Is the death of our HDTV due to the solar flares?

Our 42-inch flat screen died just before 4 PM on Thursday. Earlier that day, I had seen a piece on HLN about the solar flares. They stated the flares happened on Tuesday, and could cause havoc for the next few days. Could the flares have fried our set?

2012-03-10T08:54:02Z

I know that solar flares are the reason we have CB radio. The solar flares were so bad one year that eleven meter ham operators abandoned it. when the flares died down, the FCC used the old eleven meter frequencies for the new Citizen's Band. When they were discussing the flares, they stated that communications, GPS systems and more could be affected. Did anyone else see the northern lights last night. That is energy from the solar storms ionizing the upper atmosphere. at ground level , you are not going to get heat, but the mild EMP can play havoc with electronics. It may be just a coincidence, but I do not believe in coincidences. The second law of law enforcement is: There are no coincidences. I thank everyone for their input.

GibsonEssGee2012-03-10T03:24:45Z

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Just an unfortunate coincidence. If it was a problem loads of people's TVs would have fried and they didn't. You are more likely to have your TV fried by a lightning strike. Start looking for more Earth bound causes like a blown fuse.

red2012-03-10T09:01:26Z

No. It's just coincidence. If your tv is a flat panel, then it doesn't have a tube, so if the heat from the solar flare was enough to fry your tv, you'd have bigger problems. If you did mean you had a flat screen, which is a tube tv, then I guess it's possible, but very, very unlikely. The solar flares should not have caused any kind of energy spike, as far as I know, so your electronics should not have been affected. We just got some good weather out of it for a few days.

?2012-03-10T04:54:01Z

Personally, I doubt it, unless you live in a space station. A flare would more likely interrupt your reception than the set itself.

I have heard there are sets suffering from "capacitor plague", where a bad batch of capacitors from China made it into computer systems up to about 2008. Your HDTV's circuit board could very likely have some faulty capacitors. It is best to check with the manufacturer (especially Samsung, it seems), rather than attempt to service it yourself. There are plenty of electronic devices inside a TV that can potentially kill if handled improperly.

Anonymous2012-03-10T04:50:33Z

Possibly