Fixing the LG OLED 65″ TV

Hardware

Don’t recycle it!

I wrote about this splendid TV some 7 years ago here.

Recently the sound became intermittent after some 15 minutes of use. I use an external amplifier and speakers and some tests confirmed these are working fine so the fault lies with the TV. Some digging disclosed that loss of sound or vision on warm up is nothing new with LG TVs of a certain age, and it appears the problem is attributable to the use of solder with too low a melting point, causing loss of electrical continuity. That’s either sloppy design or planned obsolescence. Your call.

So I determined to try fixing the issue, which means installing a new motherboard – there are two circuit boards in the TV, the motherboard and the power supply, both passively cooled. There are no fans. In addition to swapping in a new motherboard I decided to enhance the ventilation in the area of both circuit boards. I had noticed that, while waiting for delivery of the new board and leaving the rear panel off, that the sound intermittency problem did not occur, likely due to better ventilation.

Because the TV screen is extremely slim – thinner than an iPhone – it is very fragile, so I moved a cocktail table up to the TV table, covered the former with soft padding and tipped the tv forward onto the cocktail table, allowing access to the rear panel and the stand. Both have to come off and the power supply feed has to be removed – one screw, a small panel and a click fit connector. The stand is retained with four large screws which come off and then the screws holding the back panel can be removed. They are clearly marked with arrow symbols. The top of the rear panel is retained with a bunch of clips – ugh! – so the panel has to be gently popped off, one clip at a time working from one end with fingers inserted between panel and screen. Not a lot of fun. Then all is revealed:



The rear cover removed. The motherboard is at the top, the power supply at the bottom.

Measurements were then made to establish the positions of the two circuit boards and penciled grids were drawn on the rear cover:



Penciled grid in the motherboard area.



The grid in the power supply area. The opening is for the mains cable.

A Forstner bit is used to drill the holes. A regular drill bit will wander and the result will look awful, whereas the pointed tip of the Forstner bit allows precise placement on the grid intersections. Be careful not to drill in locations where there are spigots on the inside of the cover – which is why some holes appear to be ‘missing’.



Holes drilled with protective plastic mesh installed.

The mesh is glued in place using Permatex 80050 Silicone adhesive which the maker’s excellent data sheet states is good to 400F. 24 hours are required for a full cure. The purpose of the mesh is to prevent fingers being poked into the electronics. Do not use metallic mesh. Should it come unglued you’ll risk a short circuit. A check with a tele-thermometer with the cover off and the TV warmed up disclosed a temperature range of 88-108F for the motherboard and the PSU had one component at 143F, so the adhesive will do the trick. Don’t even think of using cyanoacrylate ‘superglue’ – it’s useless. Once the holes are made the penciled grid can be removed with isopropyl alcohol.

The motherboard is retained with 6 screws and the white retaining plate at right is removed and placed in position on the replacement board. There are five connectors, all ‘click’ captive and it took me a while studying these with a magnifying glass to determine how to release the connectors without breaking anything. The two ribbon connectors at top left are real bears and quite fragile, so study carefully before removal.



Old and new motherboards.

After testing the result at high volume for 3 hours – failure formerly occurred after 15 minutes – all is well.

Why DIY? Well you can risk taking this to the repair shop and it is a bear to move and very fragile, whereupon you will be charged $800 for the repair by someone who very much struggles with the English tongue, and then you will have to go through hell again getting the monster screen home. And then if the TV is faulty when you get home, guess whose fault it’s going to be? Or you can do it the American way, recycle the set and buy a new one. The original ran me $2,800 7 years ago, and a similar replacement (with more invasive advertising) is $1,600 today. Still not cheap, reflecting how hard it is to manufacture fault free large OLED panels. And OLED beats anything else into a cocked hat.



Reassembled.

I used TVPartsToday for the motherboard which cost $129 shipped. Their excellent service insists that you provide a picture of the bar code(s) on your existing motherboard before you can place an order as that means an exact match will be shipped. Mine was right the first time. Their site states that they have almost 8,000 parts in stock! By the way, if the TV simply refuses to turn on it’s likely the power supply board that is blown, and these are under $100.

