On Mon, 15 Feb 2010 05:36:14 -0800 (PST), Jstein
wrote:

I was able to shine a flashlight on the screen this weekend and their
is in fact a picture so it would appear this is a back lighting issue.
Because the screen turns on at full brightness for a split second,
would this imply that the back light has completely failed (and needs
to be replaced) or could there potentially be another issue affecting
this ie power supply, component failure etc?

The fact that the backlight powers up at full brightness and then
shuts down suggests pretty strongly that you have a controlled
shutdown by the inverter controller. Two likey causes are (a) a tube
failure causing imbalance and (b) some non-tube-related fault in the
inverter drive circuitry. My bet is on (b).