If you remember a few posts ago, I mentioned that our 5 year old HDTV died. Kathy was just watching it and the picture went off and a light on the front panel started blinking. Generally not good. As a customer of this Pioneer Elite Rear Screen Projection TV (which is no longer made), we were very frustrated. It had already had a recall and another repair after the recall. The TV is great but having problems like that early in it’s life makes you remember bad things so we were prepared for the worst – meaning a high cost repair option that probably meant we would choose to get a new TV instead. The TV is a first generation HDTV meaning it doesn’t even have HDMI connections so we’ve worked around things to connect to modern devices.
With all this in mind, the repair guy gets to our house and takes a quick look at it and after a quick conversation with me (he’s a very nice guy), he pushes a few buttons on the front panel and the TV comes back on. It turns out that Pioneer was worried that people could steal their technology so they put a switch on their TV that disabled the TV if it was opened. Now if I was an engineer, I would know about such a thing and probably even have a service manual and probably even know how to bypass such a thing so this is such a silly thing. On top of that, the material that is pressing against the switch is particle board which doesn’t really hold up over time – getting soft and flexible – so doesn’t press adequately against the switch which is what caused my problem.
A ton of electrical tape over the switch to disable it and add to the pressure the back and we are good to go. Hopefully, the TV will last a while longer.