Big black rectangle appearing in the middle of my TV screen: is the tube going?

I’m currently borrowing a friend’s 16-inch Sharp Aquos LCD TV that recently started losing a large middle portion of its picture in the way I described in the thread title. It looks like the pixels in this rectangular area have just. . . died. Can anyone tell me if this might be something that’s relatively repairable, or a sign of bigger problems? I figured I’d check with the good folks here before beginning the search for a good repair shop.

What surprises me is that the set’s not even a year old; my friend received it as a sales incentive reward from work. Since she’s been gracious enough to let me use it in my workout room for the past few months, I figured I’d take care of any problems that arise while it’s in my care.

Anybody?

Any chance you accidentally put it into picture-in-picture mode somehow?

Could it be your cable? Once, our cable was on the fritz and we got the same thing you’re describing: a black square in the middle of the screen. Turns out it was some kind of menu that got stuck because my box was fried.

IANAT, but I dobut that it would be a perfect square if it was actually screen pixels dying.

Double-checking. . .

Doesn’t look like it. As far as I can tell, it doesn’t actually have the picture-within-a-picture function.

Lissa- it does seem to be an area that displays certain screen options. But can I ask you, was your cable just *out * when this happened? Because mine appears to be fine- I mean none of the channels are out or anything.

No, you could still tell what was happening-- meaning that you could see the image around the edges of your screen.

Make sure the Closed-Captioning system is off. You wouldn’t believe how many trouble calls we have at work for that.

Unplug the unit and let it sit overnight before plugging it back in.
Here are all the Sharp Aquos manuals in pdf format

Let’s try that again

Here are all the Sharp Aquos manuals in pdf format

You could also disconnect the cable box and just play a DVD player audio video input line directly into it to test the “fried cable box” hypothesis.

wmulax, I found it about ten seconds before you replied! It was indeed the closed captioning. I must have hit the CC button by accident and it was generating the box as a blank caption field (?) Oh man. I’m so happy; you have no idea.

finagle, Lissa- your questions got me rooting around with the controls, so many thanks. wmulax- you woulda saved me regardless.

astro- I appreciate the .pdf and the sound suggestions! Thanks so much, guys.

Didn’t there used to be a setting which pasted a black square in the middle of the screen if the tv show being shown exceed a preset rating (parental guidance thingy)?

Bob

Just a note…there is no “tube” in an LCD screen.