Blurry picture on a Panasonic 51" rear projection screen TV, is it worth fixing?

Question

I have a Panasonic 51" rear projection HDTV that has a blurry picture. If it helps to know the model number it's PT-51HX40B. The TV is about 7 years old now and while it still functions, the picture is getting quite blurry. Text is becoming extremely hard to read as their appears to be red shadow behind any white text I see on the screen. Sometimes the screen will go black for about 5-10 seconds and then will come back on (note the power doesn't turn off, the screen just goes blank). The TV supports 480i, 480p, and 1080i only. It seems the higher resolution I set it too, the worse it gets. From the sounds of it would it be cheaper to just buy a new HDTV, or would it be worth it to get this one repaired?

Answer 1

Time for a new TV.  It would be $200-$300 to have someone come out and adjust the convergence and that isn't the main problem.  If your TV is going blank for a period of time there is no telling why.  There is no sense in paying a tech to chase around a problem on a tv that old.  

Answer 2

Yes have a Tech check it out usually its just a bulb or somthing

Panasonic, are real good products I own allot of them TV ,Stereo,

DVD and so on I have never had any trouble with anything but

it is bound to happen.

Answer 3

This is an antique. Junk it and buy a Panasonic PDP set. From the sounds of it, your TV is an old CRT projection set and the tubes are becoming dim and out of alignment. You'd ahve to spend >$600 to get this fixed. The set is worthless, no one even makes CRT projection sets anymore.

You'll be pleasantly stunned with the picture quality improvements seen in current generation PDP TV's over your ancient set. I'd advise skipping the LCD route unless you want to buy a smaller set. PDP TV's produce a significantly better picture, suffer no motion artifacts and are at least as durable as an LCD TV. Read the last years Consumer Reports articles to get true info. Tragically, there is an amazing amount of misinformation spewing from Retail Sales assistants and more than a few YA posters!

Astrobuf