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Philips Recalls Almost 12,000 Flat Panel TVs
wh0pper writes "Arcing capacitors have caused Philips to recall select Ambilight flat panel (read plasma) TVs. Because the TVs make use of flame retardant materials, damage was only sustained to the TVs and not homes. This is the first time I've heard of TVs having this type of issue. How safe are LCD and DLP TVs from this type of thing?"
The plasma's leaking all over Engineering Seal off engineering with a level 10 forcefeild and jettison the warp core^W^W TV.
Ever see a CRT go up? A nice big flash followed by some of the worst stench outside of a Linux convention ;)
Seriously, I think the hazard from the toxic chemicals is worse than the danger of something catching on fire.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
"Because the TVs make use of flame retardent materials,"
RoHS does not allow for this. Arching capacitors can be just a smoke screen.
The fourth state of matter you get from Super-heating gas? Clouds of highly charged particles and that? Wouldn't you kind of expect that to be dangerous?
EpiAdv - if you like Pokey the Penguin, try this comic!
LCD and DLP rear projection TVs use entirely different technology, you muppet. if you want to be a techie, know WTF you are talking about.
>>This is the first time I've heard of TVs having this type of issue.
Of course. Because it was the first time somebody came out with a really stupid idea of ambilight!
should check out these TVS... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4614598.stm
"This is the first time I've heard of TVs having this type of issue. How safe are LCD and DLP TVs from this type of thing?"
m puters/philips-plasma-tvs-recalled-306.htm
The source of the problem are fluorescent lights that Philips built into these sets to illuminate the wall behind the display. There is a fix: turn the bulbs off.
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/electronics-co
"The recall includes sets with "Ambilight," or ambient light technology that projects a soft glow onto the wall behind the set, to create atmosphere and an enhanced viewing experience, according to the company. If owners turn off the Ambilight feature, the hazard is eliminated."
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
images so realistic you won't be sure your wall's not on fire.
"Ever see a CRT go up? A nice big flash followed by some of the worst stench outside of a Linux convention ;)"
Yup. I've been responsable for a few.* I even remember when TV had metal chassis and tubes. Shocking would be an understatement.
*Ok, ok so my team lost a couple times.
RTFA, the fires were caused by an arcing capacitor used in the ambilight system. The ambilight system has nothing to do with the plama technology, its just a rear lighting system projected on your back wall to help prevent the weird feeling you get from watching a large image (that and a marketing gimmick). This is more fire cause by a faulty ballast or capacator in a flourecent lighting system in your ceiling.
Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
When ever there is a product recall, will it make fron page at Slashdot?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
"WOW Dad.. you were right about HDTV - Those flames in Ladder49 look real!"
The above comments are not guaranteed to make sense to anyone other than the author...
...the stupidest thing I've seen in decades. I think they must have resurrected some Zenith engineer from 1957 who thought that would be a "futuristic" idea. The claim is that it would reduce eye strain since the border between the monitor and the wall would be less harsh. I say BS, because being honest, how many people watch movies with the lights on? at my house we even turn the lights off to watch The Mighty Boosh on BBC America!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
China still uses the capacitor formula that they "aquired" from a japanense firm. Of course, the firm detected the theft and allowed the spy access to an old formula from the 60's. Sadly, the formula fails after about 2 years. Hence the reason why so many motherboards fail after just 2 years (capacitor leaks and arcs).
Someone's been watching too many 90s Spider-man cartoons with Michael Morbius in them. Plasma is something found in blood, but it's also a kind of high energy gas.
EpiAdv - if you like Pokey the Penguin, try this comic!
As demonstrated by Mr. LaForge, proper safety protocol when dealing with plasma is the same in the 24th century as today: stop, drop and roll under the door.
Yeah, no other type of TV uses caps.
The more you know, the less you understand.
It's meant to switch the TV off, and scour the surrounding area after prolonged use.
What is it with people these days, back in my day, I had a 21" black and white console Zenith TV that caught fire once. Yup, one of the wax capacitors arced over and up she went. I blasted it with a dry chemical extenguisher and replaced the bad capacitor with some rolled up wax paper and alumninum foil and she still worked!! Hell, I'd still be using it if Rexall still carried vacuum tubes. The 6U8A that drives the sound went out, and I don't have a glass blowing kit to make a new one. Product safety, hummmpphhh!! Damn yuppies.
Unknown host pong.
While RoHS does call for the elimination of the fire retardents you've listed, it in now way should be interpreted as to exclude ALL fire retardents. Not all fire retardent additives are polybromides.
Those are plentiful, effective, and cheap. But there are others.
In general, government authorities do not regulate against immediate safety in favor of environmental (long term safety) unless there is a viable alternative.
Usually (but not always), the regulation is deemed necessary to overcome the economic incentive to keep using the commonly accepted materials and methods.
But, if you acknowledge the logical reality, you can't "edumacate" and call other people "beyatch".
It seemed silly to me at first, but now that I've seen it a few times, I actually like this Ambilight thing. Now, with the caveat that *I* am unqualified to do this, and am only making an idle observation, it seems that a PC with webcam (webnbcam pointed at your LCD panel TV) and an LED array behind the panel would make it a reasonable proposition to recreate this effect. (Software on the PC would analyze the image from the webcam to see what dominant color should be ordered up from the LED arrray ...
