AVES in OTT

Last Thursday night my digital tuner box arrived in the mail. I got home on Thursday night and hooked it all up and it worked great. I can't get a lot of channels, but I can get CBC, CBC-French, and SunTV all in HD. Since this past weekend was the NHL All-Star weekend I was looking forward to checking out the game in OTA HD quality.

Saturday morning I was watching TV and doing stuff around the house and everything was good. Then around mid-morning I turned on the TV and... nothing happened. The power light was flashing on and off but it wouldn't turn on. After doing a bit of research, it seems like this is sort of like a "check engine" light and it means something is wrong with the set. About 90% of the people on the web with the same TV said that they either had to get some connections re-soldered or the IC Controller needed to be replaced. At $450, that didn't sound good.

I went over a bunch of options (including taking a bat to the TV in frustration) and decided that I should get someone to look at the TV before I go out and buy a new one. So on a recommendation from my friend Mike (he had them come out to perform some warranty work on his TV) I called the guys at Audio Video Engineering Services here in Ottawa. They said it would be no problem to come to the house and it would only be a $45 charge to perform the diagnostics. Not too bad... especially if it could save me from spending much more on a new unit.

So today the repair guy came to the house (turned out to be the owner of the company) and checked out the TV. Inside the TV there are 2 circuit board side-by-side and apparently it is quite common for some of the soldering connecting them to come apart. (especially right after people move their TVs around... although I hadn't done that) So after replacing a couple of fuses and doing some re-soldering, the TV is good as new!

So if you're in the Ottawa area and you have a TV that you want someone to look at, I recommend giving the guys at Audio Video Engineering Services (AVES) a call. Really nice guys and they do good work. They've been in the business for over 18 years and its always nice to support the local guys.