I use to own a Brown goods repair centre for Most major manufacturers. (largest in the NW) We used to have 14 x 4 drawer filing cabinets full of service manuals just for Tv's. It still irks me when people think they can "see" faulty components. Your eyes wont be able to tell you if a resistor is intermittent OC etc.
I had a neighbour bring his VCR round one day. (yeah that long ago) He said he had taken it into work and hooked it up to an oscilloscope but couldn't work out what was wrong...Well he wouldn't have. It was a stock Mech fault...
Good on the OP for having a go, But repairing down to component level is a little harder than looking
its entirely possible if you understand how the circuit works - Solenoids are driven by MOSFET switches or such - its not rocket science and complex circuits can be broken down to some simple sub blocks but you need to know what's going on. Replacing random parts in a Hail Mary fashion wont work unless you get very lucky