vizio lcd screen repair made in china

Vizio, America’s second best selling LCD TV brand, is now telling some broken set owners that their televisions cannot be repaired. If the set is past the 12 month factory warranty, Vizio advises owners to buy from them a replacement set !

HD Guru came across Jeff  Bartran’s letter to Vizio CEO and founder William Wang complaining that the company’s service department had deemed “un-repairable” his 13.5 month old, high end $1868 Vizio 55-inch

HD Guru investigated to determine if Bertran’s experience was unique. It didn’t take long to find eight additional cases of “un-repairable” out-of-warranty Vizios posted in the last thirteen months alone on the consumer complaint website consumeraffairs.com.

The un-repairable defects included black screens, dark spots and red and green lines. Vizio replaced defective in-warranty sets with refurbished units, which a number of owners complained also failed soon after the warranty period.

Vizio’s Florida customer service center confirmed in a phone call that defective set owners are indeed told that their TVs are un-repairable when the failure turns out to be the backlight unit (BLU), which is the light source within all LED and LCD flat panels.  Mr. Bertran told HD Guru that according to Vizio, his set’s problem was, indeed, backlight failure. He also stated Vizio offered him a replacement at a discount , however at a price  higher than he could get from Vizio’s etailers offering the same model.

Should an under one year old set be deemed un-repairable, Vizio’s warranty policy is to replace it (at their option) with a used, refurbished set they call “Recertified.” An out-of-warranty set becomes an expensive doorstop.

HD Guru contacted Vizio’s media relations company for a comment along with a request for a list of “un-repairable” models and the problems that would cause them to be so labeled but no response was forthcoming.

“First of all, we do not currently have any OW (out of warranty) PDP (plasma) or LCD TV models where our standard response is to tell the customer that the unit is unrepairable and can’t be fixed.  Our policy and practice is to fix customer units to keep them in the home and in the brand.

Having said that, we do occasionally work with OW customers where their defective OW unit might require extensive parts replacements that cause the unit to be uneconomical to repair.  These cases are not common, but when we do run across them, we typically will offer the customer an option of buying a new set at a discounted price….in addition, we do occasionally run across a unit that just won’t stay fixed or stumps our technical people as to the cause of the defect….this is not a common occurrence, but when that happens, we will offer to replace the unit at a discounted price…..our goal here is always to keep the customer in the Panasonic brand.”

“There is no minimum timeframe to how long Geek Squad will provide repair service. Customers who bring in their products outside the warranty period will be assessed a repair cost based on the severity of the issue and the product parts that are available. As with any consumer electronic product, as technology advances, parts are sometimes phased out and when unavailable, can affect our ability to make repairs on older models.”

Check out our other “Disposable TV” article. Before purchasing a Vizio or a non-name brand TV, consider a set from company that actually builds them. Vizio and off-brands purchase their sets from assemblers, while name brand companies like Samsung, Panasonic, and LG have invested billions of dollars in panel and component manufacturing plants. They want to keep your business and so maintain extensive nationwide parts and service networks.

As mentioned above, we asked Vizio media relations (early Wed.) to explain why its HDTVs are un-repairable when a backlight fails and for an explanation as to what Vizio defines as a defect that is un-repairable. In addition, as an aid to our readers we asked for a list of Vizio models and the associated defects that make the sets un-repairable.

Late Thursday night, after this article was published, Vizio responded . The spokesperson did not honor our request for an explanation as to why Vizio calls a bad backlight(s) un-repairable (other companies repair sets with the same defect) nor did they provide us with the list of un-repairable Vizio TV models and their associated defects we requested. Instead they made a response regarding defective panels, although we never inquired about panel defects.  Below is Vizio’s response verbatim.

