Probably shouldn't be watching it anyway...

September 29, 2007 9:38 AM

So I'm watching Veronica Mars reruns on my TV a couple nights ago and all of a sudden the audio goes and all I get is a staticky type sound. What's the deal?

The TV is not new. It's probably about 5 years old. But I got it from a friend's parents who kept it in the guest room and rarely used it. So it's older, but not used so much...I have it connected to my cable box via regular RG59 (or is it RG58?) coax. I plugged in another TV, same setup, just a different TV and the audio is fine. No DVD player. No RCA connectors for audio or video.

I've checked all the settings on the TV AND the cable box and they're all fine.

Am I SOL or is it worth trying to connect my cable box and the TV with RCA audio connectors? Would that do anything at all? Should I try something else?

In case it matters, on the TV I have space for audio and video in and out, and S-Video.

posted by heavenstobetsy to Technology (2 answers total)

It's not going to take much effort to plug in a set of RCA cables for audio and see what you get. It's possible that the set is failing at extracting audio from the combined signal, but the audio processing and speakers are ok. It's also possible that the amplifier has gone kaput, and nothing's going to help. In that case, I wouldn't recommend repair (honestly, it'll cost more than it's worth), either put that money towards another TV, or run the RCA's from the cable box to a stereo. Adds another remote for volume maybe, but hey, you get sound again.
posted by pupdog at 9:58 AM on September 29, 2007

Is it an RCA/GE set?

Certain (if not most) TV's sold under one of these brands (made by Thomson electronics) had, for a period of years, *terrible* soldering jobs on shoddy main circuit boards. One of the certain fist signs was exactly this symptom.

Which is one of the reasons I never buy anything with those labels on it.
posted by pjern at 8:28 PM on September 29, 2007