Last night after an excellent episode of The Unit, my TV's colors went nuts. It now looks like I should be wearing 3D glasses to view it. The reds and blues are all separated, and there's a big red "bow" at the top.

I have a Samsung HCL4715W 47-inch rear projection and I tried the "Perfect Focus" AND manual convergence no absolutely no avail. Thankfully I have exactly 1 mo. left on my 4-yr. extended warranty, but the real bad news is a guy can't come until Friday and I'm set for an DirecTV HR20 HD-DVR installation for next Tues.--an appointment I've waited a long time for.

Is it the convergence board and, more importantly, is there any hope of this being fixed at my house or will the guy take it away? I REALLY want it home and working by Tuesday...

Thanks.

Sure sounds like you lost convergence.

I would think you could get it repaired in your home.

Did the picture move, or just the color? You didn't drop a magnet behind the TV, did you?

Thanks for the quick input. Picture seems in the same location and I HOPE there's no magnet involved (but you never know w/kids in the house, so I'll check). Do they need to replace a part or just make some readjustments, normally, in cases like this?

Gotta figure out a Plan B for Lost tonight, which really stinks on top of everything else.

[P.S. Bummer about the Twins, Spiky, as a former longtime MN resident myself...]

It could be the convergence board but its more likely just the IC convergence chips have lost contact with the board. Over time from heat up/cool down cycles the solder tends to crack and the chips come loose. Resoldering them usually fixes it but if you wait too long the chips can fail and need replacing. This is fairly common on CRT based RPTVs.

If the red, green, and blue images are all equally out of alignment then this is what may have happened:

The digital convergence control module went bad. This is a $100 part from Samsung and an hour or so of time to properly converge the guns. When it goes it can take out the convergence amplifiers and the current limiting resistor at the back of the main board. You can easily identify this resistor by the black scortch marks. You are lucky you have that warrenty. This is a $3-400 repair on a 5yo unit.

Why does this happen? Well the digital convergence module has a number of (cheap) surface mount electrolytic capacitors. Over time these dry out and lose their electrolyte. This causes them to lose capacitance or even short out. These surface mount electrolytic capacitors are typically rated to last 1000-2000 hours. That's not a lot of time in a TV where the tubes can last 10-20,000 hours. They cost pennies apiece and could be designed to last longer, but the CE manufacturers don't want to pay a few cents more for a better made part.

If only one to three channel of convergence is bad (horz or vert R, G or B), Then the problem is probably that one of the convergence amps is bad.

Another possibility is that power supply went out. The convergence circuit is fed by +/-30V power so either one could be bad.

Personally, my money is on the digital convergence board.

Well, it's fixed (Friday). I don't know exactly which part he replaced: It's about 3"x4", rectangular, with a bunch of curved pins on one long side. He replaced that when I was out and my was here (never good), and when I came back in looked pretty good...until I saw some words scrolling across the bottom and noticed they started off in the far right corner with the reds and blues separated and then coming into focus as it moved left.

I tried manual convergence and that didn't fix it (although it was out of whack in other places too), so I called him back and he fixed it (slowly) in the service menu.

Right after he left I switched from S-video (HD-DVR coming Tuesday) to component (XBox 360), the words were way out of whack there. Again manual convergence didn't fix it so I call him back again. To his credit he came back again, and he ultimately fixed it (again in the service menu). If he'd spoken much English it may have went better (Russian?), but also if he'd check it over better before leaving too.

I'm glad I had the warranty for sure, but I'm also ready to upgrade when the time comes. Thanks again for the helpful input.

Edit: Not a real big deal, but I swear the picture is a little lower. e.g. the "A" button selection on my XBox360 in the lower righthand corner is now near the very bottom of my screen. I don't notice this anyplace else (like watching TV) so I don't care that much...

Warranty: Good.

My father's set had this happen after six years (this was the second time and was not in warranty). He went out and bought an LCD to replace it so I took the set figuring I could play around with it and see what I could find. After doing some research, I replaced the two convergence chips on the Toshiba after reading how to do it online.....
After replacing them, you have to do a lot of tweaking in the service menu to get your picture where you want it, and even then it may never be exactly the same as what you previously had. Since I didn't buy the set originally and only invested $20 into it (cost of convergence chips), I was willing to play with the service menu as I felt I had nothing to lose. I would not have done that if I'd bought the set originally - I would have brought it to a technician. For this reason alone (convergence chips going bad so quickly) I will never buy this type of TV again.

I guess I'll live with the just slightly off picture. The guy came back twice and fixed it 99%, and since it's just about 4 years old and thus lacks several more modern features (HDMI, 720p, etc.) I'll let it go. I probably wouldn't have noticed if not for that XBox360 button, and I can't tell on TV even if I try. Thanks again for the good input, and I am glad I had the warranty.

You may have a different overscan setting, or a slight shift, now. You could possibly figure out how to fix whatever this is online. But messing with the service menu of a CRT projector is not for the fainthearted, don't get into this unless you mean it and will read about it indepth first. You can cause permanent damage if you don't know what you are doing. And that would not be covered under any warranty.

It is fairly easy to adjust the image shift / size on that samsung, but you need to be careful not to tweak the other settings. The service menu has a lot of cryptic settings. Also you will lose your custom brightness / contrast / etc user mode settings by entering the service menu.

Not to belabor this, but I'm not going to leave it as is and called the BB repair service to come back (Friday). I got a new HD-DVR yesterday and the screen now cuts off half of the bottom channel listing when I pull the guide up. Also on Sports Center I can see only the top half of the scores running across the bottom. Unacceptable. I'm sure it is pretty easy, but I'm not going into the service menu myself and will wait for the guy to return. (I only hope I don't get the same guy since he rushed so quickly and barely spoke a word of English...)
At least I didn't re-run my Avia disc yet since I did, as you said, lose my custom picture settings.