Panasonic Plasma repair - any leads?

[Deleted member 15865]

My Panasonic plasma (2012 model) stopped working yesterday. There’s no power coming through, even the red LED in the front below the panel is not lighting up. It might either be a power cable failure or something inside the TV. I tried changing the power socket but that doesn’t work. I can try changing the cable (if I find a similar one - please help where I might) but the TV end seems stuck. I am not able to unplug it there even by decent force.

I raised a complaint on Panasonic portal online. But the person who called me said they don’t repair Plasma TVs. They haven’t gotten back yet on any alternate contact.

I am based in Thane/Mumbai. Would any of you know whom I should contact?

 

[mathan]

There is one Raju TV service center in Thane west. When I was based in Mumbai couple of years back, I got a LED TV serviced and they got the job done quickly.

 

[Deleted member 15865]

There is one Raju TV service center in Thane west. When I was based in Mumbai couple of years back, I got a LED TV serviced and they got the job done quickly.

Thanks Mathan. Sounds like you found them competent. Do you have their contact number?

 

[mathan]

Thanks Mathan. Sounds like you found them competent. Do you have their contact number?

You can ask for Mr. Raju. His number is 8108567878. Not sure if it has changed now. You can also google for address. Very professional guys.

 

[Vinod.R]

Hi Sachin,
1) The power plug is held by side clips. Depress the clips and pull. The power cord should detach.
2) I have had my panasonic plasma go dead on me. Fault has been found to be the main board IC. Trying to get it fixed. Not found someone competent enough.
3) I had initially fixed this same tv myself by cleaning and resetting and it worked for 3 years.
4) My model no is TH-P42X30D. Do some googling for your model numbers common faults. It should give you a clue.
5) You can expect repair to be expensive most of them will say "panel gone" so they can make more money. Based on what you have said must be the power supply board. Should be an easier fix.
6) For god's sake you are in Mumbai not some small town like Thrissur I am sure you will get a technician to fix it for you. I am still struggling.
I hope I have helped.

 

[Deleted member 15865]

Hi Sachin,
1) The power plug is held by side clips. Depress the clips and pull. The power cord should detach.
2) I have had my panasonic plasma go dead on me. Fault has been found to be the main board IC. Trying to get it fixed. Not found someone competent enough.
3) I had initially fixed this same tv myself by cleaning and resetting and it worked for 3 years.
4) My model no is TH-P42X30D. Do some googling for your model numbers common faults. It should give you a clue.
5) You can expect repair to be expensive most of them will say "panel gone" so they can make more money. Based on what you have said must be the power supply board. Should be an easier fix.
6) For god's sake you are in Mumbai not some small town like Thrissur I am sure you will get a technician to fix it for you. I am still struggling.
I hope I have helped.

Thanks Vinod. The problem is Panasonic seems to have disowned it and one has to be sure the local technician is competent enough.

I tried harder and the cable could be disengaged. I tried another cable in its place but that didn’t work. So must be a problem with the power supply board as you say.

You can ask for Mr. Raju. His number is 8108567878. Not sure if it has changed now. You can also google for address. Very professional guys.

Thanks Mathan. Let me try calling him.

 

[Deleted member 15865]

Hi guys, firstly my apologies for wasting your time. It was a false alarm. And it costed me Rs 1000 and a couple of hours.. Here’s what happened.

Eventually I was able to convince the Panasonic service franchisee to send a technician. He came, we removed all cables, took the TV down, detached the stand, and then saw that the switch on the right side of the TV had turned off. He just turned it on, and the power came back on! He put the stand back, the TV back on the cabinet, I plugged all the cables back (also rearranging my audio equipment and cables which got disturbed as a result), and paid him his service charges!

Now why did this elude me earlier? Because in all these years not once did I use that switch and had totally forgotten it was there. Yesterday when I was arranging some thick audio cables around, one of them must have hit the switch and turned it off! And not remembering this switch, I checked everything else, the TV power cable, the power socket etc. and concluded there was something wrong with the TV.

All said and done, at the cost of wasting some time and money and feeling foolish, I am glad I can continue to enjoy the Plasma (it seems parts are now difficult to procure) and even avoided any major expenses or downtime. What a relief!

Thanks you all for your kind help.

 

[Marakk]

Hi guys, firstly my apologies for wasting your time. It was a false alarm. And it costed me Rs 1000 and a couple of hours.. Here’s what happened.