“Panel defects are extremely rare with VIZIO televisions.  In cases where a panel defect does arise, VIZIO’s policy is to replace the unit as opposed to sourcing, shipping and installing a replacement panel because it is considered  “beyond economical repair” (BER). Panels can be replaced, but it is economically impractical because the cost of a new unit is comparable and comes with a full manufactures warranty. VIZIO is addressing it’s customer service response to ensure there are no further misunderstandings.”

“At VIZIO, customer satisfaction is paramount.  Our customer service personnel are instructed to provide consumers with all of their options. VIZIO honors all in-warranty repairs either by replacing parts, or by replacing the unit. Consumers with out-of-warranty units always have the option to replace parts and repair – their decision comes down to cost.  When the cost to repair a unit nearly meets, or exceeds the cost of a new unit, Vizio counsels the consumer that it is deemed Beyond Economical Repair. The final decision to repair or replace is at the consumer’s discretion.  This extends to panels, backlights or any other component of any VIZIO unit.

Here’s a nice little instructional video showing the repair process for one of the most common issues people are having with some Vizio LCD TV models. That is, the unit turns on and the LED power indicator lights up but no video ever shows up (although the backlight does light up) and then it seems to lock up in such a way that you will not be able to turn the TV back off using the remote. The unit is a Vizio LCD flat screen television with model # VX37L HDTV10A with a manufacturing date of Aug, 2007. A not so surprising reveal is that these units, while seemingly an American brand, are actually made in China. Does that explain why people are complaining about Vizio TVs? Well, it’s really up to you to judge but you should also consider that other brands get an equal share of complaints as well.

Safety Warning: If you’re new to electronics repair, please be careful. Read up on safety information first and always plan ahead. Be sure to have the necessary tools and equipment that you need and don’t do any improvisation if you are not sure what you’re doing. You could end up with something worse than a busted television.

A report from our television repair division, TV Repair Houston: Vizio TV Repair, model E500i-A0. Vizio entered the American TV market as a complete upstart in 2002, with 3 employees and a $600,000 operating budget—total. By 2007 company revenue exceeded $2 billion—an amazing feat. Known for their highly aggressive pricing vs their top competitors, Vizio hit the American market hard, quickly laying waste to far-better-known manufacturers. In their wake come other ultra-low-cost Chinese televisions, further challenging the position of the legacy Japanese manufacturers—and the LCD repair and LED repair markets generally.

Questions have arisen on the feasibility of Vizio led tv repair and Vizio lcd tv repair: is it feasible to perform flat screen tv repair of these low-priced TV’s, usually assembled with cheap labor in China? As we have stated in our free White Paper, “Is It Worth Fixing?,” the answer is: it’s a definite maybe. Almost always, each repair prospect must be individually assessed by a senior tech, then researched and sourced, then quoted to the customer. Not all televisions are suited for repairs—we only fix 90% or so!

Here, proof positive of the primary principle: when in doubt—and for “smart TV repair,” and “TV repair near me” queries—and especially, “Vizio TV repair near me” queries—Call the Professionals! Call Bammel TV: your Vizio TV repair shop! In this case, we identified and corrected a fairly commonplace syndrome, namely backlight repair: behind the display panel of modern flat screens is an array of high-intensity LCD or LED lights. They go out sometimes, and can often be replaced economically; not always, but quite often our Super TV Technician near me can isolate the faulty elements; order ’em up; and replace them, leaving the television back up in excellent working order

"Called these guys about my 43" Pioneer Plasma TV problem. It was diagnosed correctly over the phone, correct part was ordered and 2 technicians showed at my home to do the repair.

There can be a number of reasons for a black screen, but the most common is a failure of the back light. This can be a power problem where the LEDs don"t get power or even an LED or two being open and thus not lighting. The fact that no picture was seen with a flashlight concerns me a bit. This may indicate that the TV is being told to produce a black screen. If so, than this may be a problem with the logic board (the one under the shield in the pictures.)

