Samsung DLP Reliability - Page 5

No problem so far with my HLR5064 still running great after 2 1/2 years

Still a great set!

Samsung HLN5065WX bought in 2003. Color wheel replaced 3 months later due to squeal. DLP bulb replaced in 2007. October 2008 black and white image picture freeze, sometimes unable to turn set "off". Un-plug for few minutes and re-connect. Set plays normal for a liitle time to a long time with malfunction returning. Remove back and vacumn as good as I can concentrating in bulb area and cooling vent holes. Ensure bottom vent holes are not covered when repositioning set. Restore everything and set has been playing OK for two weeks. No other problems experienced.

Folks:
I bought one of the first Samsung DLPs shipped to the US (through an AVS Forum "Power Buy"). Replaced the bulb once and it is still working fine at my brother-in-law's in Michigan. I have had an HLT-6187S LED DLP for a year now and it is working fine. Great picture for the price and for anything over 50" the price can't be beat.

I have an HL-P5085W. Bought it in Oct 2004. It's dead now. More then 4 years later and never replaced a power supply, bulb, color wheel, etc. Moved it from Baltimore (Best Buy) to Norfolk and has worked like a charm! NOW if only I can find an authorized dealer closer to Norfolk then 88 miles! It is DEFINITELY worth it to me to get it repaired (any suggestions??). We have been VERY happy with it!


Norfolk

Have had mine for over two years not a single problem, need to change bulb soon but that is expected and more of a preventive issue.

I went to turn on my 5067w DLP and pop! then it sounds like it keeps trying to light the bulb.After I took it out...sure enough glass fragments and a broken filament. Almost 3 years on it and it was getting dim.

No warning?

OLDdlp 01/312009 Set continuing to play with no repeat problems. Could be I had dirt/dust in the color wheel area causing the color wheel to freeze??? I guess it does not hurt to keep any moving parts free of dust and dirt.

My HLR has been a nightmare. Three bulbs, a light tunnel and another issue. That's one problem every 8-9 months.

It isn't the techs, it's Samsung. They extended the warranty 90 days and that covered the light tunnel. The bulb blew a few weeks out of the extended warranty and their response was to send me a once in a lifetime opportunity to buy an extended warranty for an additional $974.

Now my TV is dying again. It goes dark and flashes the three lights of death but if I power it up again it will run for a while.

I suggested to my wife that we buy another Samsung but a different technology and she flipped out. To put it mildly, she would go without a television before she'll give any more money to Samsung.

08/23/04 Purchased HLP5063W Total $4,229.72
06/29/07 DIY. New lamp assembly (samsungparts.com) Total $187.25
02/26/09 DIY. New color wheel assembly (samsungparts.com) Total $138.78

Less than one hour to replace CW. Roughly six connectors to disconnect.

HLS-4676 bought new in Nov 2006.

Worked great until last month. Now it has dozens of frozen mirrors and dozens of bright white spots.
The cost to repair is almost as much as a new TV

Oh, and that sammy is now sitting by itself in a spare bedroom, not even plugged in.

Isn't that the DMD board failing? It's about $200. There's another thread where a guy replaced his and it's not all that difficult from what I can tell.

HLR-5668 here. One problem after another. I am on my 2nd Light engine and now I get this? I have no idea what the problem is.

HLS4666W purchased November 06.

As of today I have at least eleven white spots on the screen and expect more since they have been adding at about one per day since over a week ago. Samsung Customer Service has rebuffed my requests for them to cover repairs past warranty, and from what I have read in another very informative thread on this site, the defective part alone will cost me about $200 to purchase, if I choose to fix it myself.

This TV is my fourth Samsung electronics purchase and the third of those four that has crapped out after about two years. The other two were a CRT monitor and a DVD Home Theater In A Box, both dead after roughly two years. The only survivor is my cell phone that I've had for over three years now.

Just imagine how much worse you'd be if you had purchased a crappier brand.

I have the same exact set with the same exact problem. I purchased mine in Nov of 2006 as well and it developed a stuck mirror in late Feb of this year. At first the spot twinkled and eventually fixed itself. Now it is completely white as of yesterday. This is so frustrating!

I heard Texas Instruments extended the warranty on DLP chips to 5 years. Does anyone know if any recourse can be taken up with TI?

Uh oh, now you guys have got me wondering...

Over the last year or two on eBay I've bought five or six Samsung YP-MT6Z MP3 players and revived 4 with a forced firmware flash. Then four dead DTB-H260F HD tuners which I also fixed. Sure are a lot of dead/as is Samsung products on the bay but so far all of these are still working. Then I got a Samsung DVDRW burner for my PC which has worked great for a year but I keep seeing problems others have had with this drive.

