Board by board
Power supply, main board, T-con, LED backlight and plasma drive boards explained.
- How to identify the boards inside a flat-panel TV
A map of the inside of an LCD, LED or plasma TV: how to tell the power supply, main board, T-con board, LED driver and plasma sustain boards apart, and where to find the numbers that identify each one.
- LED backlight strips: how they fail and how to diagnose them
Direct-lit and edge-lit LED backlights explained, why one failed LED can black out a whole TV, how LED drivers protect themselves, and what to check before replacing strips.
- Plasma TV boards: Y-sustain, X-sustain, buffers and logic
How a plasma TV's drive boards fit together (power supply, logic board, Y-sustain and Y-buffers, X- or Z-sustain, address buffers), what each failure looks like, and why plasma boards are matched to the panel.
- The T-con board: what it does, how it fails, how to match one
The timing controller board between an LCD TV's main board and its panel: typical T-con symptoms, the checks to do before blaming it, and why a T-con is matched to the panel model rather than the TV model.
- The TV main board: firmware, HDMI faults and boot loops
What a flat-panel TV's main board does, how to tell a hardware fault from a software one, common HDMI and boot-loop symptoms, firmware recovery, and why main boards are matched by exact part number and version.
- The TV power supply board: symptoms, safe checks and common failures
How a flat-panel TV's power supply works (standby, PFC, main rails, LED driver), the symptoms of a failing supply, the capacitor and fuse checks you can do safely, and how to match a replacement.
