Off the top of my head, I can think of at least 3 times when I've seen CRT sets which ran for years on end...solid state of course. Although the vintage Arcade game, Computer Space, used a General Electric tube hybrid b/w as a monitor, and arcade machines ran continuously as a rule...

But, it's always been pretty amazing how much use some tv's got and still kept going. We had a neighbor that took a used TV from me and ran it 24-7 for a few years before it got tossed. And as a kid, my grandparents had a small RCA color in their kitchen that was on for the better part of every day.

Kinda funny that manufacturers only usually guaranteed 2 years on the CRT.

We used to have some arcade games at the club I work at that ran 24/7. The screen burn was amazing and they crts had faded to a point where with maximum screen voltage you could barely see them in a dark room.
The key here is lack of thermal cycles. Parts and solder connections dont fail as much if the thing stays hot all the time. They seem to run till the crts are totally dead, 10 years or so.

At my office, we have several crts that have run for years. There are a pair of 8'' Phillips monitors that have been running for over five years 24/7. The worst part is that they are built into a fixture with no ventilation.

Also, we only just got rid of our two 36" crt sets that have been in our cafe for the last four years. They too ran 24/7. Earlier this year, one began developing all sorts of intermittents, so it was retired. The other's crt just faded to nothing over the last few months, until the picture became unwatchable.

My Dad's 2000 Zenith basically also runs 24/7, as he spends retirement falling asleep on the couch with the tv on all night.

When I was a kid, we had a 1981ish Sears (I think it was built by Sanyo but can't remember) anyways, that thing was NEVER turned off, it ran most of my childhood. My Dad liked to sleep with it on. When my grandmother on my Dad's side passed away we got her '80 Magnavox and ran the crap out of that. We kept the old one and it was given to me, in 1995 I finally got so sick of the damn thing with the blurry picture and horrible reception that I kicked the front of it in so my parents would have to get another tv. They bought me a 1995 Zenith for Christmas, It's one with the crappy CRT but it still works because I broke it wiring sound to it for the stereo that it was never meant to be hooked to.:D A cable wire flipped up onto the back of the CRT neck board and fried the CRT because, like an idiot, the set was on while I was doing "mods" to it. :P

My mom and stepfather own a 1987 Mitsubishi 60" projection that gets high usage.I fixed it up for them about 10 years ago when it came out of a beach condo where it only got used during the summer.The HV bleeder/distrubutor block had shorted. Ever since they have had it it gets turned on when they get up and never turned off until they go to bed.They even leave it on for the dogs.It's been run that way for 10 years and it will probably get run that way until one of the crts goes south and the color balance is unacceptable or they all 3 fade to a barely watchable picture.

The only other trouble they've had is the AFT coil in the IF kept drifting until it finally wouldn't stop searching.It has a built in capacitor and I suspect it went bad.Of course it's NLA.Could have probably got an external capacitor to tune if I could figure out the capacitor value but since they are on cable and have a box I figured why bother.I simply hooked it up to the video input and that was that.

Luckily this set was made before the infamous leaking electrolytic capacitors found in all late 80s to mid 90s Mitsubishis.I've run into a lot of those where you had to replace a whole lot of electrolytic capacitors and sometimes repair the circuit board traces and damaged components from the leaking electrolyte.Also of note was the terrible Mitsubishi projection made around 1990 where the vertical chip was run directly off one of the switching power supplies (rather than a winding on the flyback) in which a certain electolytic capacitor would go bad and the vertical Ic would receive twice or more it's rated voltage and it would burn up itself and a big black hole in the circuit board.

And it was one year later than the Mitsubishis that ate deflection yokes.

After the leaking capacitor tvs came the coolant fluid leaking Mitsubishis which also damaged the circuit board traces and components so I guess my mom and stepfather are lucky Mitsubishi had it right for that year.It still has a nice picture despite my stepfather's heavy smoking.I go over and clean it the screen,lenses and mirror a few times a year.

As you can tell I've worked on a lot of Mitsubishi tvs.they must have sold a crapload of them around here.

I just turned down a late '90's Mitsubishi big screen. And, their standard CRT sets of the '90's had the same cap trouble. In fact, I will no longer fool with any late '80's or newer Mitsubishi TV.

As far as TV's that never get turned off, I know an older couple who had an early '90's Sanyo 25" TV that probably saw 14-16 hours a day use. When they went out of town, which was fairly often, they left the set on 24/7. About 3 years ago, some caps in the vertical circuit gave trouble and I fixed the set for them. Then, their kids gave them a Dynex 37" LCD TV for Christmas. Fortunately, they took out the extended warranty because that one held up less than 2 years at 14-16 hours a day. It turned out that the needed repair part was NLA; so, best buy gave him a refund of the original purchase price. He took that money and bought a new 42" Insignia TV and still had money left over. I wonder how long that one will last?

