TV gets blue, green/yellow spots when white on-screen

[Alucai]

Hi,

Blue and yellow-green spots appear on my Toshiba SDTV whenever there is white on-screen for a certain amount of time (I think it's around 30 seconds). It is extremely distracting, especially when playing video games (the Xbox 360 Guide menu is white, you can imagine how often I see these spots). They stay for a long time and come up often.

For the longest time now I've just dealt with it, but the spots have been there since Day 1 and, since they haven't gone away with time, I'm now forced to ask the Internet (specifically, Tom's Hardware, as I've used Tom's Guide - aka Computing.net - in the past with reliable results) if/how this can be fixed.

Here are two pictures; they may be hard to see as my TV is a flat-screen CRT (I think, I can see the bars going down the screen with my phone's camera). The TV has Component (that is, RGB) inputs and calls those "COLOR STREAM", if that helps to determine the model. It also has standard Composite inputs, and the spots appear across both, and I'm pretty sure they appear when watching TV shows, though maybe not, as what show has ever-present white? (Another prominent example of a cause of these spots can be as simple as the sky in Forza Motorsport 3 when in the cockpit view.)

 

[SmurfOnABoat]

This is fairly common on the Toshiba's usually starts around the 2 year mark of use. 9 times out of 10 its a bad board, video processor or power supply. My vote goes for a failed board, this usually is caused by poor cooling (not your fault) but sometimes personal use and wall mounts and/or positioning too close to a wall will cripple the already poor cooling.... You could have a tech come look at it, but I think you are kind of stuck with a bad unit.... Hope this helps and good luck...

 

[Alucai]

This is fairly common on the Toshiba's usually starts around the 2 year mark of use. 9 times out of 10 its a bad board, video processor or power supply. My vote goes for a failed board, this usually is caused by poor cooling (not your fault) but sometimes personal use and wall mounts and/or positioning too close to a wall will cripple the already poor cooling.... You could have a tech come look at it, but I think you are kind of stuck with a bad unit.... Hope this helps and good luck...

Gah. Figured as much. Yeah, the TV goes back a few feet (it's a monster, and the weight matches its size), so no way I could wall mount it... and there's about a foot and a half separating it and the wall.

Thanks for the info, I can't recall how long we've had this TV, but it's definitely been more than two years. What I said about the spots being there since Day 1, I'm now starting to doubt it, as I forgot how long we've had it.

I won't bother with a tech. Too much money to tell me something I already know. When I eventually get an HDTV (or even 3DTV), whenever that is, I'll be able to replace this faulty unit with something that's much easier to play games on (and read text; not even the Wii's web browser looks right, and you can imagine games designed for HDTVs...).

Thanks again for the help. I won't mark a Best Answer yet, just in case anybody has any other info to contribute.

 

[Alucai]

Best answer selected by Alucai.