Maxent 50" plasma MX-50X3 official thread - DO NOT POST PRICES!!! - Page 72

Replaced a friends offending capacitor today and fixed his 50" Maxent plasma.
I do some soldering and found it hard to try and desolder the capacitor off.
I just ended up wiggling the capacitor back and fourth till the leads on it gave up.
Then unsoldered off the part of the lead that was still stuck on the board.
Next I retinned the board and the ends of the new capacitor and did the final solder.
Didn't even remove the board from the TV or take it off the rolling stand.
Here is a pic of the new capacitor soldered on.

Thanks for the pic. I am going to attemp this same capacitor fix on my MX-42x3 tonight.

Were you able to desolder/solder the cap with the board still inside the TV? Or did you have to disconnect the board and remove it from the TV first?

I did this repair last night, it was very easy, less than 5 minutes of work. I didn't need to remove the board either, I just opened up the small cover to expose the board, wiggled the existing capacitor around until it fell out and soldered a new cap into its place.

Thanks for the help and the pics. My flickering problem is now gone!

I am having the flickering problem (started out not bad, and now I am up to about a 4-5 minute warmup time).

I am hesitant to do the repair myself (I am a lousy solderer), so will probably have to take it somewhere. Has anyone had this done at a repair shop? Just curious what the cost estimate would be.

Alternatively, I might be able to find a neighbor with some experience. How much was the replacement capacitor (I'm sure this is mentioned somewhere in this thread, but couldn't find it)?

^ Did not notice the part number in an earlier post. I see it's $1.49 at Radio Shack, so I'm picking it up.

Talked with my neighbor who has a soldering gun and has some more experience, and we're going to give the repair a shot Wednesday evening.

Wish me luck!

Boo-Yah! Just did the repair above.

$1.58 (after tax) and 20 minutes of my time = fixed TV. Awesome!

That makes me wonder if I can find some broken Maxents and just fix them and load up my house with Plasmas for cheap. Time to hit up Craigslist.

Hello,

I have survived the flicker problem by replacing the whole board (twice!) as I have mentioned in earlier posts. I now have two (started out as one) green vertical lines that appear just to the right of center and run from the top down about half the length of the screen that come and go! Any thoughts? I can't bear to part with my 50x3 after all we've been through together!
Thanks,

Chris

P.S. I am in the Northeast.

I bought mine from a recycling place a couple weeks ago. The capacitor, plus a fuse (10A 250V) brought it back to life. A 5-pack of the fuses came to $4.11 from an E-Bay listing by Divine Lighting. There are three of these fuses on the burnt orange main power board just above the I/O board with the cap fix. BTW, almost all the parts in this TV are Panasonic. The only 3 exceptions are the above mentioned I/O board, and the two small input power supply boards to the right of these boards. The orange power board is used on the Panasonic TH-50PHD8UK and a couple others. The glass for that is rated at 60,000 hours.
I had thought about replacing the Maxent parts with true Panasonic, but since it works, no need. My hat goes off to Jstic for posting the fix - Thanks a million!
I almost forgot, does anybody have the original table stand that came with this model? I saw a stand for a 42" base on Ebay, and it seems to have the same dimensions.

I joined this board actually quite awhile ago but forgot my user name and password along with the email in which I joined, so I had to reregister. I want to thank britt and others who posted on the flickering problem. My Maxent MX50X3 started getting this flickering problem about 6 mos. ago. It started gradual and late yesterday even after the unit had been on for 1hr. it still had some flickers going on and the visual quality had been deterioating for quite sometime.

I nervously took down the TV from the wall and cracked open the back panel ready to perform surgery. The offending capacitor literally came off with little or no effort leaving just one tiny remnant of lead from the old capacitor. I unsoldered the remaining lead and installed the radio shack capacitor 272-1029. Now keep in mind my level of experience of soldering is really quite minimal and I was pretty much prepared to having to take the TV to a electronic shop and repair the damage I may have caused.

