Poorly Philips PW289616? Any ideas?

Hi peeps,

I know a 28in w/screen barely qualifies as a pukkah home cinema tv, these days, but for better or worse, that's what I've got.

Been fine for about 20 months or so from new, but now that it's well and truly out of maker's (12 month) warranty (wouldn't you just know it!) it seems to have gorne 'on the blink'!

All else appears to be OK, but the observable fault is that the picture *brightness* now randomly fluctuates (even on a 'no-input' blue screen.)

Fairly mild (difficult to see on dynamic, fast changing images, but readily apparent on a static (e.g. freeze-frame image.) There also appears to be a slight overall loss in the pictures usual clarity and vitality, and maybe a very slight overall loss of picture contrast for the same picture settings.

I guess the two symptoms are probably related, and it almost 'feels' as though something in the picture brightness/digital processing side of things is working 'overtime' !!

I know you're all probably onto bigger and better things, these days, (Plasma, progressive scan, component inputs etc. etc), but if anyone's still running a PW 9616, has anyone experienced a similar fault?

And if so, any ideas as to likely diagnosis/cost of repair? Also any suggestions as to the best repair outfit to entrust investigation/repairs to? Funnily enough, I don't relish the prospect of letting some 'cowboy' just fiddle and fart about in the back, not only failing to accurately diagnose and fix the reported problem, and perhaps even introducing half a dozen new ones!

[Oooohhh errrr, cynical, aren't we? !!!]

Anyway, any (polite!) thoughts and suggestions gratefully received, and many thanks in anticipation of any responses.

Cheers,

Mark Pearce (N.E. Hampshire U.K)