So we were watching Idol last night andthe top half of the screen blacked out with a bright band right in the middle and the bottom half looking fine...

Is it dead?

I guess you could unplug it for a couple of minutes, and then plug it back in. Same thing goes if you have a cable/sat box. If the picture does not reset, then obviously something is wrong.

The vertical sweep circuit is not working. The problem could be in the negative output of the power supply or the sweep circuit itself could be bad.

Do not run the TV like this unless you want a dark band across the middle when you do get it fixed. The phosphor is easily burned when the beam is not sweeping properly.

It is doubtful that restarting the TV will fix it.

That's looks like a 27" SD TV. You could pick up another on craigslist for $50, which would be less than paying for a repair.

Oh I wouldn't dream of wasting money on a repair. I've had this TV for going on 6 years and it was used for about 4 years before that. I'm glad it lasted as long as it did. Just waiting for the in-laws to get a new HD so I can have their old big-screen... rear-projection. Fairly old, but still puts out a decent picture compared to some other big screens out there... I want the HD myself, but it'll have to wait until after we put in our back yard.

Thanks for the info. I just wanted to be sure before I unplugged it and stuck it in the garage.

whap it!

my 36" toshiba crt recently started getting extremely fuzzy or going completely black

while i have plans to replace with a plasma or lcd before much longer.. its not in my immediate plans

so I found if i whack the side of the tv.. it goes back to normal
my 2 year old daughter has caught on, and also goes and smacks it, when her cartoons start to mess up

time for HD

I can't help but notice you have a copy of The Darjeeling Limited next to your TV in that picture. Awesome movie! Even with just Upconversion, it should look great on a HDTV setup.

The TV I had in my basement's entertainment center did something very similar, except there wasn't any bottom picture, just a bright white line through the center. I replaced it with a HDTV.

Stop and remember how cute this was when she whacks the side of your new plasma or LCD. It may help her live to see 3.