I'm looking for a bit of advice from any electronics techs out there.
My TV was bought in 07 or 08 and has had an intermittent problem for at least 6 months. Mostly, the picture freezes and the sound stops, though occasionally it goes 'jerky' with the picture updating every 0.5 to 2 sec. The only way to reset it is to turn it off and on at the wall. Rarely it will freeze as I change channel and it this case it will restart itself after about 1 minute. Generally it will be OK for the first 30 minutes after turning it on. Some nights it only fails every 15-20 minutes or so other nights (especially during a good show
) it can fail every 3-5 minutes.
I'm assuming it is the TV and, given its age, replacement would be the only option. However, before I part with the hard-earned I'm wondering if it could be the areal. I imagine areal problems would present as pixelation or dropout and be correlated with weather conditions (eg worse during storm or heavy cloud), something I haven't noticed. I also haven't noticed the problem being different on different stations but since I spend 99% of my time on ABC or SBS perhaps that isn't surprising.
Could it be areal (or cabling) and how would I check it?