A little mouse can demobilize an elephant.
This is a BIG machine. Enormously heavy. The level of component integration just wasn't as high as today. Many boards with discrete circuits around. Even DC-DC converters, which come in chips today, were built with transistors.
It already has Ambilight - implemented with CCFL tubes, not with LEDs like modern models! Amazing.
It once cost 4500€ - not for very long though.
It had no stand and I didn't want to carry this monster into my lab, so I did some checks on it at my friend's place. Something had to be wrong with the power supply. It did not start all the voltages and switched off after 5sec or so.
I decided to pull out the supply for measuring in my lab. The excellent service manual was easy to find at elektrotanya. Wow, this is the biggest power supply I've ever seen!
I tried to figure out how to start it. In modern supplies this would be a simple connection to the power-good pin from STDBY or ground. Not here. This one produces three different standby voltages, which are partially looped through the main board and come back as OK-signals to the supply. It has multiple stages, which activate in a certain sequence controlled by individual signals.
I gave up on that and started to measure all the standby voltages instead. 3.3V, 5.2V were ok. But the supposed 9V were only 6.1V! I tracked down the smoothing cap. It was just a little 100µF SMD type.
I checked the voltage with my scope and the problem was clear: a 6V baseline and way too high spikes up to 9V. This cap wasn't doing its job. I removed it and it measured only 85µF. Dead alright! I soldered in a new one quickly and the voltage measured proper 9.5V.
Board back in the TV and it started just fine. Nice. As little as 1€ material bill this time.
This little sucker made all the difference in this enormously complex machine:
Philips used to be top of the notch. This plasma monster proves it. It is an engineering masterpiece, which flawlessly ran for over 10 years. These days Philips TVs don't stand out from the crowd. They are not even built by Philips anymore.
