Fixing convergence on TV

Just before the Wold Cup, the most horrific thing happened: our 65″ Mitsubishi WS-65819 broke!

Now, most people would run to the nearest TV store and purchase a brand new HD TV without blinking, but this mishap presented an opportunity to see what’s inside that TV and to try to fix it.

One evening we turned on the TV and the colors were all shifted; no amount of manual color alignment would align them, especially since the red component was jumping as well.

After a bit of googling, I found out that could very likely be a known problem of convergence chips failing. The convergence kit could be had for $50 to $100. Considering the alternative (spending $1000’s on a new TV), ordering one kit seemed a reasonable gamble – I can say at least I have tried!

A week later (still a few days before the Word Cup!), the convergence kit arrived and I opened the back of the TV.

The mainboard was screwed with a couple of screws and everything easily slid outward. This TV was designed well and with the intent of being easily maintainable in the field. What I liked the most is the use of classic discrete components and having much space between them.

The convergence chips are those quite large black packages and are bolted to huge cooling fins. Here is a picture of fins removed which exposed one of the two chips:

A convergence chip de-soldered:

Here you can see the old and new convergence chips next to each other:

Swapping them was very easy and it involved some crude soldering.

The moment of truth has come – it was time to plug it in and to turn it on – and to see if a guess was right and the problem was with the convergence chips — or we will be out of pocket by a few grans for a new TV (and that, very soon, since the World Cup is going to start in just a few days!)

Viola!

The picture became as sharp as when we bought the brand new TV!! Fantastic!