How to Fix your Vizio M470NV and M550NV

[engelwood39]

Re: How to Fix your Vizio M470NV and M550NV

Yes you are correct on that one, it would need a reball.
All the info can be found linked below on the service for that board.

https://www.nickstvs.com/store/p1176/3647-0312-0150

1 year warranty and $95.00 for the service. Once the repair service is purchased, an automated email is sent out with shipping and packaging details. At that point you would simply follow the instructions.

Hey Nick... Would you be interested in buying all the boards out of this Vizio xvt473sv TV? The main needs reballed and the rest are fine I am pretty sure? I know they pull a premium on EBAY and I am not sure I want repair it at this time.

[Nick's Tvs]

Re: How to Fix your Vizio M470NV and M550NV

Hello,

Yes that is one of the symptoms of a bad main board due to a faulty BGA chip. We have seen this symptom in the past many times caused by a faulty main.

[GARMANDOKEL]

Re: How to Fix your Vizio M470NV and M550NV

Hi Nick, I have A Vizio M550NV That has just the orange Vizio logo light up, but won't turn on when I press the side button Or power on remote. Do you think the Main board is faulty? The part number is: 3655-0102-0150 (7A) and the board number is:0171-2272-3237 Thanks in advance, Luis

[Nick's Tvs]

Re: How to Fix your Vizio M470NV and M550NV

Yes you are correct on that one, it would need a reball.
All the info can be found linked below on the service for that board.

https://www.nickstvs.com/store/p1176/3647-0312-0150

1 year warranty and $95.00 for the service. Once the repair service is purchased, an automated email is sent out with shipping and packaging details. At that point you would simply follow the instructions.

[engelwood39]

Re: How to Fix your Vizio M470NV and M550NV

Hey Nick,

I have became okay at repairing LCD, led and even a plasma tv over the last year. That being said... I have had 2 Vizio' s I have been stumped by.

I am working on a Vizio xvt473sv and it just lights up orange on the front logo and stays that way. Is this one that probably needs reballed also?

If so, how much do you charge for that and how do I go about getting the board sent to you?

[ivtec]

Re: How to Fix your Vizio M470NV and M550NV

I fixed my Vizio M421VT LED that would have a symptom of pic scrambled, i heated the BGA with a Heat Gun both sides of the board and added 2 fans 5 v dc on the back against the BGA and it's been good ever since.

[Nick's Tvs]

Re: How to Fix your Vizio M470NV and M550NV

You most likely have a BGA failure. You can't really test for that. At least we are unaware at this moment how to test without the use of very expensive equipment.

[NeedsMoreFlux]

Re: How to Fix your Vizio M470NV and M550NV

I'm trying to fix a Vizio xvt3d554sv.

Can anyone point me toward a schematic and maybe a boardview?

I tested the chips you posted about. They test Ok.

If you have any other chips to suggest testing, please do.

I will be testing the power supply and get back to you another day.

[luckydawgz]

Re: How to Fix your Vizio M470NV and M550NV

I have a VISIO XVT3D474SV and while watching it last night, the screen got jumbled.
I powered it off and now I am seeing symptom #8:

TV does not seem to turn on, the Vizio logo on frame does not flash but stays orange.

I have the suspected board removed, will pack it in an anti-static bag plus protection, and and sent it off to you to test and repair by USPS Priority Mail tomorrow.

Thank you Nick!

... and thank you badcaps forum.

Jim

Main board was repaired and tested by Nick's TV is back and installed... TV is working great.

Thank you Nick.

[luckydawgz]

Re: How to Fix your Vizio M470NV and M550NV

I have a VISIO XVT3D474SV and while watching it last night, the screen got jumbled.
I powered it off and now I am seeing symptom #8:

TV does not seem to turn on, the Vizio logo on frame does not flash but stays orange.

I have the suspected board removed, will pack it in an anti-static bag plus protection, and and sent it off to you to test and repair by USPS Priority Mail tomorrow.

Thank you Nick!

... and thank you badcaps forum.

Jim

[Nick's Tvs]

Re: How to Fix your Vizio M470NV and M550NV

JMHammond,

The U41 chip is Sil9385CTU but I warn you right now DO NOT buy this chip from UTsource. If you are to purchase it, I highly recommend this guy on ebay:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1x-SiI9385-S...QAAOSw~rpZPKQd

He/she sells very high quality chips and has failed us less than 1% of the time. Out of a few thousand parts we have gotten, I think only a couple were bad. Very high quality and also great customer service from them.

