Troubleshooting new lamps, lamp-hour counters?

[Gigatron]

Hi everyone,

I have an HL-S5687WX/XAA, which has been trouble-free, for several years, until yesterday. Yesterday, I powered up the system, as normal, and after 45 seconds or so, I lost the video feed (but not sound). I turned off the set, waited a few minutes and tuned it back on. Same thing happened - started normally, 45 seconds later, video cuts out. Then I notice the 3 blinking LEDs on the front panel. Quick trip through the manual says it's indicative of a lamp failure. Since I know the bulb works, I pull the plug, wait a minute, plug it back in. Everything turns on, like normal, then 45 seconds later, video goes out, 3 blinking lights again.

So, I pull the lamp unit, re-seat it, restart everything - same thing. Starts normally, lose video after 45 seconds, blinking lights. Go into the factory settings, reset the lamp-hour counter (10,400 hours), do a hard reset, and power it up again. Starts normally, 45 seconds later, the video cuts out, 3 blinking lights.

Now, as far as the TV should be concerned, it has a new bulb with zero hours on it, correct? How does the TV know that it doesn't have a brand new lamp assembly? It shouldn't, yet it tells me that I have a lamp problem. I know it's not a ballast issue, because the tv powers up just fine for those 45 seconds. There's no severe loss in brightness (other that what can be expected for a 4 year old bulb with 10,400 hours on it), there's nor color distortion and no strange sounds on start-up or shut-down.


So what is it that trips the 3 LEDs? The bulb is rated for 5000 - 8000 hours, yet some people get the warning lamps, well before the 5000 hours and some people don't get the lamps until well after the 8000 hours. If it were a routine service lamp, designed to go off at a specified interval (say at 6,500 hours), then everyone would get the warning when they've reached that level of operational hours. Yet they clearly don't. So except in the cases of the bulb exploding, or failure of other components (ballast, cooling fan, color wheel or control board), what would trip the lights?

If someone could enlighten me as to what I may be missing or misunderstanding, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Fred