Eventually I was able to convince the Panasonic service franchisee to send a technician. He came, we removed all cables, took the TV down, detached the stand, and then saw that the switch on the right side of the TV had turned off. He just turned it on, and the power came back on! He put the stand back, the TV back on the cabinet, I plugged all the cables back (also rearranging my audio equipment and cables which got disturbed as a result), and paid him his service charges!

Now why did this elude me earlier? Because in all these years not once did I use that switch and had totally forgotten it was there. Yesterday when I was arranging some thick audio cables around, one of them must have hit the switch and turned it off! And not remembering this switch, I checked everything else, the TV power cable, the power socket etc. and concluded there was something wrong with the TV.

All said and done, at the cost of wasting some time and money and feeling foolish, I am glad I can continue to enjoy the Plasma (it seems parts are now difficult to procure) and even avoided any major expenses or downtime. What a relief!

Thanks you all for your kind help.

Haha! Holdout as long as you can. Next step after plasma now is just OLED.

 

[mathan]

Hi guys, firstly my apologies for wasting your time. It was a false alarm. And it costed me Rs 1000 and a couple of hours.. Here’s what happened.

Eventually I was able to convince the Panasonic service franchisee to send a technician. He came, we removed all cables, took the TV down, detached the stand, and then saw that the switch on the right side of the TV had turned off. He just turned it on, and the power came back on! He put the stand back, the TV back on the cabinet, I plugged all the cables back (also rearranging my audio equipment and cables which got disturbed as a result), and paid him his service charges!

Now why did this elude me earlier? Because in all these years not once did I use that switch and had totally forgotten it was there. Yesterday when I was arranging some thick audio cables around, one of them must have hit the switch and turned it off! And not remembering this switch, I checked everything else, the TV power cable, the power socket etc. and concluded there was something wrong with the TV.

All said and done, at the cost of wasting some time and money and feeling foolish, I am glad I can continue to enjoy the Plasma (it seems parts are now difficult to procure) and even avoided any major expenses or downtime. What a relief!

Thanks you all for your kind help.

Cool. All well that ends well.

 

[Deleted member 15865]

Haha! Holdout as long as you can. Next step after plasma now is just OLED.

Marakk, can’t imagine what I’d do after the Plasma. Even OLED falls short. It’s a pity when commerce kills superior technologies.

 

[Marakk]

Marakk, can’t imagine what I’d do after the Plasma. Even OLED falls short. It’s a pity when commerce kills superior technologies.

Well, plasma can't do 4k or HDR, which is a bigger upgrade for me than 4k. It reached its peak evolution and died out. Couldn't keep up. Can't be helped.

 

[Deleted member 15865]

Well, plasma can't do 4k or HDR, which is a bigger upgrade for me than 4k. It reached its peak evolution and died out. Couldn't keep up. Can't be helped.

Plasma primarily died because it was thicker, heavier and power hungry in comparison. The other problems, viz. image retention and sunlight visibility were taken care of towards the end of its lifecycle. I still secretly wish plasmas would stage a comeback a la valves and vinyl.

 

[Marakk]

Plasma primarily died because it was thicker, heavier and power hungry in comparison. The other problems, viz. image retention and sunlight visibility were taken care of towards the end of its lifecycle. I still secretly wish plasmas would stage a comeback a la valves and vinyl.

Those along with other limitations stopped plasma from competing against the evolving market, including bigger pixel size which limited resolution. Energy consumption and the nature of tech itself limits brightness, which is essential for HDR.

OLED, or even good FALD sets, will blow you away with 4k HDR once you'll upgrade.

Plasma just trumps lower end IPS and VA panels for SDR content.

 

[Deleted member 15865]

Those along with other limitations stopped plasma from competing against the evolving market, including bigger pixel size which limited resolution. Energy consumption and the nature of tech itself limits brightness, which is essential for HDR.

OLED, or even good FALD sets, will blow you away with 4k HDR once you'll upgrade.

Plasma just trumps lower end IPS and VA panels for SDR content.

I’ve seen OLED in showrooms and personally I prefer plasma for long duration viewing pleasure over them. But each one of us has different preferences. Some like vinyl and valves, some don’t. And not all of us consider resolution as the holy grail of quality. For example, many of us audiophiles prefer a more natural and musical sound over high res sound given a choice. And so on.