One of today’s modern technological wonders is the flat-panel liquid crystal display (LCD) screen, which is the key component we find inside televisions, computer monitors, smartphones, and an ever-proliferating range of gadgets that display information electronically.What most people don’t realize is how complex and sophisticated the manufacturing process is. The entire world’s supply is made within two time zones in East Asia. Unless, of course, the factory proposed by Foxconn for Wisconsin actually gets built.

Liquid crystal display (LCD) screens are manufactured by assembling a sandwich of two thin sheets of glass.On one of the sheets are transistor “cells” formed by first depositing a layer of indium tin oxide (ITO), an unusual metal alloy that you can actually see through.That’s how you can get electrical signals to the middle of a screen.Then you deposit a layer of silicon, followed by a process that builds millions of precisely shaped transistor parts.This patterning step is repeated to build up tiny little cells, one for each dot (known as a pixel) on the screen.Each step has to be precisely aligned to the previous one within a few microns.Remember, the average human hair is 40 microns in diameter.

For the sake of efficiency, you would like to make as many panels on a sheet as possible, within the practical limitations of how big a sheet you can handle at a time.The first modern LCD Fabs built in the early 1990s made sheets the size of a single notebook computer screen, and the size grew over time. A Gen 5 sheet, from around 2003, is 1100 x 1300 mm, while a Gen 10.5 sheet is 2940 x 3370 mm (9.6 x 11 ft).The sheets of glass are only 0.5 - 0.7 mm thick or sometimes even thinner, so as you can imagine they are extremely fragile and can really only be handled by robots.The Hefei Gen 10.5 fab is designed to produce the panels for either eight 65 inch or six 75 inch TVs on a single mother glass.If you wanted to make 110 inch TVs, you could make two of them at a time.

The fab is enormous, 1.3 km from one end to the other, divided into three large buildings connected by bridges.LCD fabs are multi-story affairs.The main equipment floor is sandwiched between a ground floor that is filled with chemical pipelines, power distribution, and air handling equipment, and a third floor that also has a lot of air handling and other mechanical equipment.The main equipment floor has to provide a very stable environment with no vibrations, so an LCD fab typically uses far more structural steel in its construction than a typical skyscraper.I visited a Gen 5 fab in Taiwan in 2003, and the plant manager there told me they used three times as much structural steel as Taipei 101, which was the world’s tallest building from 2004- 2010.Since the equipment floor is usually one or two stories up, there are large loading docks on the outside of the building.When they bring the manufacturing equipment in, they load it onto a platform and hoist it with a crane on the outside of the building.That’s one way to recognize an LCD fab from the outside – loading docks on high floors that just open to the outdoors.

LCD fabs have to maintain strict standards of cleanliness inside.Any dust particles in the air could cause defects in the finished displays – tiny dark spots or uneven intensities on your screen.That means the air is passed through elaborate filtration systems and pushed downwards from the ceiling constantly.Workers have to wear special clean room protective clothing and scrub before entering to minimize dust particles or other contamination.People are the largest source of particles, from shedding dead skin cells, dust from cosmetic powders, or smoke particles exhaled from the lungs of workers who smoke.Clean rooms are rated by the number of particles per cubic meter of air.A class 100 cleanroom has less than 100 particles less than 0.3 microns in diameter per cubic meter of air, Class 10 has less than 10 particles, and so on. Fab 9 has hundeds of thousands of square meters of Class 100 cleanroom, and many critical areas like photolithography are Class 10.In comparison, the air in Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA is roughly Class 8,000,000, and probably gets substantially worse when an MBTA bus passes through.

The Hefei Gen 10.5 is one of the most sophisticated manufacturing plants in the world.On opening day for the fab, BOE shipped panels to Sony, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, Vizio, and Haier.So if you have a new 65 or 75-inch TV, there is some chance the LCD panel came from here.

Become a member of Consumer Reports to get access to our TV Screen Optimizer, which will help you get the perfect picture on your TV in just minutes.Join todayto get started.