As for the Q29 however, that one I actually have no idea, I would have to talk to my tech and ask him what the part number is along with where we generally buy these from. He won't be in for a few more hours, so ill have to get back to you on that one.

[ljintexas]

Re: How to Fix your Vizio M470NV and M550NV

Nick is AWESOME! Thank You Nick!

[JMHammond]

Re: How to Fix your Vizio M470NV and M550NV

Nick, can you provide the part numbers for U41 and Q29?

John Hammond
Hammond's TV Service
469 Agnes Road
El Dorado, Ar. 71730 Ph. 870-863-8682 hammondtvservice@gmail.com

[masessum]

Hello everyone, my name is Nick, and I am the owner of Nick's TV repair. I am going to go over how to diagnose and fix your Vizio M470NV and M550NV TVs.

This thread should take care of 99% of all failures we see with these two models.

Experience:
We have helped fixed over 100 of these TVs in the past 6 months alone through our local and online repair services we offer on these models with a 97% success rate.

I will start by going over the extremely rare failures of this set first:

We have seen one M550NV experience a panel failure. The symptoms of a bad panel are going to be no picture on screen. We were able to diagnose this set by disconnecting one of the two ribbons between the T-con board and the panel. We disconnected one of the ribbons and turned the TV on, what we saw was a white screen on the disconnected side and a fully black screen on the other. We reconnected the ribbon and disconnected the other side. From there the disconnected side went from black to white, and the connected side was showing us proper picture. This meant that the side disconnected at the time was our faulty half which caused neither side to display on screen.

We have never seen in our shop these sets with bad LED's, bad LED driver board, bad power supply board, or a bad T-con board. However it is not impossible as there is a thread on bad caps with a one of these sets experiencing bad LEDs. It is extremely rare but can happen.

Now to the 99% of failures we see with these models are going to be main board failures listed below

Symptoms of a bad main board:

1. TV turns on, but the on screen vizio logo freezes and the tv eventually cycles off and back on again. (this can sometimes happen endlessly or until power plug is removed)
2. TV turns on, both sound and picture come through, however the TV menu is very slow to navigate and seems to freeze a lot.
3. TV turns on, the menus and component/coaxial input work, however the HDMI ports don't appear as optional inputs
4. TV turns on, menus work smart apps work, but the HDMI ports have no sound and no picture. (No signal keeps appearing)
5. TV turns on and HDMI ports work, but no sound
6. TV does not turn on, and the small vizio logo at the bottom of the frame keeps flashing white to orange endlessly
7. Tv does not seem to turn on, the vizio logo on frame does not flash but stays orange.
8. Tv logo goes from orange to white but the TV does not turn on.

Our first symptom is usually due to both a faulty Silicon Image chip with location number U41 and additionally a faulty transistor at location Q29. U41 is the larger IC close the the bottom HDMI ports and Ethernet port. You can check the chip by looking at the capacitors near/around it for shorts. If you find shorted capacitors, it is due to this chip malfunctioning. The Q29 transistor is located about 2 millimeters off to the right of the large heatsink. It is a very small three legged surface mount component. While in circuit, it should show around 10k ohm and slowly rising with the negative lead on the bottom leg and positive lead on the top left leg. With the negative lead still on the bottom leg and the positive lead on the top right leg you should be seeing around 29k-32k ohms. If you do have a shorted silicon image chip U41 but still good readings on your Q29 surface mount transistor, we still would advise replacing that transistor as well since hey tend to fail together.

Our second and third symptoms are due to a faulty Nand chip with location number U6. This will be the rectangular chip located under the heat sink. BE VERY CAREFUL WHEN REMOVING THE HEAT-SINK!!! The heat-sink has adhesive on it that is stuck to a smaller heat-sink which makes contact with the CPU chip. If improperly removed, the BGA chip can get ripped off the board and cause your board to be beyond economic repair. What we do is use hot air on the top of the heat-sink at around 300 degrees for around 20 to 25 seconds to loosen up the adhesive. This will make it easier to remove and will help prevent ripping traces on the CPU chip. (You must de-solder the large heatsink from the bottom as well) To find a replacement with proper software on this, you can purchase a chip on ebay from Coppell TV repair. (We do not sell these as repair kits as these failures very rarely occur)

