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NotTaR of Television Sets : Reduced width picture and/or hum bars in..  
 Copyright © 1994-2007, Samuel M. Goldwasser. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction of this document in whole or in part is permitted if both of the following conditions are satisfied: 1. This notice is included in its entirety at the beginning. 2. There is no charge except to cover the costs of copying. I may be contacted via the Sci.Electronics.Repair FAQ (www.repairfaq.org) Email Links Page.

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Reduced width picture and/or hum bars in picture and/or hum in sound

The most likely cause is a dried up main filter capacitor. Once the effective capacitance drops low enough, 120 Hz (or 100 Hz in countries with 50 Hz power) ripple will make its way into the regulated DC supply (assuming full wave rectification).

Another likely cause of similar symptoms is a defective low voltage regulator allowing excessive ripple. The regulator IC could be bad or filter capacitor following the IC could be dried up.

Either of these faults may cause:

  1. A pair of wiggles and/or hum bars in the picture which will float up the screen. For NTSC where the power line is 60 Hz but the frame rate is 59.94 Hz, it will take about 8 seconds for each bar to pass a given point on the screen. (On some sets, a half wave recitifier is used resulting in a single wiggle or hum bar).

  2. Hum in the sound. This may or may not be noticeable with the volume turned down.

  3. Possible regulation problems resulting in HV or total shutdown or power cycling on and off.

The best approach to testing the capacitors is to clip a good capacitor of approximately the same uF rating and at least the same voltage rating across the suspect capacitor (with the power off). A capacitor meter can also be used but the capacitor may need to be removed from the circuit.

Once the capacitors have been confirmed to be good, voltage measurements on the regulator should be able to narrow down the problem to a bad IC or other component.


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