Also, I don’t want to conclude that plasma technology would not have evolved further to make higher resolution possible if there was enough R&D investment committed to it. But that’s how commercial sense works - it tends to go with which value proposition will work for the masses (more certainty of scale up). I don’t blame the TV companies - they can’t ignore commercial sense. But as a customer/viewer I wish some of them continued to make plasma as a niche product.

 

[alphacentury100]

Plasmas were the best. Nothing can come close to its refresh rates. Of course Oled have better black level than plasma, but still I love plasma. When my P50ST30 died, I switched to Samsung 55"3d and at that time, I hated the Samsung, but now I got used to it.
But Plasmas do consume a lot of Power and mine was consuming around 400W.

 

[Marakk]

Plasmas were the best. Nothing can come close to its refresh rates. Of course Oled have better black level than plasma, but still I love plasma. When my P50ST30 died, I switched to Samsung 55"3d and at that time, I hated the Samsung, but now I got used to it.
But Plasmas do consume a lot of Power and mine was consuming around 400W.

Errr...but plasmas were mostly 60 Hz. The 600 Hz motion drive of plasma is not the same as 120 Hz of LED or OLED. The techs are different. 600 Hz of plasma on a 60 Hz (60 fps content) is essentially flashing each frame 10 times before moving on to the next one. LED/OLED TVs on the other hand are sample and hold.

Coming to OLED motion, it's bad for lower frame rate content which stutters the worst (affects some more than others), but for higher frame content, especially gaming, OLED has excellent motion thanks to no blur/smear. Plasmas are excellent for 24 fps because of that blur, but not for higher frame rate content.

There are going to be improvements in black frame insertion this year in OLED TVs, which can help, and if the tech evolves, within a few years, we can have plasma like motion in OLEDs too for lower frame content.

 

[VRavichandar]

Hi guys, firstly my apologies for wasting your time. It was a false alarm. And it costed me Rs 1000 and a couple of hours.. Here’s what happened.
...
All said and done, at the cost of wasting some time and money and feeling foolish, I am glad I can continue to enjoy the Plasma (it seems parts are now difficult to procure) and even avoided any major expenses or downtime. What a relief!

Thanks you all for your kind help.

Not just you, but it just skipped me (and probably others who read this). Same thing happened once with my Panasonic TV, but luckily I kind of stumbled on to it after a few minutes.
Feeling silly is far better than feeling sorry! Great that the problem was simple and you are back to watching your favourite TV

 

[Vinod.R]

You are very very lucky and I envy you here. I am comparatively unlucky here.
I don't have this particular plasma working so went and bought another used plasma for a total cost of Rs 12500/-.
This is a Panasonic plasma with good quality but I like x30d better!

 

[maxms]

I too love my Plasma. Have Panasonic Plasma 42 inch x30d model. Its 7-8 years old now and still works good. Not sure if it was a issue but few months back i realized brightness was bit low and have to increase brightness from earlier setting.
Was planning to upgrade television sometime back but realized plasma PQ looked better and more natural then new TV's in my moderate budget so dropped the idea to upgrade. May be in high budget 1L+ new televisions are better but in low to moderate budget old plasma is still better.

 

[Ajay_k73]

Hi guys, firstly my apologies for wasting your time. It was a false alarm. And it costed me Rs 1000 and a couple of hours.. Here’s what happened.

Eventually I was able to convince the Panasonic service franchisee to send a technician. He came, we removed all cables, took the TV down, detached the stand, and then saw that the switch on the right side of the TV had turned off. He just turned it on, and the power came back on! He put the stand back, the TV back on the cabinet, I plugged all the cables back (also rearranging my audio equipment and cables which got disturbed as a result), and paid him his service charges!

Now why did this elude me earlier? Because in all these years not once did I use that switch and had totally forgotten it was there. Yesterday when I was arranging some thick audio cables around, one of them must have hit the switch and turned it off! And not remembering this switch, I checked everything else, the TV power cable, the power socket etc. and concluded there was something wrong with the TV.

All said and done, at the cost of wasting some time and money and feeling foolish, I am glad I can continue to enjoy the Plasma (it seems parts are now difficult to procure) and even avoided any major expenses or downtime. What a relief!

Thanks you all for your kind help.

You know what, same thing happened to me. I wasted whole day and decided that I will contact technician tomorrow. Suddenly, I remember about that button and it was switched off accidentally while cleaning.