Our 4th through 8th symptoms are all due to bad contact between the main CPU chip and the main board.
These CPU chips also called BGA which stands for Ball Grid Array run fairly hot. The chips themselves are very resistant and almost never fail, however after years of heating and cooling due to the Tv being turned on and off, microscopic cracks will form in the solder balls between the chip and the board. These cracks, will prevent data from going through and thus malfunctions will occur in many different ways dependent on which solder connections break first. There are two ways to fix this problem, a correct way, and an incorrect way. The incorrect way also the easier way would be to perform a reflow on the chip. What that means is to apply heat with the use of either an Infrared heating element or an oven. What a reflow means is you are heating up the solder balls to their melting point. As the solder balls heat up, they will expand and reconnect the cracked solder joints as they melt back together. The problem with this, is that they will almost never reconnect properly. This will only temporarily fix your issue and a repeat failure will come either within a few weeks or a few months.

What we have done at NicksTvs to properly fix these boards, is fully remove the chip from the board followed by cleaning up all the old solder from both the board and from the chip. From there we rework the chip by replacing all the old solder balls with new ones using softer, more malleable solder which is less prone to cracking in the future. I would not recommend performing this task unless you have access to a BGA rework station and experience using one. This is a very time consuming and delicate procedure. Once the BGA chip has been reworked, we tin the board, add a thin coat of special flux and reattach the chip. This repair procedure allows for extended life time on the board. This is why we are one of the only companies able to provide you with a full year warranty on these repairs. You will notice most repair centers only off 30-60 days and sometimes up to 90 days warranty on their repairs. This is because they only reflow the chip.

I hope this post/thread has helped people understand what goes on with these board and to avoid buying some of the advertised repair kits which contain in my opinion randomly selected components. Yes Zemtronix I am talking about you.

I have set this thread to email me every time someone writes a comment, so if you have further questions, please feel free to post and I will try my best to answer questions.

Thanks for this information, Nick...I've had one of the 470's in my shop for a while now, & almost bought a NAND from Coppell, simply because he states that it will fix the constant orange logo flash reboot cycle. Sadly for the 110+ customers that fell for his misinformation, this does not work. I reflowed the main IC, and it's now working. BTW, this is Marc, in Cincinnati, we've done business before.

[Nick's Tvs]

Re: How to Fix your Vizio M470NV and M550NV

TVtimmy,

Glad to hear you were able to get the boards back up and running. We have heard of a few people reflowing the chips that ways and having their boards work for a few weeks, but also had a customer state that this allowed for his tv to run a full 11 months before a repeat failure occurred. The second time around he performed the reflow, he said the board did not work at all. I guess it can be a hit and miss with these.

-Nick

[tvtimmy]

Re: How to Fix your Vizio M470NV and M550NV

Two days ago I took my modified heat gun to the mainboard chip on a m550nv and it worked! Did the same thing to a xvt424sv and it now works. When I plugged them in they flashed amber to white. I let them do that for about 5 minutes and then pressed the knob control on the side and the both turned on. Great tip, thanks!

[dick_barton]

Re: How to Fix your Vizio M470NV and M550NV

Many thanks. I'm sure this will come in useful to some members.

[Nick's Tvs]

Hello everyone, my name is Nick, and I am the owner of Nick's TV repair. I am going to go over how to diagnose and fix your Vizio M470NV and M550NV TVs.

This thread should take care of 99% of all failures we see with these two models.

Experience:
We have helped fixed over 100 of these TVs in the past 6 months alone through our local and online repair services we offer on these models with a 97% success rate.

I will start by going over the extremely rare failures of this set first:

We have seen one M550NV experience a panel failure. The symptoms of a bad panel are going to be no picture on screen. We were able to diagnose this set by disconnecting one of the two ribbons between the T-con board and the panel. We disconnected one of the ribbons and turned the TV on, what we saw was a white screen on the disconnected side and a fully black screen on the other. We reconnected the ribbon and disconnected the other side. From there the disconnected side went from black to white, and the connected side was showing us proper picture. This meant that the side disconnected at the time was our faulty half which caused neither side to display on screen.

We have never seen in our shop these sets with bad LED's, bad LED driver board, bad power supply board, or a bad T-con board. However it is not impossible as there is a thread on bad caps with a one of these sets experiencing bad LEDs. It is extremely rare but can happen.

