52" Phillips T.V. going bad..any suggestions?

The picture is off, looks a little blurry and off-centered. On one of the menu buttons it has these sets of crosses that are not centered. My guess is this has a lot to do with it. My question is do you think this is the problem, if not any idea what it is? Also is this something I could fix myself and if so please tell me how in simple terms. Thanks for your help.

Answer:
your TV should have the ability to adjust the focus, usually through an automated process that you start by pressing a button on your TV, or through your main menu accessed by your remote.

If this is simething that just happened suddenly, the more likely explanation is that you have a burned out electical component that controls this function. There are usally 3-4 of these components in a TV and it's common for more than one at a time to go out.

This is a very common problem in big screens that typically pops up after 4-5 years of use. I just went through a repair like this on my 65" Hitachi. If you're having a similar problem, a technician will need to come out to your house and do an on-site repair, which entails removing the old components from the motherboard and soldering in replacements. This is not something you should try yourself. There are high voltage elements and capacitors on the circuit boards that can fry you if you're not careful - and you need a special tool that keeps solder from running on the board and creating a short circuit.

The typical repair cost for this is $300-$400. Expensive, but a lot cheaper than a new TV.
The crosses you see are called Convergence. The convergence, when not centered exactly will cause the blurry screen, you may see outlines of the same picture in blue, red, or green.
I would recommend having a TV tech coming to the house (if you have on in your area that does housecalls) and having them converge the TV. It can be a time consuming process as you have to do it box by box in some cases.
If the TV is old enough you may want to see if someone would like to buy it and put the money (sometimes up to about $200 or so to repair it) in to the set and just get a new NON Philips/Magnavox set (they have really gone down hill in their quality - we dropped them as a servicer last year).
Good luck.

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