This has been a bad week for TVs in the Yachtzee household. Earlier this week, our 10 year old Phillips Magnavox went out. The TV shows a bright white line across the middle portion of the screen. The top half of the screen is black. The bottom half of the screen is a dark snow with 3 horizontal lines across the middle, red, green and blue. I assume this means the TV has gone to TV heaven. Am I correct?
Anyway, I was able to locate another TV, a refurbed Sharp 27 in. TV that my brother-in-law had bought 4 years ago and the kids were using as a video game TV. I hooked it up last night and everything seemed to be working fine, but today I was watching TV and suddenly the TV went out. The screen went dark, with a bunch of red, green, and blue dots moving diagonally across the screen. The image of whatever program is on is ghosted in dark red, green and blue in the background.
So my questions are:
1. Are both of these TVs now dead? Is there anything I can do short of buying a new TV?
2. Is there something that could be causing the TVs to go bad, or am I just having bad luck with Old-TV-Itis?
It stinks because I'm stuck at home with strep throat with no TV.