I reinstalled the back panel, hung the TV back on the wall connecting the component (Cable) and my HDMI switcher (bluray and HDDVD) turned on the TV and it turned on instantly. I was so happy as was my wife...

Not only are the flickers gone but I noticed the quality of the picture was like new again...can't thank you guys enough.

Dave

I live in north east and need help with this board!!!

All I can say is thank you to Jstic!!!!! I replaced the capacitor in my Maxent and per your photo. Hit the power switch and my TV was perfect. It use to take 25 minutes for my tv to warm up. I would call my wife on my way home to start the warm up process.

Hi We have a 50" Maxent that had "snow in the mornings" it turned into "flickering" which I would have called "crazed Zebras". Anyway, the TV died. We did the above fix and now have what I call "Shadow Flickers"..dim flicks of black and white. Can anyone help?

Jstic's fix works.

I replaced the capacitor, and all is well. It was down for over a year in the garage waiting for something like this, and I am ever so grateful that my kids now have a 50" plasma in the playroom to play Wii on and watch cartoons - what a luxury.

Thank you all for this forum.

/TOM

I have tried to attach a picture of my Maxent with the "streaks" running from the top down. Sometimes there are three of them and they get longer and shorter. Any Ideas? Please Help!
Thanks,
Chris

I have a maxent model#P420142X3.My tv has the flickering problem so i removed the board and was going to do the capacitor fix.The #766 cap on my board is not a surface mount and it is 470uf 25v.The board # isQPWB11561-1G-2-. I was wondering if this board can be fixed also

Anyone?

OMG... The T.V. was on it's way out the door no lie... A buddy of mine gave it to me for free cause it didn't work. I took it to the shop , They got $80.00 from me just to look at it. And another $378.00 to fix it. I said no way.. I almost told them to keep it and use it for parts for someone else, But I brought it home and there it sat. I figured Id look online to see if I could find someone with the same problem and I found this site. Thanks to Brittcrowell post and pic. I FIXED IT MYSELF FOR $1.58 and I never soldered before in my life.. ..All I can say is thanks for the post

I followed the simple instructions on changing the capacitor, purchasing the correct capacitor at Radio Shack. I have used a soldering iron before so I knew what I was doing. And yes, I put positive to positive. However, I went from having a flickering problem to nothing at all. I read someone's post that they had to change a few fuses as well and I did that. I am not sure what happened. It will not power up at all now. No flashing green lights, no sound, nothing. Can anyone help?

Thank you. Trying not to have to buy another TV.

Oh Crap !! survivor13 now I'm scared to do it. But I'm gonna be brave, and go for it. Wish me luck all.

I would be careful "wiggling" off the old capacitor. The solder pads which are on the PCB may very well come off with the cap, or get damaged. I ruikded a mother board a few years ago doing that. Just use a soldering pen and be patient, it takes a few minutes but will eventually come loose. I made my own two pronged soldering tip to do both sides at once.

Well everyone, I did it !!!
It went just as described. Thank you every one for this great thread. I did the wiggle method and it worked out just fine. I was afraid of breaking the board too, but I just wiggled very gently, and it fell right off. I didn't want to take the board out, and I don't know how you would de-solder without getting to the back of the board. It was a little tricky soldering the new one in though, because I was using my big "Ole Weller" gun. Should have had a smaller iron for it. Plus I have big hands and poor eye sight, but the reading glasses did the trick. It's hard to believe that that little ibuprofen sized cap could cause all that flickering. It was getting to the point where it was not going to stop flickering no matter how long it was on. Eventually I'm sure I would have had nothing at all. Thanks again every body !!!!

Thanks also, jstic! This fix worked for my 50x3! I've never soldered before, but an $8 kit and $1.50 capacitor from Radio Shack later, my TV is up and running. It had gotten to the point where it wouldn't even warm up and stop flickering at all.

A note for those having this problem: The capacitor itself (#766) didn't look bad at all during visual inspection. I did notice a tiny bit of rust-colored motherboard underneath it once I had taken it off, which I'm assuming was from the capacitor failing. That was the one though.

