Resolving a Green Color Band on the Woot Infocus DLP
As some of my friends know, i’ve had a love/hate relationship with the Woot-sold Infocus DLP 61md10 HDTV. I had one bulb fail nearly 10 months in, and I lucked out and got a warranty replacement. After moving this past weekend, I had a weird green colorband floating up the screen very slowly on both component inputs. At the time, I didn’t realize that it might have been related, but I had a very loud hum when putting the audio leads directly to the TV to power the stereo.
I did some research about color weirdness with DLP’s, as well as specific problems associated with the Infocus / RCA model that I have, I was worried that the issue might be the colorwheel on the lamp assembly, or (horror of horrors) possibly the entire “light engine.” I blew out the colorwheel with some compressed air, but didn’t notice any ball bearing noise at all, so I didn’t think that was the issue.
The next day, I was able to hook up an HDMI input and verify that the problem didn’t exist digitally (phew). This post referring to 60hz power line interference made me curious about the cable line coming in from Charter to the cable box. I routed that cable line through my cheesy Monster Cable surge protector (which has 3 coax in/out thingamajigs), and that cleared up the issue – no more weird green color band, and no more loud hum. I am assuming that there’s some sort of voltage regulator or noise filter on those coax passthrus, but this is the first time i’ve been glad that Woot gave away those surge protector kits along with the TV.
Now, hopefully I can enjoy another couple thousand hours of DLP television without spending $500 bucks on a new lamp. 
