Vizio tv shuts down after 2 sec.

[abevilac]

my 7 yr old Vizio shuts itself down after I turn it on. The split second it is on, the blue screen says no signal. I've tried everything to change the input source but it doesn't respond. The buttons on the side of the tv have been acting up for about 3 months now but it always worked w/ the remotes so I didn't think twice about it. Anybody have any experience with this?

[M>B>]

Call them...

VIZIO toll-free at (855) 472-7450 from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. CT Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. CT Saturday and Sunday. Consumers can also visit the firm’s website www.vizio.com and click on “Safety Notice” for more information.

Probably too old to expect them to do anything?

[Acer]

Could be a capacitor. Supposedly an easy fix for someone with minimal electronic soldering skills, or so I have read on the intertubes.

[SteveG]

Older model Samsungs had a capacitor problem. They sent a technician to replace the card for free.

[Speedy]

I love Chinese capacitors designed and manufactured to screw us over.

[eustacetilley]

Speedy wrote:
I love Chinese capacitors designed and manufactured to screw us over.

It's actually funnier than that; Wikipedia only admits to half of the story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague
(Apple was bitten badly by this; there were a lot of Airports and iMacs affected.)

The full story is that the "Bad Formulation" was deliberately left where it could be easily found. What started out as a simple "Industrial Espionage" revenge prank then went wildly out of control.
The result is that for serious purposes, no Chinese capacitor can be trusted at all. There are definitely good ones, but how can one tell?
Sometimes, actual legitimate manufacturer incompetence is involved. Hitachi will never live down that awful "SV" line of series bias diodes. Delco, if they were still around, has some 'splaining to do about those tawdry XPL909 transistors. And RCA's Dual-Gate 40673 MOSFETS went bad just thinking about static electricity.
But no deliberate fraud was involved.

It's almost at the point that large value caps should be socketed. If something starts getting goofy, pull the caps, go down to the local Safeway with a Capacitor checking machine, and run them through the Green-Good, Red-Bad cycle. Buy any replacements then and there, and once home, plug the caps back in, making sure that the orientations are reasonably correct.
If this sounds absurd, there were a few decades where people did exactly this, with their TV set Vacuum Tubes.

Eustace

[beagledave]

I have this same thing happen from time to time. Not always.

I did a bit of poking around and wonder if it might be fixed with a firmware update?

Hi All,
First let me say thank you all so much for your help. I truly appreciate the input from you all. Here is my update. I called Vizio and after scanning receipt and talking to support they told me there is a firmware update. They sent me, at no cost with prepaid return shipping, a black box with an RGB and USB hookup. I connected to TV and pressed a RESET button (following instructions). Then power it on. The next step was to disconnect this box from the TV. Power it off. Then insert a USB flash drive they sent. Turn on TV and update the firmware. This has fixed the TV. It now works perfectly! I am left to wonder how many recently out of warranty TVs have been scrapped because the repair service wants $185 to fix and most people will not call the company because the TV is out of warranty. Most people will not pay repairs considering the TV is less than $300. Hopefully this post will help others with the same problem. VIZIO fixed!

[Speedy]

Eustace, thanks!