Now to the 99% of failures we see with these models are going to be main board failures listed below

Symptoms of a bad main board:

1. TV turns on, but the on screen vizio logo freezes and the tv eventually cycles off and back on again. (this can sometimes happen endlessly or until power plug is removed)
2. TV turns on, both sound and picture come through, however the TV menu is very slow to navigate and seems to freeze a lot.
3. TV turns on, the menus and component/coaxial input work, however the HDMI ports don't appear as optional inputs
4. TV turns on, menus work smart apps work, but the HDMI ports have no sound and no picture. (No signal keeps appearing)
5. TV turns on and HDMI ports work, but no sound
6. TV does not turn on, and the small vizio logo at the bottom of the frame keeps flashing white to orange endlessly
7. Tv does not seem to turn on, the vizio logo on frame does not flash but stays orange.
8. Tv logo goes from orange to white but the TV does not turn on.

Our first symptom is usually due to both a faulty Silicon Image chip with location number U41 and additionally a faulty transistor at location Q29. U41 is the larger IC close the the bottom HDMI ports and Ethernet port. You can check the chip by looking at the capacitors near/around it for shorts. If you find shorted capacitors, it is due to this chip malfunctioning. The Q29 transistor is located about 2 millimeters off to the right of the large heatsink. It is a very small three legged surface mount component. While in circuit, it should show around 10k ohm and slowly rising with the negative lead on the bottom leg and positive lead on the top left leg. With the negative lead still on the bottom leg and the positive lead on the top right leg you should be seeing around 29k-32k ohms. If you do have a shorted silicon image chip U41 but still good readings on your Q29 surface mount transistor, we still would advise replacing that transistor as well since hey tend to fail together.

Our second and third symptoms are due to a faulty Nand chip with location number U6. This will be the rectangular chip located under the heat sink. BE VERY CAREFUL WHEN REMOVING THE HEAT-SINK!!! The heat-sink has adhesive on it that is stuck to a smaller heat-sink which makes contact with the CPU chip. If improperly removed, the BGA chip can get ripped off the board and cause your board to be beyond economic repair. What we do is use hot air on the top of the heat-sink at around 300 degrees for around 20 to 25 seconds to loosen up the adhesive. This will make it easier to remove and will help prevent ripping traces on the CPU chip. (You must de-solder the large heatsink from the bottom as well) To find a replacement with proper software on this, you can purchase a chip on ebay from Coppell TV repair. (We do not sell these as repair kits as these failures very rarely occur)

Our 4th through 8th symptoms are all due to bad contact between the main CPU chip and the main board.
These CPU chips also called BGA which stands for Ball Grid Array run fairly hot. The chips themselves are very resistant and almost never fail, however after years of heating and cooling due to the Tv being turned on and off, microscopic cracks will form in the solder balls between the chip and the board. These cracks, will prevent data from going through and thus malfunctions will occur in many different ways dependent on which solder connections break first. There are two ways to fix this problem, a correct way, and an incorrect way. The incorrect way also the easier way would be to perform a reflow on the chip. What that means is to apply heat with the use of either an Infrared heating element or an oven. What a reflow means is you are heating up the solder balls to their melting point. As the solder balls heat up, they will expand and reconnect the cracked solder joints as they melt back together. The problem with this, is that they will almost never reconnect properly. This will only temporarily fix your issue and a repeat failure will come either within a few weeks or a few months.

What we have done at NicksTvs to properly fix these boards, is fully remove the chip from the board followed by cleaning up all the old solder from both the board and from the chip. From there we rework the chip by replacing all the old solder balls with new ones using softer, more malleable solder which is less prone to cracking in the future. I would not recommend performing this task unless you have access to a BGA rework station and experience using one. This is a very time consuming and delicate procedure. Once the BGA chip has been reworked, we tin the board, add a thin coat of special flux and reattach the chip. This repair procedure allows for extended life time on the board. This is why we are one of the only companies able to provide you with a full year warranty on these repairs. You will notice most repair centers only off 30-60 days and sometimes up to 90 days warranty on their repairs. This is because they only reflow the chip.

I hope this post/thread has helped people understand what goes on with these board and to avoid buying some of the advertised repair kits which contain in my opinion randomly selected components. Yes Zemtronix I am talking about you.

I have set this thread to email me every time someone writes a comment, so if you have further questions, please feel free to post and I will try my best to answer questions.