High Voltage/Power Supply Issues: No picture

With the vast majority of Barcos, the CRTs will remain off with no video signal applied. This often confuses the first time CRT owner, who is used to a snowy screen from a regular TV that isn’t hooked to cablevision. Not so with a CRT. When no signal is present, the tubes will usually remain off. Some models will eventually default to the Barco opening screen, or may eventually go to the internal crosshatch test pattern if it doesn’t lock to an incoming signal. Note that the opening Barco screen is in red and green only. The blue tube will remain off until a signal is sent to the set. This is normal.

Assuming that you’ve read the owner’s manual, you’ll know that 1 to 5 (or sometimes 6) on the keypad will select the input, Video, Svideo, RGB or component. If you accidentally push a button on the remote, you might select an input that isn’t connected in your A/V system. The first thing to check is if the correct input is selected.

Assuming that the input signal is selected properly, make sure your signal source is actually working. Did you make any changes to your A/V system recently? Is it possible that a connector wiggled off if you moved a component? If you are running your video cable through an attic, has a mouse or rat made a meal of your cable? (Trust me, it’s happened!)

To check to see if your signal is live at the projector, it’s easiest to grab a DVD player and send a video or Svideo source right to the projector with the DVD player sitting right next to the projector. Take a short video or Svideo cable and go right from the DVD player to the projector. Select the correct input via the keypad or remote. If you have an image now, then your regularly used input is either not receiving a signal, or that particular input is bad. The Barco has an RGB switcher card that selects between video, Svideo and RGB. It’s quite possible for one input to go dead on this card, usually due to static electricity, but many times it’s the cable. Try another source using that input, or connect your source and cable to another projection device or monitor to confirm that the source works.

So let’s assume that you’ve confirmed that you do have a live signal at the projector, but the screen remains blank. As described above, you’ve now ruled the RGB switcher card out and your source, so your problem is now on a different board in the set.

Most H and V scan fail problems are indicated by the red scan fail LED on the focus/g2 board. If this LED is on, then your H or V cards are bad. Without substitution, it’s impossible to determine which card it is, so send both in for troubleshooting and testing.

It’s rare but possible that the H shift board will go bad and cause a ‘no picture’ condition without the scan fail LED coming on.

Failure of the SMPS can also cause a lack of voltage to be supplied to the H deflection board which will then result in a scan fail light being on.

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