SharpNo company did more to develop and commercialize LCD TV technology than Japan’s Sharp Corp. But in 2015 it yielded to market pressures here in the U.S. and licensed its brand to Chinese TV manufacturer Hisense, which also purchased Sharp’s TV plant in Mexico. Subsequently, a majority share of Sharp was bought by Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn, which reclaimed the rights to the Sharp brand from Hisense in 2019. The company recently announced a return to the U.S. TV market in 2022.

Step 3: Check to see if the issue happens on another device, or an app. You can also check the TV"s menu by pressing the "Menu" button on your VIZIO remote.

Press the menu button on your VIZIO remote, and choose System > Reset & Admin > Reset to Factory Settings. In some models it may be under the "Help"option instead of "System"

Vizio is a TV brand that popped up in 2002 and very quickly became a major player in the domestic TV market. Although the TVs themselves are made under license in China, Vizio itself is based in Irvine, California, and employs American workers as well as overseas. That’s one reason they became a popular brand, though the reality is that they deliver solid TVs at a very reasonable price.

Of course, no TV brand is without issues, and some people have reported not being able to hear sound from their Vizio TV. Without seeing your physical setup and knowing how you’ve configured everything, troubleshooting TV audio remotely can be problematic. However, there are a few basic checks I can show you how to perform, and see if that gets you on the road to being able to hear as well as see your Vizio TV.

Check the feed. What is providing a signal to the TV? Is it a cable box? Satellite? Stream? Change the feed to something different and see if the problem persists. If you have a cable box connected, stream something over WiFi or connect a laptop or mobile and cast something to the TV. If audio works when you change the feed, it is the feed and not the TV. If there is still no sound coming from your Vizio TV, it may be a fault or a settings issue.

Perform a Factory Reset.Depending on what the troubleshooting steps above have revealed, you can attempt a factory reset of your TV to get your audio working again. Although this reset won’t help hardware issues, it will help software and settings malfunctions. Simply travel to the Menu on your TV and use the remote to click on “Reset & Admin.” Once there, click on the option to “Reset to Factory Defaults” and follow the on-screen prompts.

When troubleshooting any technical issue, it is good practice to simplify the setup as much as possible. In this situation where we have no sound coming from a Vizio TV, you should remove all external audio and input devices except one. For example, I tend to connect a DVD player to the TV using HDMI and then SCART. I use a DVD I know that works and then play it on the TV.

If you find yourself in this situation, you could check the audio settings as above or contact Vizio customer services. If your TV is still under warranty, I would make a warranty call and get it fixed. If your TV is out of warranty, you have a decision to make.

A known issue with early Vizio TVs was with the audio board. It formed part of the mainboard and had inherent weaknesses. Five components need to be changed to repair the fault which could be quite expensive. You may need to talk to a professional to get expert advice.

While LCD and LED TVs are cheaper than ever, they are usually cheaper to buy than repair. You may need to make a judgment call on whether to have your TV repaired or just replace it with a newer model. Only a professional TV repair guy can advise you properly there.

Yes, Vizio TVs have the option to turn off your speakers. Navigate to the Menu on your television and highlight the audio settings. Make sure that the TV Speakers option is toggled on.

(Reuters) - LeEco has scrapped a planned $2 billion acquisition of U.S. consumer electronics company Viziodue to regulatory issues, a fresh setback to the cash-strapped Chinese conglomerate"s expansion drive.FILE PHOTO: LeEco"s new Le Pro3 phone is on display during a press event in San Francisco, California, U.S. October 19, 2016. RETUERS/Beck Diefenbach

A new agreement between LeEco and Vizio will now replace the scrapped deal, by which the companies will incorporate LeEco’s app and content within Vizio’s platform, and bring Vizio products to the China market, LeEco said on Tuesday.

Some observers welcomed the withdrawal of the Vizio acquisition plan, saying it is good for LeEco which has owed suppliers money and recently had a sports broadcasting contract terminated due to an unpaid installment.