I have a friend with a malfunctioning TV and no job, so paying for repair is not likely, but is an electronics engineer, albeit silicon design and not circuitry.

Does anyone have any pointers on TV repair? The TV is a Sony CRT HDTV. I don't have the model number at hand, but the KD-36XS955 looks close.

The symptom is that the TV will sometimes simply not show video at all, sometimes failing to come on after being shut off, sometimes cutting out while it's on. It will also sometimes seemingly partially lose deflection, so that the picture becomes smaller for an instant. He has a trouble code that the TV is communicating via the power LED with a blink code. I don't have that at hand, either.

Between us, we can probably figure out how to break it more. Anyone want to help us actually make it better?