Annoyed, my 8500 plasma started acting flaky a couple of weeks ago. The HDMI would sometimes come up "no signal", I figured it was just some new components coming up too fast and the handshake messing up. It usually cleared up pretty fast.
Last week I had a situation where it was "no signal" for a longer period on the HDMI input from my receiver. I thought the cable may have gone bad or something. So I tried a different cable, hooking directly from different components, to different HDMI inputs. All "no signal". So I tried my laptop and randomly it came up, then I hooked the cable back to my receiver and it worked fine. Figured it may have been stuck in some off state.
Last night, same thing, "no signal" on all inputs/cables/sources. So I tried the laptop thing again last night and this morning, no dice. Called up and my warranty ran out 10/31 (of course). Screen still works fine, network and smart apps (which I haven't otherwise used) work fine, just the inputs. Some poking around reveals that other Samsungs have had HDMI ports go bad and it's a $60 or so part. Could be worse.
They say they (Samsung service) may come on Thursday but they'll call to confirm. Figured they're the most likely to have the part on hand and know if there is some common root cause. Glad my little screen is easily moveable, hooked it into the same power/HDMI cable and it came right up. So at least I can catch the game.