And now I've had a Samsung DLP for eight months. Sure hope it holds up!

We have a HLS4676s that has developed the white dot problem.
Thankfully we have an extended warranty.

Have waited 3 weeks to have it fixed and the guy is supposed to come out to repair it this AM.

My Wife's cousin has the same set and experienced a failure of some sort (not sure what) a year and 1/2 ago. When they came out to fix theirs, they said that the 720P component (DMD board, perhaps?) isn't made any longer, so they put a 1080P board in it instead! Hopefully we'll also get an upgrade to a full high-def engine.

The set also makes a sort of grinding noise, like a bearing going out, when it's turned off and the fan or perhaps the color wheel is slowing down.

Not sure if this is part of the problem as well, as it's been making that noise for several months now when it's cooling down after being powered off, so it may just be a separate matter.

Update:
The guy from Precision TV, Fry's Electronics designated repair service came out today and swapped out the DLP chip, all's well... Let's hope it stays that way.

Samsung HLN617W 61" DLP purchased 07/04

Two Lamps, Two color wheels & two "Mirror Light Tunnels"

All in all spent over $600 in six years to keep it going......that's not very good in my book. I'm in the process of replacing the second color wheel right now.....just so I can sell the damn thing.

Replaced it with a Panasonic 65" plasma.....a noticeable upgrade in every respect.

Are you really that surprised your 65" Panny is an upgrade in every way? A new 60" DLP is $900 bucks, $799 on sale. Depending on model your new Panny may have cost 5 times that on the street. Actually, a current 73" DLP can be had for $1200 which I am sure is half or maybe a lot less than half the price of you paid for your Panny. The 73" DLP would be a huge upgrade as well. Then energy cost on your Panny for 6 years if you run it 10 or 12 hours a day will be a chunk of change too.

I have a 58" Panny in my bedroom, okay TV I never turn it on, it uses to much power and puts out too much heat. I probably paid a lot less for my 82" DLP than you did for the '04 Sammy, probably less than you paid for your Panny.

I have 4 DLPs (3 different brands), and only the early adopter (2005) models ever needed service. Just how many 2004 HDTVs are comparable to what is available today anyway?

I guess I am asking so what is your point? You buy a TV at $4k -$5K or maybe more as a very early adopter, run it 6 years and the maintenance was $600. What exactly did you expect? Or more precisely what should you have realistically expected?

What did I expect? I expected to replace the bulb a couple/few times......that's it. That was the touting of DLP TV's.......change the bulb and the set is like new again. Not exploding 9,000 RPM color wheels every few years. Luckily I'm somewhat competent with a set of tools and have fixed it myself......otherwise it would have been A LOT more than $600.

Am I surprised the plasma is a big upgrade? No. I wanted a plasma even back then but they were too expensive for their size and had too many issues. DLP won the size/price ratio.......you might argue they still do.

But.....they way I see it, I got a bigger better HDTV for Half of what I paid for the DLP. Sure that's entirely due to 6 years of progress but so what?

Now if the Panny craps out on me I'll be right back on here complaining about that and probably beeming about whatever great new set I had to replace it with. However......I EXPECT the Panny to last me a long time (longer than 6 years) without having to pump money into it........that's what I expect. If it works out that way great I'll keep my plasma for 10 years + before upgrading.......I don't upgrade just to to upgrade.

A 3rd party warranty would have insured your costs were the same or less. You might even have been upgraded to a better set a long time ago. You certainly would not have had to do the repairs yourself. I wll be buying a Mack or similar warranty for my $2500 82" DLP. I think that is about $250 for 4 years. I am glad you have a set you like and I hope and believe it should last you a long time. Today one can buy large DLPs dirt cheap and I can tell you the picture quality on my 82" DLP makes my 58" Panny look like something of a joke. The Panny is a 2007 vintage display, so you would expect that.

I am hoping for a 100" Laser DLP RPTV for under $3k in the next 2-3 year and if such beasts are available I will ugprade for the sake of upgrading. Despite your claims to the contrary that must have been part of your thinking when you bought the Samsung way back when or your would have just bought an SD CRT like 99% of the population back then.

I own a Sammy 6187s for over 2.5 years now, and so far no problems *knock knock*. The geometry is perfect, which makes this one of the best sets I've ever owned or seen. My only issue it is that the 3D feature is pretty useless for today's technology and Samsung doesn't care.