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I wonder if all these sets were tuned into the "Teen Sex Orgy" on Without a Trace when this happened.
At least it's not one of those hazardous TV's with three guns that shoot beta particles at you!!
[Insert pithy quote here]
I heard they were the second most likely thing to cause fires, after heaters.
Well, sometimes caps go.
A few years back, one of the big-two makers of the electrolytic paste put out bad goop for several months. This paste found its way to several manufacturers of high quality capacitors. These caps found their way into PC mobo's, and there was a spate of in-the-field capacitor failures in certain motherboards. Some name-brand makers of high quality mother boards got bit by that one. (My then-employer included.) No flames, though. These caps were being operated entirely within spec, but were fabricated with out-of-spec paste.
Caps that are pushed beyond their ratings will go. Sometimes, their are transient voltages the designer didn't account for that cause caps to be operating beyond their rating.
I remember oh... about 25 years ago when the TI "Silent 700" thermal printing terminal with built-in acoustic modem was the Bee's Knees. No shit, we all coveted those babies. Way better than an ASR33. Anyway, I was working in the cube next door to one guy that was cranking away on a Silent 700. For some odd reason, it was a period of dead silence among the 16 code monkeys in that area. There was a loud *BANG* and then a "Woah" from the user when a fairly large 'lytic released it's magic smoke(*). A rather spectacular amount of smoke, as I recall, since it was a large cap. A memorable occasion.
About 20 years ago at a startup company, we had just gotten the first prototype PC boards for the first product. The boards were the first of the design, using a brand new CAD system tool flow. The entire company (all 16 people) gathered in the lab for the power-on ceremony. Anyway, with the whole company watching, the VP of Eng flips the big red switch, and -- *BANG* -- along with lots of smoke. Now, the engineers were in their glory, fanning the smoke away with notepads and laughing like drunken sailors. The newly hired VP of Finance turned white as a sheet. The Pres. got a frozen smile on his face and mumbled something encouraging. He told me later he was thinking about how much money he could get for the furniture at liquidation. Turns out, with several brand new untried cad tools in the tool flow, the silk screen for one type of electrolytic had the polarity backwards, and so those caps had been stuffed backwards. A trival, but spectacular bug.
And then, in college, after a couple of brews my roomie and I decided to strip out the electrolytic caps from a worthless transistor radio, plug them into the end of an extension cord, and lower them out the window to the room blow, plug in the extension cord, and let them go *BANG* outside the window of the room below. Yes, sometimes caps go.
(*) The magic smoke theory of electronics: All components run on factory inserted magic smoke. This is easy to prove, as sometimes you will see a component rupture and release its magic smoke. It never works again after that. Therefore, all electronic components require magic smoke in order to operate.
u must be from the academia! where i come from - every penny matters. and if i was a gambling man i'd say that someone fucked up and used up a bunch of cheap-ass materials. thus the recall. thus someone is getting fired. assumption? yes. but i'm going with my gut feeling.
It has been determined the real problem is that there is nothing on.
No - you misunderstood - *I* am not suggesting that the RoHS law is good or bad - I'm simply pointing out to the OP that RoHS doesn't outlaw fire retardents, it only outlaws *some* fire retardents.
"where I come from" is just as cost-sensitive. Successful business (esp in manufacturing) is largely about using the cheapest solution that's still effective. Not all costs are material.
So, I don't know where you assumed that my explanation of the way these regulations come about can IN ANY WAY be interpreted as my endorsement of them. No, I'm not from academia. But I did attend.
I don't think that term is politically correct.
Shouldn't it be "ignition challenged" material?
Shiny. Let's be bad guys.
I use mine to roast marshmallows...
The plasma......they're everywhere! Frogblast the Ventcore!
Someone has done something similar, but used photocells from RadioShack instead of a webcam.
7 98540&&#post47985408 07796&&#post4807796 (pic)
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=4
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=4
...newest feature will be ambilight on four sides.
How about "Differently Flammable"?
LCD panels: Backlight runs off of a high voltage supply to power the cold cathode tube, relying on capacitance based power supplies, depending on the company making it, and how cheap the components are, can burst into flames.
Plasma: See above.
DLP: See above.
Television: Different tech, yes, but still see above.
The quality of your product is based on the quality of the products put into it. If they're sub par, don't be surprised if it doesn't melt into a pile of plastic and glass.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
...just a bit further, I just got an Ambilight and experience the shutdown problem twice already. In order to do something about it, I would like to know a bit more about it. Is it easily repaired ? Does it occur more often when you use the set longer ? Can you prevent it somehow (apart from turning ambilight off) ?
I hear some people complaning that their ambilight emits a buzzing sound after some time after getting the TV, could that be part of the same problem?
I have another type of Philips TV with ambilight, which I bought not because of ambilight but because of the very good picture quality on an LCD screen, but I should say the ambilight is a really nice feature indeed.
