Big recall on Philips plasmas

You know those fancy lights inside of some Phillips plasma? The ones that cause the overall color that is displayed on the screen to also be displayed on the wall behind the TV; officially it is called Ambilight. Well, they can know add another color setting called electric discharge. *clearing throat*

Anyways, We warned you about this a few weeks back so hopefully this did not happen to any of our readers but it has been made official now.  Philips is recalling over 12,000 sets because of a faulty capacitor inside of the Ambilight that causes arching which results in an electrical fire inside the TVs. Thankfully in the nine reported cases, no one got hurt nor was there anything damaged (besides the TV) thanks to fire retardant (thanks sam) material.

All joking aside, this is a serious thing so check out this link that will tell you if your, or family members, set is part of the recall. These 12,000 sets are all in the US and Philips is going to make house calls to each and everyone of them to fix the issue.

[(Unverified) Posted Mar 29th 2006 12:31PM]

Fire 'retarded' material? Retardant maybe?

[AR Posted Mar 29th 2006 4:15PM]

First I would like to thank HDBeat for this article. Philips suposedly sent out letters about the recall but I never got one.

For those that do not want to take their plasma off the wall to get the serial number, simply hit 123654 on the Philips TV remote to bring up the serial needed to open a case with Philips.

One 10 minute call to Philips and I was basically done. An in-home repair estimated in 1-2 week after the part is ordered for the local service center. You can still use the plasmas, though Philips recommends turning off the Ambilight.

[AR Posted May 11th 2006 6:08PM]

The entire back panel needs to be removed to replace the Ambilights (at least on the 50PF9630A). The process took about 1/2 for the repair guys. You see everything "under the hood." I found it interesting that most parts were labeled SAMSUNG including the plasma display.