I should have taken before and after pictures.

How To Clean Water Out of Your DLP HDTV

Yesterday morning my wife turned on cartoons for our 4 year old son and came back upstairs to take a shower and get ready. I was just finishing getting ready and headed downstairs to grab some breakfast. When I came downstairs, I looked over and my son was sitting right next to the TV. I told him to move back and then I looked at the television, a Mitsubishi WD-57733, which is by no means an inexpensive television.

There was what looked like a big black ink spot, about the size of dinner plate, at the bottom left of the television. I asked him what he did and he told me he poured water on it. I sent him upstairs to his room and was contemplating what I was going to do about this. I purchased a 4-year extended warranty, but after reading the fine print, I found out this is something that would definitely not be covered.

I started my Google search and found out that a screen replacement kit is about $350. This was money that I didn't want to spend. I decided to see if there was anything I could do about it. I removed all what seemed like 900 screws to remove the screen. I figured I would check it out since I was planning on ordering a screen replacement anyway. Once I removed the screen, I placed it face down on a soft fleece blanket that I had laid on the floor, and draped a furniture blanket over the television cabinet to prevent dust from getting inside the cabinet.

I then removed the four padded brackets holding the screen in place and discovered that the screen is actually two plates of some type of plastic. The plates have a circular groove pattern in them and the water was seeping in between the plates and getting trapped in the groove pattern. I grabbed a couple micro-fiber cloths and started drying the water with one. Once I had removed all the excess water, I used a hair dryer on the coolest setting to evaporate the rest of the water from between the two plates.

There was a film left over by the water. I sprayed some Monster Screen Clean and used the other microfiber cloth to clean the film. I then used the hair dryer again to evaporate the rest of the Screen Clean. It looked good so I screwed the brackets back on and placed the screen in place. I put 3 screws back in and decided to test it out before I put all the screws back in. It was a good thing, I missed a small water spot. I took it back off and repeated the process on the small water spot. I put it back on with the three screws to test again and it looked great.

I put the rest of the screws back in place and put the TV back in its original spot. It looks flawless. I can't even tell that there was anything wrong with it. That says a lot. I am very anal about my home theater and even had the television professionally calibrated.

Long story short, I saved myself $350 and my son is no longer allowed downstairs on his own. He can watch all the TV he wants on his Spongebob TV in his play room.