I've posted pics of the fixed capacitor and soldering. Hope they're of use to someone!

hello, i have a problem with my maxent, i havent seen that anybody here reported it.

here is a pic of how the image comes on.



do you have any idea what can it be? i already spent a ton of money replacing the Y sus board and X sus board and it keeps doing the same thing.
how can i tell if its the capacitor on the main board ? it doesnt look blown.
...

then the cable that goes here.



One of the pins (black cable - ground) came out and i dont know where it goes.

would you take a pic of yours please so i can see in what pin goes.

thank you so much.

Everyone still loving their MX50X3s?

I remember posting here as a new buyer and having to wonder if this thing would last or not. It's been 6 years now and this thing has held up like a champ, including 2 VERY rough falls inside of a shipping container. Go Maxent!

The TV is definitely showing its age as of this year. I've noticed the darkest parts of scenes are flat black. I hooked it up to my computer where I can very finely tune the image coming into the TV to get those dimmest colors up and out of the dead range without ruining true blacks, and the image is back to perfection - but unfortunately when the PS3 or regular TV are the source, I don't have that kind of control and the image suffers significantly. It's too bad there isn't a very fine, Photoshop Curves-like interface for adjusting this sort of thing on every display device.

brittcrowell, impressive soldering job. You've got a backup career in computer repair, methinks.

Hislastbow, I've occasionally seen similar streaks on mine. I... turned it off and then on again, and it went away. It's only ever happened on hot days when it's been on for more than 4 hours, but even when it's hot, power cycling it has fixed the issue.

creativeguitar, You are really working hard to resurrect that poor TV! Can you be clearer about what you need a photo of? Do I need to take the back panel off my TV to get the picture or can it be done without dismantling things? I'm happy to take a picture to help if it requires no surgery on my working TV... .

I love mine. It's definitely showing its age compared to the newer sets, but it still functions perfectly. I could not possibly be happier with how well it's done over the years.

This review mentions a service remote. Does anyone have access to such a service remote?

My Maxent 50x3 had rolling picture problems that I left unrepaired too long due to time constraints. I turned the tv on last week and it is now a black screen with occasional flashing white lines. Could this still be a capacitor issue?

We purchased the tv in July 2006. My husband and I work opposite shifts and the tv is almost always on.

The capacitor fix worked for about 8 months, but the TV went out again. This time, the green power light stays on but I get no sound or picture. The remote turns the unit on but not off, same with the power button. I tried another capacitor but that's not it this time. The input board is getting 12 volts to the left side and 5 volts to the right side, which seems about right. When I turn it on, I get green LEDs on both x-sus and y-sus boards, and the screen is energized to a gray, not the bright blue usually seen on start-up. If this were a computer, I'd say it doesn't POST, so maybe the problem is the logic board (underneath the main board). Or, since the sound circuit appears to reside entirely on the input board (the speaker output wires come directly off it) maybe there's something else wrong with the main board. After I find a replacement, I'll post the results...

Yep I have been equally as surprised with mine... I have had it since November 2005. I lost AV1 on it last year but still has a good pic on the rest.

I just recently moved from Va. to NC. I was worried about it making the trip but the movers took good care with packing it and it survived the move.

Damn and I was actually hoping that I would be able to use the moving insurance to get a new one...

I found a replacement board QPWB11522-1G-2 (just use Google shopping) for $54.95. The board appears to be new (in sealed bubble wrap) with the new capacitor already built in, but in a slightly different location. The board does work and fixed my problem (the TV quit 8 months after the original cap fix). It does need some fine tuning, but I'm going to swap the BIOS chip from my old one first. As of today, the seller (discount-merchant.com) has another one for the same price, and gets them in regularly.
I also noticed all the new TVs now come with 80mm cooling fans (the Panasonic has 4) just like those used for computer cases. Apparently, the original designers hadn't planned on everybody taking them off the stands and mounting them on walls where they don't get any air circulation. (The capacitors are only rated to 105 degrees) I plan on putting a tower fan on one of the box speakers I've got on either side of the TV.