[Apologies if this should go in the KDS owner's thread.]
I recently inherited both a Sony KDS60A2000 and a Sony KDS50A2000 from a friend who used the Sony settlement to get two new TVs. They're both broken, but they're both broken in different ways. Can I cobble together one working big screen from the two of them?
The KDS60 has a "simple" problem: you guessed it, the green screen. I've read through the online documentation so I know what's involved in fixing this.
The KDS50, surprisingly, doesn't have the green screen issue, but as near as I can tell from Googling around, it has a faulty lamp power supply. The picture, not the sound, cuts off for 30 seconds or more every couple minutes, but the green light doesn't blink at all. It seems as far as the TV knows, everything's fine. One important wrinkle though is that when the TV starts up, I get the message that the lamp is near the end of its life. From my research, I don't think this is "lamp that's near dead" behaviour, but that's a possibility.
So my questions are…
Are the lamps compatible?
Clearly my first step should be moving the lamp from the KDS60 into the KDS50 and see if that solves the blink. However, I have no idea if those two parts are interchangeable. Yes, I could have figured that out in two minutes on my own, but why do that when I can spend 45 minutes writing a super-long post on AVS?
Are the lamp power supplies interchangeable? Are they removable? Is this process documented somewhere online?
One option would be to take the lamp power supply from the KDS60 and install it in the KDS50. I have no idea how feasible that is, however. I'm more worried about finding instructions than about doing the work: my girlfriend and I are both nerds who are well-familiar with the inside of a desktop computer, though admittedly neither of us have ever crawled around on the inside of a TV…
Are the optical blocks interchangeable?
Taking the optical block out of the KDS50 and putting it into the KDS60 would be the other option. Though this seems like an involved and time-consuming process, from looking at the guides online it looks pretty straightforward. And even though in abstract this process seems to be a bigger hassle than swapping the lamp power supplies, it's very well documented online with lots of pictures.
Is this even worth it?
If I could get a free or low-cost TV out of this in exchange for a little elbow grease, that would be great. But at the same time, I'm a firm believer in "it's only free if your time is worth nothing." If I'm going to spend the better part of a weekend on this, only to find out that it's not going to work out (or, worse, have a TV that's turning green three months from now), I'd rather just go buy a new TV and enjoy the rest of my Saturday.
Would it make more sense to just turn this over to a repairman?
I certainly don't mind letting go of money if that money is well-spent and saves me the hassle. But the thing is, nobody in my family watches a lot of TV, so we're unlikely to buy anything that costs much more than $600 (probably the Samsung PN51E450). No matter how much the KDS retailed for, to us it's just a $600 TV because that's what it's "replacing." The closer the repair bill inches towards $600, the less enthusiastic I'll be about the whole thing.
What in the world am I going to do with the carcasses when I'm done?
I mean, seriously. These things are huge. Do I take them to the dump? An electronic recycler? Or would I be able to sell them for parts, particularly if I decide that this whole issue is just more trouble than it's worth and don't even touch them? A working optical block and a lamp has to be worth something...
That's all I can think of. Thanks for reading my overly wordy post…I can't tell you how glad I was to discover AVS and a community as knowledgeable, capable, and enthusiastic as you guys!
I recently inherited both a Sony KDS60A2000 and a Sony KDS50A2000 from a friend who used the Sony settlement to get two new TVs. They're both broken, but they're both broken in different ways. Can I cobble together one working big screen from the two of them?
The KDS60 has a "simple" problem: you guessed it, the green screen. I've read through the online documentation so I know what's involved in fixing this.
The KDS50, surprisingly, doesn't have the green screen issue, but as near as I can tell from Googling around, it has a faulty lamp power supply. The picture, not the sound, cuts off for 30 seconds or more every couple minutes, but the green light doesn't blink at all. It seems as far as the TV knows, everything's fine. One important wrinkle though is that when the TV starts up, I get the message that the lamp is near the end of its life. From my research, I don't think this is "lamp that's near dead" behaviour, but that's a possibility.
So my questions are…
Are the lamps compatible?
Clearly my first step should be moving the lamp from the KDS60 into the KDS50 and see if that solves the blink. However, I have no idea if those two parts are interchangeable. Yes, I could have figured that out in two minutes on my own, but why do that when I can spend 45 minutes writing a super-long post on AVS?
Are the lamp power supplies interchangeable? Are they removable? Is this process documented somewhere online?
One option would be to take the lamp power supply from the KDS60 and install it in the KDS50. I have no idea how feasible that is, however. I'm more worried about finding instructions than about doing the work: my girlfriend and I are both nerds who are well-familiar with the inside of a desktop computer, though admittedly neither of us have ever crawled around on the inside of a TV…
Are the optical blocks interchangeable?
Taking the optical block out of the KDS50 and putting it into the KDS60 would be the other option. Though this seems like an involved and time-consuming process, from looking at the guides online it looks pretty straightforward. And even though in abstract this process seems to be a bigger hassle than swapping the lamp power supplies, it's very well documented online with lots of pictures.
Is this even worth it?
If I could get a free or low-cost TV out of this in exchange for a little elbow grease, that would be great. But at the same time, I'm a firm believer in "it's only free if your time is worth nothing." If I'm going to spend the better part of a weekend on this, only to find out that it's not going to work out (or, worse, have a TV that's turning green three months from now), I'd rather just go buy a new TV and enjoy the rest of my Saturday.
Would it make more sense to just turn this over to a repairman?
I certainly don't mind letting go of money if that money is well-spent and saves me the hassle. But the thing is, nobody in my family watches a lot of TV, so we're unlikely to buy anything that costs much more than $600 (probably the Samsung PN51E450). No matter how much the KDS retailed for, to us it's just a $600 TV because that's what it's "replacing." The closer the repair bill inches towards $600, the less enthusiastic I'll be about the whole thing.
What in the world am I going to do with the carcasses when I'm done?
I mean, seriously. These things are huge. Do I take them to the dump? An electronic recycler? Or would I be able to sell them for parts, particularly if I decide that this whole issue is just more trouble than it's worth and don't even touch them? A working optical block and a lamp has to be worth something...
That's all I can think of. Thanks for reading my overly wordy post…I can't tell you how glad I was to discover AVS and a community as knowledgeable, capable, and enthusiastic as you guys!
)
