Warm up problem? - Toshiba TP50H60?

Toshiba TP50H60
Looking for some help to fix my TV. I turn it on, and almost immediately I get “snow” on every channel. That is to say, no picture, no sound, just static. As if you had selected a channel that had nothing on it. One of my features on this TV is picture in a picture. When I select “PIP”, outside of the fact that it is being “affected” by the ‘main’ screen, you can see that there is a clear picture. When I select video one, and turn on my VCR to get the picture via this route, I get a perfect picture. Soooo, its “not” the signal coming from my cable company / connection. And yes I did try and swap around the cable connections anyway, with no effect. I also tried hooking up to ‘antenna 2, same result. If I look at TV, via the VCR, for a while, and then switch back to the ’regular’ TV, my signal will be fine and I can watch it fine for as long as I leave the TV on. But if I shut it off for a few minutes, then my problem returns. I noticed also that if I turned on the TV, and left it on for a while, with it showing the ‘static’, that after maybe 30-45 minutes I would get my picture and again it would stay good until I turned the TV off. It seems to me, that there might be some kind of warm up problem tied to the “cable” connection? I banged around the cable connection, with no effect. Hopefully its something I can fix as the last time I called a TV repair company, they had to pick it up, kept it for over two weeks and it cost me over $700. Being retired and on a fixed income I can’t afford those kind of costs.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions,
Eddie

Eddie
September 2009