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I have this unit now for about 4 or five years. Never had any problems with it until recently. About 2 weeks ago this problem started showing up. When the TV is first powered on, it will work fine for a few hours. Randomly it seems that the screen will go black but the audio remains on. It does this on every input. If the unit is powered off and then back on the picture will come back for another random amount of time. The lamp is the original.

I've done some searching on the board, but have not yet found a definitive answer. Any help would be appreciated.

The most probable options are: Ballast, DMD, lamp timer or color wheel.

1. Open the back cover (tape the door switch) and check if you can see any light (lamp ON). If the lamp is ON then the problem is not the ballast, it's most probably the DMD board, if it's off then the ballast is the most probable culprit, however, just to be on the safe side, check your color wheel physically, here's a guide to take it out: http://guides.fixyourdlp.com/samsung/bp96-01579a.php.

2. Check how many hours does your lamp have, use the steps from this post: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=92.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the info.

The lamp is still on when the problem occurs. It is the original lamp that came with the TV - 13872 hours.