7-31-12 The Monster TV

Back story of the monster TV: Mark, our IT guy, emailed the server saying he'd just posted a Craig's List ad if anyone was interested. It was a 65" hi-def TV. In his listing he mentioned it was very large and you would have to have a truck to bring it home.  I sent it to Bob, mainly as a joke because the last time someone posted they were selling a giant TV on the work email, it was Mel's and I snapped it up and then told Bob after the fact that we now had to find transportation for a 50+ inch old style projection TV to put in Nick's basement.

This time, Bob called and said, why not? It's a good deal, we've been talking about putting a screen in the front room on the main floor where it is much cooler in the warm months and spending evenings down there instead of smothering in the upper loft. The only hitch was finding a truck. 

Mark said that David, our CEO and IT guru, could help. So yesterday at lunch, Mark and David lugged this monster out of Mark's basement, into the truck, and over to my house where they unloaded it and put it inside. We'd originally thought we'd put the big one upstairs but one look at it and how heavy it was, and I made the executive decision to have it just put in the front room. Later when Nick got home I asked him to hook up his xbox to check the picture. When we plugged it in, there was a giant diagonal black line across the left side of the screen. It's hard to get a shot, but you can see part of it below:

It was like that on every screen, no matter the input. Rats. We were pretty sure Mark would have mentioned this in his ad. Maybe it had happened moving? I emailed him. Sure enough, it wasn't there before. The only thing he could imagine was that perhaps a string or thread could be across on of the lenses. 

So, being the handywoman, I took the screwdriver to the back of this thing. Of course, I took out all the 28 screws of the upper panel and it didn't budge. Mark suggested via IM I try the lower panel. 20 more screws later and I was wondering why I hadn't gone looking for the electric screwdriver.

So now I was inside, and lo, there were many connections. 

Craning up into the upper portion to get a look, sure enough, there was a big cobweb that had shaken loose from its brothers at the top of the cabinet and stuck to the front screen in a perfect diagonal formation.

You must appreciate that I am now half inside the television taking pictures.

And voila! Picture fixed!

I let Bob get home to put all the 4 dozen screws back in with the electric driver. The next job was to move all of the furniture around to accommodate this wall hog downstairs. It's still a work in progress, but both couches and the piano have found new spots and all we need now is the DirectTV guys to come out and run a line for the box.