a bit, then come back, and frequency of blinking went up as the set stayed on for longer. Again the circuitry controlling the auto-shutoff features were kicking in because of some internal issue in the bulb. They were not able to debug what the internal problem. It seems to me that the above 2 issues resulting in very similar symptoms mean that it is very hard for the consumer to debug the problem without a technican or the service manual to guide the way. I don't have a service manual but I'd guess you'd need some additional equip for testing purposes as well. My advice if you don't have the proper diagnostic equipment and the service manual then get ahold of one of the Sony authorized repair centers and get someone to look at it.

Reply