By CMPalmer
Profiles: Blogger | TechLore
Blog: Chris Palmer's Avoidance Central

Sunday morning, the convergence on our 47" Panasonic HDTV (model: PT-47W53G) went haywire. The green gun's image had a big bow in the bottom up about 8" and the upper right corner was stretched off screen, giving everything a weird set of green and magenta shadows. I was pretty sure it was a hardware problem, but I went ahead and made sure the problem occurred on all modes (standard definition and HDTV modes) and all inputs (cable, DVD, etc.). I knew that it was too far off to fix with the onscreen convergence menu and besides, the green channel is the fixed reference - you can only adjust the red and blue to converge on the green. I did go into the service menu to see if I could do a manual convergence enough to watch while I waited to get it fixed, but the green didn't respond at all.

Next, I started Googling. It took a while to wade through reviews and casual mentions of my model and to try to get the right search terms, but the general consensus I found

was that the convergence amplifier chip had gone bad and that I could expect to pay around $400 to get it fixed. I called a recommended local repair shop here in Huntsville (American Video Services - they came highly recommended by several people, so I'll give them a plug) and that was about the quote I got, plus $100 for them to pick up the TV, fix it, return it to my house, and re-adjust it.

Now I had a dilemma. The TV cost around $1300 when I bought it three years ago and now, for the same price, I can get a bigger one with better features and go for an LCD or DLP instead of a CRT projection. But I didn't want a new TV for Christmas and it would blow the rest of our Christmas budget. Even if I had bought the extended warranty on the TV it would have expired by now. One annoying thing I found is that Panasonic and Hitachi sets that use this particular chip have a very high failure rate for it after about three years of use. It was so common that when I found the right sites, it was a common question - "Help! My red|green|blue convergence just went bad! What do I do?" followed by several replies of "Replace your convergence amp ICs." So, I am about 95% sure that is what is wrong with it.

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