My Toshiba 32" color tv (plain old fashioned kind, six years old) is wigging out. Instead of a full picture we see only a thin line of color across the middle of the screen. The rest is black. What's interesting is you can see the picture through that thin line, as if we have just a sliver of a window on it. Can anyone tell me what this could be and if it is something we can likely fix, or must I inform my wife it's time to get that flat panel plasma or LCD finally? Two background items are worth noting: 1) For 12 months or so we have intermittently seen a thin white (or opaque) horizontal line flitting around sometimes near the bottom of the screen (not where this one is), and 2) We signed up to be a Nielsen family about 18 months ago and they wired some wierd monitoring stuff into the back of the tv. I've wondered if that caused all of this.
No I am afraid this problem happened all by itself. You have a vertical sweep falure. Could be a simple Vertical output iC and the sweep supply or maybe just the sweep IC, or a capacitor and a fuseable resistor in the sweep power supply. I would have the set checked out before throwing in the towel. It should, for a repair like this, cost about 225 or less to repair the set. Good Luck, and keep us informed of the repair with this TV set.