Well going from a 4:3 CRT to a 16:9 HDTV was a bit of a no brainer for me. I love movies and already owned hundreds of DVD's (All Widescreen). But.....had my DLP ran flawless I would still be watching it. It had a very nice picture. I did however always prefer the picture on plasmas. Some people prefer LCD's. I was very happy to find out that prices had dropped as far as they had. Sure a new DLP would have been cheaper......but I really didn't want to get into replacing bulbs and potentially other parts again, and laserview's are still too pricey.....maybe next time....I really haven't checked out their picture.

I was bummed my DLP kept having what I consider to be frequent issues......I was very happy to discover I could get into a plasma as a replacement.

I know that early adopter Rear Projection Micro Display TVs whether they were DLP, LCOS, SXRD etc were less reliable than they shouuld have been and some people had horrendous luck with them. Mits is the only one still making rear projection but the sets have improved in terms of reliability, picture quality, and price dramatically over the years.

They still represent by far the biggest bang for the buck, and use the least energy. I would love to have an 84" Panny Plasma, but they are priced like a luxury automobile and they consume prodigous amounts of electricity. The extended warranties would probably be a small fortunes as well. Plasma is a good choice up to its practical (meaning ordirnary working people affordable) size limit at 65". 65" is way too small for my viewing distance so it is not even a consideration for me.

I still own two Samsung DLPs one a 2006 56" which I have placed in my mother-in-law's living room, and a 2008 HL72A650 which is now in my brother's living room. The old 56" did get a light engine under warranty and chugged along perfectly ever since. The 2008 72" set has never hiccupped in any way. It like all the other sets was way to small for my 14.5' viewing distance.

What is remarkable is how similar the pricing had been, the first set purchased was the 56" Sammy at $2500, then the 65" HP at $2600, in lat '08 the 72" Samsung at $1800, and this year the 82" Mits at $2500. All are still in daily or near daily use. Only two are still at my home the 65" HP, and the new big Mits. Since the 56" Sammy and the 65" HP get reduced duty, they will last pretty much indefinitely. The newer sets are each likely to see 4 years of heavy duty service before the get relegated to back up roles. I will likely conitnue to cascade the sets down to my family as I find compelling technology. Assuming the same pricing trends we have seen over the last 5 years continue, my hope to buy a 100" Laser set for $2500 does not seem unrealistic. Based on the apparent size ceiling on consumer oriented Plasmas, and all the weight, heat, energy consumption, I suspect a big plasma is never going to be a viable consumer product. To me, and of course that is dictated by my viewing distance I do not consider 65" a large display.

The interesting thing about the older DLPs is that you really don't have to worry if they fail because they cost so little to replace.

82" for $2500.......that's cool.

My wife thinks we are pushing it with the 65". We sit at 11.5-12ft. If I really want to be immersed I pull up a seat to around 8.5ft.

If I ever set up something in our basement I will have to decide between DLP and a projector.....although at that point I'd probably just go for the projector.

Oh....and the EW wasn't too bad. $140 for 3 additional years (4 total).

HLT6187 bought August 2007. Zero problems and still the best image I've seen.

HL56A650 heavy use zero problems

HL50A650 Mild use zero problems

Still awesome vibrant punchy picture.

Is there a way to see how many hours the tv has been running? I am curious how many hours my bulbs have.

I stand to be corrected, but as I recall, you enter the service menu and the firmware version and hours display.

I just found this post from 2009:

you'll have to enter the service menu.... which I've read will RESET ALL OF YOUR CONFIGURATION SETTINGS! I wasnt too worried about mine so I said "Heck with it" and did it.... from the looks of the video (much brighter than prior to the check), I'm guessing it did.

So be forewarned.....

To enter the service menu-
With the power off, use the remote and press the following buttons with about a half-second delay between presses: MUTE-1-8-2-POWER. (press them one at a time, separately, not together). The TV will power on and you'll have this nice and pretty menu to move around in.... I think the hours are under the "Service" option.

HLS5086W - Purchased in Dec 2006. Endless problems.

Currently sitting in corner for about a year unplugged.

- Self power off.
- White dot (stuck mirror) problem.
- Static noise (fire cracker frequency) problem and become unusable.

Static Noise problem: After turning on and watching TV for about half an hour, a static noise will start firing at low frequency. This will not bother in the beginning as it may sound like a part of music of program or the part of TV program itself. Frequency of static noise will go up and at one point it will sound like a fireworks (of 4th of July). Violent static noise and all of sudden pin drop silence. TV will go mute by it self. No Static, No TV sound. If left unplugged for 15 to 30min, TV will be working as new. However, Static Noise will come back SOON and above cycle repeats. Samsung wants ME to pay the bill to fix it. TV was less than a 5years when this problem developed while I paid close to $1500 for this crap.

I can't trust SAMSUNG product any more.