I have what is essentially a 42” 1080p TV in a plain metal box that was set up for advertising, like at trade shows. There is a little box inside that played a slideshow off of a CF card or got its data over your network, wired or wirelessly. This thing apparently started life as a TV but the guts were transplanted into this new case. It was down to $41 at a pawn shop but they refused to sell it to me at that price, saying they wanted to mark it back up to $100 even though it didn’t sell after sitting there for over a year. I passed when they gave me that BS. The very next month it was in the clearance section for $20 and I snapped it up.
You can see from the first image what the problem was. When mom was visiting last year we’d have to power off the unit a few times before that would go away. It happened again this evening, but since the back is currently off i just reached in and started jiggling cables. I think I found the one that was causing the problem (it’s a small board that connects up to a couple of wide flat cables that go into the LCD panel) but now I’m waiting to see if the problem comes back. There was no pattern as to when it would flake out, sometimes going a couple of days before getting weird and at other times it would happen within a few minutes of powering it on.
The next challenge is getting it to work with a remote control. The IR board is buried in there, but I’ll probably have to relocate it so that I can have line-of-sight from the front. I have no clue what brand TV this was, and so programming a Harmony remote might prove to be a challenge. Maybe I can dig out one of those generic universals where I can just press the power button until it does something; I’m sure I have some of those dinosaurs laying around.