Squished picture on my TV set

June 19, 2009 4:29 PM

Is my (analog) TV completely borked?

I have an analog TV set that is about two and a half years old (but I have digital cable, so the analog thing shouldn't, as far as I know, be a factor). Today, when I turned it on, there is a black band about 3 inches wide on the top of the screen, with a white border, then the picture starts. The picture is the complete picture, just compressed into the smaller area. Any ideas/suggestions about what might be causing this/how to fix it?

posted by polexxia to technology (12 comments total)

Honestly, my old analog TV messes up like this frequently, and a sharp jab with my fist to the top or side usually fixes it temporarily.
posted by nitsuj at 4:31 PM on June 19, 2009

I know there's some weirdness with picture size, and this might be a manifestation of that.
The unceasing barrage of DTV infomercials mentioned the squished picture/black bands, but I don't recall exactly what they said.
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posted by esmerelda_jenkins at 4:50 PM on June 19, 2009

a good slap to the side usually works. i'm all for physical abuse of electronics
posted by Mach5 at 5:48 PM on June 19, 2009

I suspect the power supply. I also suspect that unless the suggested physical violence works or you know an old-timey repair person, you need a new set.
posted by bz at 6:10 PM on June 19, 2009

If this TV is a cathode-ray tube model, it sounds as though your raster gun has died.

Also, yes, physical violence could solve the problem. It sounds silly, but it does work.
posted by hippybear at 8:53 PM on June 19, 2009

I seem to find a gentle tap (ok, a hard knock) works more often than not too. Well, with electronics anyways. I haven't tried it on my friends yet.

Last time I had a shrinking image, there were some capacitors going bad. It might not be worth fixing these days.
posted by Climber at 9:16 PM on June 19, 2009

Yeah, I don't watch it that often, and since it IS the "complete picture", I was just wondering if it's something minor that a good smack might fix. heh. I guess I'll wait till the boyfriend comes over this weekend and see if he can make it work right. If not, well, he'll deal with it being a smaller screen, since I can't be bothered to get a new set right now :)
posted by polexxia at 9:19 PM on June 19, 2009

There pretty much no way you can make it worse by giving it a good smack.

If not, well, he'll deal with it being a smaller screen, since I can't be bothered to get a new set right now

Check the curb and/or thrift stores in the area. I can't count the number of perfectly good analog TVs I've seen around for essentially free since the digital switch last week.
posted by Ookseer at 11:45 PM on June 19, 2009

Just to be clear: you are not talking about letterboxed content, right?
posted by gjc at 2:56 AM on June 20, 2009

Is there some sort of compressed / 16:9 widescreen feature that got accidentally turned on? My oldish crt used to have this feature, it would compress the vertical down so that all the CRT lines were used in a smaller area, and I could tell the dvd player that it was hooked up to a widescreen tv, getting more lines out of a widescreen signal. It would 'squish' ordinary 4:3 tv signal.

2 years old doesn't sound quite old enough to resort to physical violence to fix the tv...
posted by defcom1 at 6:31 AM on June 20, 2009

a good slap to the side usually works. i'm all for physical abuse of electronics

I believe this is known as percussive maintenance.
posted by namewithoutwords at 8:15 AM on June 20, 2009

I believe this is known as percussive maintenance.

I came in here to post this exact same thing.
posted by deezil at 12:55 PM on June 20, 2009