Below are pics of what is going on w/ my TV - I'll be honest, I do not know that much about RPTV - at first I thought that I had a blown lamp, but I guess since the red lamp still seems to be working, it's just something with the convergence...

http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/1139/img0581wm6.jpg



Here's my question-
Unfortunitly I am not experienced with soldering or working w/ tvs, so I'm thinking I will need to get the TV serviced - Is there anything worth trying that does not involve soldering etc before deciding to get it serviced? I bought the TV used for about $500 and am wary about spending too much to repair it, especially when theres that part of me that sees this as an excuse to upgrade to a plasma....=)
I should also add that today while watching football it seemed to snap back up in to place for about 30 seconds before going back...just to get my hopes up.
I've tried resetting convergence to factory defaults, manually adjusting etc but nothing through the menus comes close to fixing the problem.

Thanks for any input

This looks like one of the convergence chips is dead, most sets have two, the owns I know are around 3,1/2 inches long by 1, 1/2 wide with plenty of little legs on them (Soldered) and bolt or clip to a big heatsink.
If one is dead always replace the both and check the resistors around it as you might find them cooked. Some only replace the dead one and that is a mistake as most of the time on a older set when you replace the two the TV's geometry becomes spot on.
The ones I've fixed for Sony rear pros are use STK's and there cheap to buy so don't get ripped off. (Max $25 each AUS). Do a search on the dollar value for parts and say about 2 hrs max

I missed a bit!!
You could have dry joints on the convergence board (Bad soldering) if it came back ok for a while, the tap, tap treatment normally finds them but if your not confident please do not attempt.

http://www.hometheatershack.com/forums/manufacturers-service-support/5600-crt-based-rptv-convergence-repairs.html

Hey Blackman- thanks for the tips.
hammerdwn - thanks for the link - havent had a chance to go through it too much yet but I'll spend some time tonight reading through it.

Hi Kyle,

My exact same model tv is doing this with the blue vertical lines. What did you end up doing to fix the issue?

Thanks!