Standby

This is not always a bad lamp, it could be the color wheel bearing starting to sieze (a bad fan noise is usually associated), a bad DMD board or a bad ballast circuit.

The first thing you should do is to remove the lamp and look for an obvious lamp failure. Unplug the AC cord, remove the lamp cover four screws (on the back lower rear section). With a flashlight find the one screw holding the lamp in place. loosen the screw and pull the lamp assembly straight out. Look at the lamp section for obvious cracked glass or weird bulges on the round bulb (bubble section on the farthest end of the glass center stem). If you see a problem then look at the lamp code tag on the left side of the tv (as viewed from thfront) to ensure you are getting the proper lamp part number. then google the model number with this code.

If the problem is the color wheel then I suggest you seek a technician to pull the optical engine and replace it with the proper alignments.

You have a rear projection DLP HDTV. The picture is produced by lighting a mercury vapor lamp, shine it through a colorwheel to develop the three primary colors (red, green and blue). When you select a particular show to watch the analog and digital circuits prepares the video signals to control a micro-mirrored device (the DLP Chip). So when the color wheel is in the red section, the red portion of the picture is shown on the DLP chip. Then as the color wheel changes to the green portion the mirrors move to show the green part of the picture. Finally the blue portion does it's thing and then it repeats at 1800 times a minute (RPM). So when it;s working the picture is virtually seamless to our eyes.

These set are great, but there are things that fail. Namely the lamp will fail every couple years, dependent upon usage. Plus the heat from the lamp causes problems. It cooks the color wheel and causes the bearings to dry out causing the motor not to get up to the proper speed. Also the heat can damage the DLP chip and it will stop some of the mirrors from moving and the symptom is white spots on the screen.

The DMD board is the heart of the optical engine, it not only puts the video signals to the DLP chip, it also controls the timing and speed of the color wheel, tells the ballast to fire up the lamp, and monitors the three cooling fans for proper speed.

The ballast has some failures mainly becauseit deals with the such high voltages.