Entertainment Center: TVs, Stereos, VCRs and DVDs - TV snow problem

I have a 27" inch CRT TV (not sure of the brand right now) that when you first turn it on, you get nothing but snow for about 20 seconds and then it suddenly tunes in fine. As long as it stays on its fine and only does has this snow problem when its first turned on. Does anyone know what this might be? I'm not a pro repairman or anything but have fixed things before like replacing a diode or a capacitor which were visibly damaged. I have a multimeter if I need to use it. Thanks for any advice.

First thing to do is to wiggle the connector that is carrying the signal to the TV and see if this helps.

Assuming it fails - my best guess is that it is a problem with the rf module. Snow is just the visual effect of noise in the absence of the rf signal. The reasons for this could be many ranging from a failing rf amp to the malfunction of the AFC/AGC circuit. Unfortunately troubleshooting an rf circuit can be tricky as you need specialist equipment. Also they tend to be made up of surface mount components which cannot be worked on without the correct tools - normal soldering techniques cannot be used.

You can try replacing the rf unit (usually it comes as a module) and see if this helps.

Sonys can have bad tuners. I have an old Sony myself with one. There was a service bulletin out there on my model number that I found when I had simular problems with my TV. I might add that I used to be a pro in that business and made a couple of attempts to fix my own TV but was unsucessfull. The tuners of today use a lot of surface mounted parts and are very, very small. I used a visor with magnifiying lenses just to see what I was working on, but still didn't have much luck. Unless you are a real artist with a soldering iron and have a few special jigs for your set, working on the tuner is a real pain and I wouldn't recommend it even for most pros. I think what happens is that the surface mount varicaps tend to go bad and the phase locked loops don't always lock on the selected channels. My tuner wasn't able to lock most of the time on channel 3, which is the output of my cable box. What I ended up doing is running my cable box to an old VCR with it's tuner set for channel 3. I ran the video out from the VCR to the old Sony TV. I can now watch my cable TV and even use the VCR on the rare occasions that I rent a video. When the TV finally dies I'll go back to the normal setup, but a Sony dies hard and it may be years before that happens.