Well...this is one of those good news bad news videos. The good news is the replacement LED strips worked, the bad news that I feel really stupid about is I put the inner edge frame back on incorrectly and ended up breaking the led ribbon cables when I tried to tighten the frame. The problem with that is those ribbon cables are built into the lcd...and a replacement for that is over $300...which means that is not worth it for an old tv. So I am out $28 for the new LED's that still work, and may try and part out all the rest of the tv parts on ebay...to at least recover the led costs. Or I may just decide to scrap everything and get it out of the garage sooner vs later.
So...the moral of the story is the led replacement works great as long as you put things back together correctly and dont screw up the led panel ribbon cable. Oh well, not every project can be a complete success...but this is the kind that really makes you feel stupid when you end up breaking something else during the repair.