CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

Untuned · Joined: 03 Dec 2011 Posts: 89 Location: Boucherville, Qc

A few days ago I started having some image noise: a couple of bands of waviness that crossed the screen. I usually keep the image at 720p. I tried switching to 1080i. The noise was still there but not as intense. The bands will sometimes disappear momentarily, but they come back. Any ideas?

I seem to recall reading a thread many moons ago about replacing capacitors in some of the boards...which boards and what capacitors...? I can't remember and I could not find the thread. My machine has around 500 hours on the chassis, so not much, but it is 17 yrs old...

gjaky · Joined: 05 Jun 2010 Posts: 2790 Location: Budapest, Hungary

A picture of the problem would help us to find out what is going on.

**Curt Palme** · Posted: Tue Jan 12, 2016 10:34 pm Post subject:

Yes, electrolytic capacitors, all of them. Not a flippant answer, but NEC PG capacitors leak like crazy, and it's pretty tough to narrow down the issue, eve nif you post a pix of the problem. System board, power supply, deflection or video boards can all cause what you're seeing. Run time of the set is immaterial, the caps will leak even if the set is new old stock.

If you're good at soldering, and want to drop $100+ into a bunch of capacitors to give it a shot, go right ahead. Otherwise scrap the set. I've thrown all things NEC PG, the NEC XGs don't seem to have the same problems as the PG chassis.

Untuned · Joined: 03 Dec 2011 Posts: 89 Location: Boucherville, Qc

Fair enough Curt, I appreciate your swift reply. I do have a soldering iron, so I am tempted to replace the caps...is there a list of the caps that I could order, or do I have to make an inventory list by inspecting each board??

I did take a summary look at the caps I could see after opening the cover; nothing that looked to me like leaking caps: no visible bulging at the top or residue at the bottom. Some of the bigger caps looked like they had glue or paste between them; I attached some pictures.

gjaky · Joined: 05 Jun 2010 Posts: 2790 Location: Budapest, Hungary

I'd still rather want see a picture about the problem. I've went through a few PG xtras until now and yet to see one with leaking caps.

Untuned · Joined: 03 Dec 2011 Posts: 89 Location: Boucherville, Qc

Hey Gabór
I was not successful in taking a picture that shows the waviness in the image. I do not have a very good camera to work with, and even if I did, I would not know how to use it...I suspect the aperture is open too long so the waves just blend in to each other and disappear in picture. But if I turn the lights on, the screen will be more difficult to see...I was able to take a short video, and it was not great (lots of flickering) but at least you can get an idea:
https://photos.google.com/photo/AF1QipOQE9Q-DGV8kY6Ne9yqm2Tl9rvMFrWTOER9mAyc

I don't know if that will work, I've never tried to share anything before like that...

The waviness crosses the entire width of the screen, you can see it, sort of, at about 1/3 from the bottom of the screen and 1/3 from the top of the screen. Each band of waviness represents about 10% of the total screen height.

gjaky · Joined: 05 Jun 2010 Posts: 2790 Location: Budapest, Hungary

Unfortunately that link don't seem to work... maybe you could draw in MS paint how it looks like? Does it affect all colors at the same time?