A very good question, and unfortunately the most common answer these days is not to repair. I’m not sure if that’s because people think tv’s can’t be repaired any more, or they think it will be too expensive, or they think there are no engineers left to carry out the repair. I understand also that a lot of people use the demise of their tv as an excuse to replace it with the latest all singing, all dancing smart tv.

Well first of all, there are still some tv engineers around, we may be a rare breed these days but a quick internet search will usually find someone in your area…probably the reason you’re reading this in the first place.

Secondly, tv’s are still repairable, and often at a cheaper price than you may think. As an example I was called to a 32″ Toshiba, it was completely dead, not even a standby light, the owner was convinced it couldn’t be repaired but was still willing to pay me an inspection fee to find out. The outcome was a working tv for £30.

Obviously not all repairs are that cheap, but neither are they always expensive. In an age where we are told to recycle everything why is it ok to fill landfills with perfectly repairable tv’s? For not much money they can often be repaired and used for a few more years, or sold on to someone that maybe can’t afford the latest mega tv.

Lastly, its best not to assume that the latest 50″ smart tv from Curry’s or Argos is going to be better quality than the five year old tv that has just broken down on you. In many cases they are built down to a price to make them attractive to consumers. They don’t sell at these amazing prices because they want to do you a favour, they know a cheap price will shift a lot of units and they ask the manufacturers…Samsung, Panasonic, LG, Vestel etc to provide tv’s at a certain low price and the way they do this is to fill the tv’s with cheap and unreliable components. Cheap Chinese LED’s in the screens that fail usually just after the guarantee period, underrated capacitors and semiconductors on the power supply and main panels, poor production techniques resulting in poor soldering and assembly.

That’s not to say you can’t buy a superb new tv, you just need a good budget, and why not not get your old tv repaired for resale to offset the price of the new one?

Two small capacitors that would make a DVD Recorder stop working

Two rectifiers, enough to make a tv appear completely dead

Three small and cheap components that stopped a TV switching on