FREE 50" Toshiba high-def CRT to a good home

[brewtownska]

Of course, there's a small catch

My Toshiba 50H71 came down with its 2nd case of broken convergence, so my wife and I decided it was finally ready to ditch it and get a new flat screen.  We ended up with a Sony 52W4100, which we're very happy with.  But of course, she's hounding me to get rid of this beast.  I tried to convince her I could fix it and we could keep it, but she really just wants it gone.  She's more or less said if any of the other smaller TVs die in the future, we'll just get a new LCD/Plasma to replace them, so I guess that's a fair compromise.

The first time the convergence went, I did a lot of web searchs and was fairly certain I knew what was wrong with it.  Of course, I'm not a handyman and never had any soldering experience, so I didn't want to risk hurting the TV and paid Emergency TV to fix it.  $375 later, I had it back the way I remembered it.  That fix lasted almost 2yrs, and here we are again.  After the first fix, the tech who did the repair did confirm I had diagnosed the problem correctly...the 2 chips that hold the convergence were bad.  Below is a link where I originally found the issue, and it explains how 1 other person was able to buy the chips online cheaply and fix it himself.  From my calculations, if you are handy with a soldering iron, you should be able to fix this TV yourself for about $30.
http://www.hometheaterspot.com/fusionbb/showtopic.php?tid/135571/

So basically, if you feel up to fixing the issue for about $30 and your free time, you can have the TV for free if you pick it up from my home.  The TV is currently in a spare bedroom on the first floor, and would be easy to get out the front door and into the back of a pickup truck.  Being a CRT, it weighs a lot...I think it's 175-200lbs.  It currently turns on and displays a picture, and you can change the convergence on the red and blue guns up and down...they just wont go left and right, because of the bad convergence IC's.

I'm the original owner of the TV...bought it when I worked part-time at Best Buy.  I babied the TV...always kept the brightness and contrast low.  I used calibration DVDs to keep the picture looking its best.  The TV does do high-def, just in a 16x9 format within the 4x3 frame.  No burn-in at all, so you're getting a good deal if you have the time and know-how to fix it.  Would be perfect for a college rental house TV if you've got kids off at college.

Hopefully I'll get a private message or some posts here from people interested.  If I don't after a week or 2, I'll turn to Craigslist.  I'd much rather see this TV fixed and used again by someone rather than put it on the curb and not knowing what happened to it.  It served me well, it just came time for me to upgrade our main TV to something that does 1080p.

Mike

[brewtownska]

Nobody here replied, so I have posted it to Craigslist:
http://milwaukee.craigslist.org/zip/894507211.html