Just over a week ago, Rebecca and I sat down to watch a movie after getting the kids to bed. About five minutes into the movie, we heard a loud pop and then a constant whirring noise coming from the TV. We also noticed that the display was now black and white.
As a gadget geek, I immediately saw this as an opportunity! We've had this 50" rear-projection DLP TV for about five years now and I don't know how much longer the bulb is going to last, so I saw this as a prime opportunity to get a new TV. Costco had some nice Vizio LED-backlit LCDs in the 47"-55" range that were looking mighty tempting. However, I did a quick search on the internet and found that the likely cause of our TV problems was a bad color wheel. This part can be had for about $110 and the guides for replacing the part seemed pretty detailed and straightforward. So rather than spend $1500+ on a new TV, I decided to attempt to repair it myself.
Today the replacement color wheel arrived, so I delved into the innards of our TV and was able to replace it without causing irreparable damage to myself or the TV. When I finally got to the color wheel itself and lifted off the mount, this is what I found:
Nice huh? This is what the color wheel is supposed to look like (broken on the left, new on the right):
So after a week without our TV(and Wii Fit and DDR3), it's finally working again!