Da Mob

Photographs

No broken legs here.



In Little Italy, NYC.

Snapped in the fall of 1982 at the Feast of San Gennaro in Little Italy, New York City. Given that I was not about to incur broken legs from sticking a camera in the faces of Tony and Vito, I opted for shooting from the hip and survived unscathed.

Pentax ME Super, 40mm ‘pancake’ Takumar, Kodachrome 64, re-scanned on the Nikon D800 with a 60mm Micro Nikkor AF-S.

Arthur Elgort

Photographers

Still going strong at 84.

When the word ‘class’ pops up in my mind in the context of photography it’s generally the fashion work of Arthur Elgort which features high on my list.



Elgort. Pure class.

And that one word is all that’s needed to describe this beautiful study from 1992.

More about the man can be found here.

The Nikon D800 in the studio

Nikon bodies, Nikon lenses, Photographs

There is no better bargain.

I have been taking studio pictures with my Novatron strobe outfit for almost three decades now with the cameras ranging from rangefinder Leicas, through Rollieflexes, and Canon and Nikon DSLRs. Autofocus in the DSLRs instantly obsoleted the film equipment which was sold. Maybe the lenses were better, but nailing focus every time beats optical quality in my book.

My Nikon DSLR journey started with a D700, then the D3x, the APS-C D2x, and finally the D800. The latter was introduced by Nikon in 2012 for $3,000 and I paid just $525 a few months ago for mine with 16k clicks. Clicks are not that important for a body designed to deliver 200,000 of them, but a USA legal import is. Nikon USA will refuse to service grey market imports. Check the serial number and look for the ‘Nikon USA’ sticker inside the battery compartment.



The all important sticker.

Suffice it to say that, with the introduction of mirrorless bodies and new lenses to fit, Nikon has comprehensively trashed the used value of every DSLR they ever made and most of the lenses which fit it.

Yes, the D750 and D780 and D810 and D850 have better low light sensors but that is of no use in the studio environment. With powerful strobes I’m mostly using ISO 200 or less.

Two things stand out in my D800 experience in the studio. Even in the low ambient light that I use with weak modeling lamps in the strobes, focus is nailed every time and as for absence of sensor noise it is simply extraordinary. Definition is like nothing I’ve ever seen and while I am strictly an SOOC guy, knowing that I can crop when needed is comforting.

Maybe a Phase One or a digital Hasselblad with a large medium format sensor will render more detail for the mega buck cost of entry, but as I have no interest in making billboard-sized enlargements, call me a happy camper. And keeping the additional $12,000 in my pocketbook is a benefit not lost on me.

Do I have a complaint? Of course. Just take a look what this little outfit weighs with the 28-300mm AFS zoom and loaded battery grip:



A waistline comparable with that of most Americans.
Can you spell ‘obese’?

I extolled the D800’s many virtues, weight aside, here, but as ever pictures speak louder than words. Here is Dutch, a gorgeous Hungarian Vizsla, in a recent studio session, SOOC naturally:



A beautiful hunting dog, descended from Hungarian royalty.


Sharp enough for you?

One final advantage. Even my ancient, non-subscription Lightroom v 6.4 from 2015, bought and paid for just once, happily processes D800 RAW files. Try that with your latest and greatest Nikon body, or pay the nasty people at Adobe a monthly fee of $20 in perpetuity – and good luck getting off that treadmill. It’s not for nothing that the US DoJ just sued them for shady subscription practices.

Muscle cars and bikes

Photographs

At the annual village car show.




My 1975 BMW R90/6.


Rabbit tail.


Bizzarrini P538S.


Wide.


Teddy.


Joker.


The ultimate SUV – the Toyota Landcruiser.


UFO.


Schnauzer.


Camshaft bumper.


British and Best.


Lucky six.


Death’s head


Grrrrr.


Beautiful lines on a Studebaker.


Fins.


My 1975 BMW R90/6 and a 220hp BMW race bike.


All snapped on an iPhone 12 Pro Max using Apple ProRAW.