On 7/19/2012 9:45 AM, mike wrote:
On 7/19/2012 7:59 AM, Jim Thompson wrote:
I have a cheapy 19" Philips TV hanging on my office wall.

It's taken to making a popping noise, suspiciously sounding like a
spark gap.

I'm pretty sure this is CFL back-lit.

Anyone knowledgeable of what to do about this... adjustment to look
for, etc ?

...Jim Thompson

Since you didn't mention change in brightness when it pops...
First thing I'd try is to plug in headphones and verify it ain't
coming out the speaker. Zero cost experiment that might save you a lot
of fiddling around.
I'd also try the brightness at extremes to see if that changes anything.

Weakest link is the transformer.
There's often a tiny cap in series with the CFL. I've seen those go
open. Might arc across that.
Spider webs cause interesting high voltage symptoms.

Another thing that happens is that the caps in the low voltage ps
go open. The average voltage is the same, but the peak voltage
can go much higher. I've only seen that after the fets in the cfl supply
short, but I presume that the CFL voltage goes higher before it fails.