Hi.



About 3-4 months ago, my TV would start turning off and on a few times at startup but eventually would stay on after a couple of minutes. Every once in a while there would be pink/purple dots that would disappear by just turning the set off and on again.



In the two last week or so, this off/on process would take considerably longer - as long as 20 minutes. The red light would flash, I'd get sound for a minute with no picture, the power-on chirp would sound and then it would power off and the cycle would continue. It always managed to work itself out of this loop eventually though as previously mentioned could take upwards of 20 minutes... That is, until I attempted to turn it off last night and it just would click on and off and on again continuously. After 5-10 minutes of this without being able to shut it off completely, I pulled out the power cord. I waited a few minutes and when I put the power cord back in, it immediately began cycling on and off again. I tried plugging the cord directly to the wall and I also left it unplugged for over 6 hours - with no change.



I bought this TV Summer of '07. It's out of warranty but it's still much too new to be this defective considering it cost well over $2000. A device of this price and supposed quality should be able to last longer than 2 years! My previous positive experience with this TV led me to recommend it to my boss, a friend, my parents and my in-laws. I hope theirs won't meet the same fate...



What kind of repair costs will this incur (I'm in Los Angeles)? And is there anything I can try before calling in the expert and his inevitable over-pricing?



Thank you.



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Samsung 46" LCD TV LNT4665F X/XAA Version SQ01