Troubleshooting No Picture Problems
No picture problems are cases in which the TV turns on, stays on, and has sound, but has no picture and no OSD (on-screen display ). The screen does not appear to light up.
Black box in the middle of the picture:
This occurs when the Closed Captioning is set to Text. Turn off the closed Captioning or select some other mode. Sometimes there is a button on the remote control with an icon on it that looks like two letter C’s in a box that does this. If not, you have to go into the TV’s menu and look in the Settings or Audio menu to figure out how to change the Closed Captioning settings.
No picture, but OSD’s and sound still work OK
If the OSD’s (On-Screen Displays) work, then most of the TV is working OK. Check to see if some sources (DVD, VCR, satellite TV, antenna, cable, etc.) work OK. If so, there may be a problem with the non-working source or with its cables. If no sources work, the problem may be in the TV itself, and it will need repair. See HDMI Troubleshooting for HDMI help.
No picture and no OSD’s, but sound is OK
If the TV cannot show any OSD’s, it has an internal problem that will require repair.
For LCD flat panel and LED TV’s, look to see if the spots of light can be seen leaking out the vents in the back. If there are no backlights, then the power supply, inverter, or the LCD panel itself may be the problem. If you can see the backlights, then the problem must be with the video processing circuitry. In either case, it will require repair.
For Sony CRT direct-view and CRT projection TV’s, check to see if the Power/Timer light is blinking continually with no pattern (not in groups that blink, pause, blink, pause, etc.). These sets contain circuitry to adjust the balance of the red, green, and blue colors that make up the picture. If the set cannot achieve proper color balance, it will refuse to show any picture at all. Some of these sets can be made useable by turning up or down the G2 or Screen control. This is the control at the bottom of the flyback transformer on direct-view TV's, or the 3 controls in the narrow part of the focus block behind the front panel of CRT projection TV's. We don't advise doing this yourself, as there are serious high voltages in this part of the set.
No picture, frozen picture, or picture stuck on blue "Welcome" screen (Mitsubishi only):
2009 Mitsubishi models may have a software problem that can cause a whole raft of weird symptoms, including but not limited to: No picture, frozen picture, picture stuck on the blue "Welcome" screen, no audio, noisy audio, no power, will not boot, will not turn off, turns off intermittently, or locked-up controls. This can often be corrected by upgrading the software with new version v11.03 from Mitsubishi's website at http://mitsubishi-tv.com/support/documents/. Enter your model number and download:
- Software Upgrade 11.03 and
- Instructions for Software Upgrade
Follow the instructions and see if it corrects your problem.
Troubleshooting
Troubleshooting is different for each brand and each type of TV, so click on the appropriate link for your TV, below.