Modern televisions have big advantages in image quality, efficiency and size, but their makers only need one bad night's sleep to cut off support, and even the simplest technical fault can turn into a nightmare. That's how we arrive at The Fixologist on YouTube, who received a 58-inch Hisense television with a problem in its backlight. Detecting the damaged LEDs shouldn't be hard, but getting to them... is another story.
I can replace a power supply or a couple of capacitors on a PCB, but every time I get a monitor or TV with a fault in the panel itself, I send it back. My main monitor has already had two repairs: the control board was replaced entirely, and one of the capacitors on its driver ended up swollen like a balloon, but the day one of its LED strips starts failing... I know I'm going to suffer. Sadly, many users live that situation firsthand, and if manufacturers had a shred of good will, it wouldn't be necessary to perform borderline destructive surgery to install new LEDs. A couple of months ago, The Fixologist on YouTube accepted a Hisense 58R6E of 58 inches that his neighbor was about to throw in the trash because of a backlight problem. What did he find inside? Well...
Your Smart TV maker wants you to throw it away: A glue nightmare
Removing the back cover isn't that hard, and both the power supply and the mainboard are exposed almost immediately. However, replacing the LED strips requires separating the panel from the diffusers, carefully removing the diffusers, and finally doing the same with the diffusion box... without damaging anything. As expected, Hisense had the "courtesy" of gluing the diffusers, gluing the diffusion box to the LED strips (this is where the heat gun came in), and of course, gluing the LED strips to the chassis.
An interesting aspect of the repair is that The Fixologist preferred to replace the individual LEDs (two had failed) rather than the whole strips, using a bit of heat. The good news is the LEDs worked fine... and the bad news is he ended up damaging the panel during its reinstallation. Now, I admit failed repairs aren't as attractive, but it's important to show this because The Fixologist worked the same way a normal person looking to revive their TV would: uncomfortable, and without enough space.
With a design that allowed external access to the LED strips, none of this would have happened. A 2019 television, thrown in the trash. Just as Hisense and its competitors want.