Even though my set is not flat against a wall, but angled in a corner where it lights a wall and a curtain, it really gives a good effect, which astonishes especially when you turn it off and you notice what is missing.
It also occurred to me that this must be easy to fabricate as an add-on to existing sets. However, I would not use a camera or other light sensor, but use the video-out from the TV to watch the average video brightness electronically. This should not be that difficult to do.
(european TVs have SCART connectors which nearly always provide video-out. on a US TV with all those separate cinch connectors, it may be that video out is not so easily available)
How safe are LCD and DLP TVs from this type of thing?
If I read the article correct, the products are just as safe as any other product. Caps arcing has been seend for ages and is a "common" problem. Here at work, we got old computers dieing every month due to caps.
Just check out http://www.badcaps.com/
This reminds me of the good ole days of HV CRTs with the 20KV supporting power supplies. You would be watching TV and suddenly hear a large snap or crack. You know it was time to break out the vacuum cleaner and clean out the accumulation of dust into the unit. BTW good article on the defective cap problem on computer motherboards. I run a repair business and have personally seen this problem many times. I have a website that goes into detail about the problem and sells recapping kits for computer motherboards. It is a shame when a +$100 motherboard stops working for the want of a 50 cent part. The biggest problem I have is soldering the new caps on these multi layered boards. I have a hand drill with a needle bit to ream out the hole as my soldering tools can't put enough heat into the small area to clean out the holes. The ground and power layers suck up the heat too fast.
How many times have I been around when an electronic device has failed catastrophically (loud noise and smoke?) That is, when the failure has occurred for some reason other than something I was doing? Twenty? Fifty?
In none of these events did anything nearby catch fire. Fire extinguisher not needed, nothing required of me but the mourning of the dead device.
That creates the illusion that these are riskless non-events. But that's always the with risks. One of the reason why accidents happen: we start to ignore the near misses because experience seems to show that they are harmless.
Ever see what happens when the mechanism that turns off a toaster oven jams or fails? After a few minutes the continuous heating action of the elements causes the toast to outright catch fire. In another fraction of a minute, the flames from the burning toaster ignite the plastic components inside the toaster oven. At this point you have serious flames and clouds of black, evil-smelling smoke (that is probably not the healthiest stuff in the world to inhale). Now, suppose that toaster is on a kitchen counter underneath the edge of a wooden counter...
That's as far as I've seen things go....
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Dear Sir stroke Madam.
Fire, exclamation mark. Fire, exclamation mark. Help me, exclamation mark.
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How safe are LCD and DLP TVs from this type of thing?"
I suspect about as safe as any good design that is built with crap parts. Same as many of us who got Mexican Palm Pilots that bled the batteries in three or four days? Maybe capacitors are difficult to successfully cheapify?
a formula was stolen, and improperly formulated, by one of the big two.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
Cause of the failing capacitors
The primary cause of these problems is industrial espionage gone wrong, with some Taiwanese electrolyte manufacturers using a stolen formula that was incomplete, and lacked ingredients needed to produce a stable capacitor.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
them there Chinese do a great job of knocking off components... NOT. I just got back from a 3 week business trip to China. We're pretty sure that they view component specifications as suggestions. They have the same view of traffic laws and sanitation practices, IMHO.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein
The only Ambilight model listed on Philips' website is a 42" LCD unit, not a plasma.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Although it was Sylvania, not Zenith, that pioneered this idea. And a few years prior to 1957, too...
Beginning in 1952, some of their high-end sets incorporated a feature called "HaloLight", which was an illuminated bezel surrounding the CRT, designed to reduce eyestrain when watching the set in a dark room.
Everything old is new again....
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Umm, DLP is a projection technology, there is no backlight.
Plasma, like CRT, is a phosphor technology, so again, no backlight.
It's not to say there are no capacitors or high voltages involved, but referring all your arguments to a backlight description is a bit misleading.
"damage was only sustained to the TVs..."
That just makes my head hurt.
It's substantially easier and less overkill to just catch the video output directly. Building them off of svideo or component is easy becuase the color signals are already seperated out for you. I made mine with svideo, but come to think of it you might be able to do it with component with hardly any components (no pun intended).
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
Wells Gardner (a major player in the arcare monitor business) had to recall several thousand of their units for a similar problem. It turns out that the high-grade capacitors the engineer spec'd for were substituted for cheap parts by a contractor.
Result: 2-inch arcs from the flyback transformer to the capacitor. I have several of the carcasses under my bench, some have holes the size of golf balls burned through the boards.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
What a bunch of amateurs. When I first plugged in my lastest power supply design, the capacitor exploded.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Despite all of the potentially malfunctioning electronics in a given home, candles are still the leading cause (21%) of house fires in the USA.
In this case, 'candles' includes other open-flame devices, like oil lamps, etc. Still, kind of ironic for 2006
There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
u must B from AOL... LOLz0r, you ignorant motherfucker.
You managed to post the exact same thing twice and get modded up both times.... Nice job!
OTOH, I wonder how long the patents on the HaloLight lasted.... Perhaps this is why we are seeing it again just now? [I haven't seen a Sylvania TV recently....]
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Welcome!