TV Fixed But Now Pixelates

The Best Buy dude was supposed to replace my TV's analog and digital boards today. But after spending twenty minutes tearing his van apart, he walked into my house with only a digital replacement board.

This pissed me off for a number of reasons. First, it's been more than three weeks since I reported to Best Buy the malfunctioning state of my TV. Three weeks seems to me an extraordinary amount of time to fix a TV. Secondly, Best Buy called me last week, confirmed that both boards had shipped, and rescheduled my appointment for the installation. But the Best Buy dude only had the one board, which he claims he got just today. He couldn't explain where the analog board was, though he seemed to realize he was supposed to have it. Showing up (for a second time I might add) with only half the parts was not just half-assed, it also signaled the likelihood that I'd need a third appointment

At any rate, he popped the digital board in. I supervised. I was curious to see what the TV's guts looked like. I wasn't surprised to see its internal make-up closely resembles that of my PC. I'm not sure why a HD TV splits its circuit board into two, analog and digital, while a PC motherboard handles both. I'm sure there's a technical reason for it. The digital board resides in a metal frame and sits on top of the analog board which is also attached to an even larger metal frame. A tiny heat sink fan is connected to the digital board, its vent hanging out when the entire unit is set in place. A monitor cable, surprisingly similar in size and shape to its PC counterpart, attaches from the side. The middle section of the TV seems to have another layer of circuit boards and the far right side holds the single lamp that lights everything up.

Though he or his company bungled the shipping of the analog board, the Best Buy dude did install the digital board quickly and expertly. He never paused or scratched his head or sighed with resigned desperation. I could tell he knew his way around this stuff and he had everything done in ten minutes.

And now the TV works like it did out of the box. Cycling with the remote's Source key no longer triggers epileptic seizures. It turns out the digital board was the sole culprit and the original analog board is working just fine. As for losing the replacement analog board, no harm, no foul.

I do seem to have a new problem however. At least I think it's a new problem. It's so obvious to me at the moment, I can't imagine that I've been watching the TV like this and not noticed it before. In the HD vernacular, they're called "artifacts." While watching the latest Lost episode, I noticed that when there is a dramatic contrast between light and dark, the dark area bordering the light area pixelates. The image quality reminds me of the early days of PC gaming, cut scenes done in VGA graphics at a low resolution. It's a strange phenomenon because it's so dramatic and obvious, I just know that it's new. The digital board reset all my settings, so I might be able to fix it by playing with the color options.

If not, I'll be seeing the Best Buy dude again soon.