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Philips Recalls Almost 12,000 Flat Panel TVs

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the unsafe-at-any-speed dept.

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?"

3 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Ambilight is... by Anne+Honime · · Score: 3, Interesting
    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!

    Like most people suffering from frequent headaches, I never watch at a screen (be it TV or computer) without an ambient light. Without, I can be sure to develop a severe migraine after 1 hour of concentrated watch. With a dim light, I can watch TV up to 4 hours without side effects (save brain wash). This sadly apply to theatres too, so I really don't watch a film on a big screen often.

  2. Re:Could you detail that... by tech10171968 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'll see if I cn dig up that bulletin tonight but, in a word, not really. The repair involves parts only available from Philips (I spelled it right this time), and I don't think they're going to help you void your own warranty. Besides, most TVs (even plasmas) involve some very, very high-voltage circuits; if you don't know where they are (or what you're doing) then there's an even chance that you will no longer be among the living.

    --
    This space for rent!
  3. Re:Caps go sometimes. by smoker2 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I used to work for a company called AVX (part of the Kyocera group) where we made tantalum caps. When some of those went wrong, they were quite nasty.

    I remember seeing a Motorola phone that had some of our caps in and when they went, they made a nice black sqishy mess out of the phones back casing.

    Another thing about burning tantalum caps, the only thing that will put them out is salt. The manufacturing process is pretty involved with each cap taking about 1 to 2 weeks to go through all the processes. The chemicals were pretty shitty too. Phosphoric acid, glycolic acid, acetic acid, manganese and many other horrible mixtures. I remember one day I was working on the manganese section (Black dip) where the anodes were dipped into the manganese solution up to the shoulder, then blotted to remove excess fluid. After that, they went into an oven with a water bath for an hour. The dozy QA came walking round and was opening each oven door in turn and big clouds of green (highly toxic) smoke was pouring from the ovens. Apparently she was "checking that I had put water in the baths" ! I think she ended up in management...

    I'm glad I got away from that place.