My father in law has a 50" Toshiba projection tv from 2004 that never gets turned off... And when I say that I am serious about it. It really never gets turned off. He has 4 german shephards that live in the house and he uses it when he is not watching it for residual noise to keep them at bay. I had to replase a bunch of SMD lytic caps on the "hyper" board last year cause the horiz went nuts but other than that it looks like crap, the whites are pinkish red and there is a fox news logo burned into the lower left of the screen. There is also alot of screen burn in places. And its a little blurry and it's full of dust and dog hair. But it's still chugging along.

Another few sets werew those Funai "Magnavox" 19" TV/VCR/DVD combo sets that were made in the mid 2000's. Pieces of crap!!! The loaders would go south rendering the whole set useless as it went to shutdown after the click,click,click a million times. Those were placed in a special needs home that I used to work at. The guys there used them all day and night. There were 4 of these sets and one still works. The others rendered the ill fated doom of the vcr loader failure.

Back in the early '90's my aunt and uncle had a late '70's Zenith Chromacolor II console that was on 24 hours a day and had been for years. One time when I was there and no one was watching it I turned it off... and boy did I get in trouble. Turns out the reason they left it on was because once it's off it wouldn't turn back on! They would have to fiddle with it quite a bit to coax it back into working again and I guess sometimes it was days before they could get it to work again. They certainly were cheap skates and didn't want to pay to have it repaired.

I think of the sets in some stores...they all get that washed-out look after a number of years, sorta yellow and fuzzy. We were in a fabric store last year and I passed the time looking at this little Panasonic bw security monitor they had hanging from the ceiling. It was all you could do to make anything out on that dim screen. 99.99% used up. One of the Targets had a line of 25" Emersons on a high shelf and they were starting to look pretty weak by the time they were retired. Another time we were at a Ruby Tuesdays and they had a couple Panasonic 25" sets near our table. One had a terrible pincushion problem (I guess) with the picture looking like an hourglass. I think the other one had vertical issues. I wondered how long they would get run like that before somebody pulled the plug.

In 2003 I was attending Grand Valley State. They had computer kiosks all over the place, and computer labs with these terrible Sampo CRT monitors. No screen savers or energy savers were used, they ran 24/7/365. They all had the login window burnt into the screen, and the cheepie 14" displays on the kiosks did not hold up well at all. They were all dim and blurry, some were barley usable. Add to that the super yellowed plastic of the ones that were near windows... really made the place look run down.

I'll have to take a picture of my Lisa's original CRT... that machine got a lot of use. You can tell exactly where the rastor was, the phosphors are almost totally used up.

-J

The old Kingdome in Seattle had a bunch of old Conrac B/W monitors in the aisles for viewing game highlights, etc. Many of them were in use from 1976 through the 'domes demise in 1999. Not 24 X 7 but heavy use nonetheless. The concession stands had Zenith color TV's, 1976 vintage, to view games while in line for a Kingbeer. They were in pretty sad shape (out of focus images, convergrence gone forever) when the dome closed, but they still worked. Likewise Sea-Tac airport had B/W monitors for flight info from 1973 through a major remodel in the main terminal in the early 2000's. Those WERE on 24 X 7. No idea how much service any of those sets received over their lifespans, but a pretty amazing service record.

I was on a service call in a nursing home, the main tv in the 'recreation" room needed a vertical height adjustment. The room was packed with residents. An old guy sitting next to the tv told me the set had been playing for 8 years 24 hours a day since he has been there.
I unplugged the TV, there was a gasp from every one in the room, then 12 elderly members slumped to the floor and died.

sylvania d 16 console.played for over 12 years,24-7.great set that never failed.the crt still looked like new when it was finally put in storage.my brother pulled it out a couple years ago and gave it a try.no high voltage.the dreaded ho tube socket.he cleaned it with de-oxit and siliconed the tube into place.bammmm!set came on with just as good of a picture that it ever had.this was a set was purchased new from sun tv by my dad in 1972.another one of his excursions after working 2 shifts and no sleep.my dad would decide he wanted something new and he would go saturday morning after coming home from work.he walked in,told the sales rep,"this will be easy.show me the best set you have".when it was delivered,it was turned on and never turned off.never beed repaired,but i have cleaned the tuner more than a few times.

One set I remember being on ALL day was the CTC-31 tabletop 23" in my grandparents liquor store. They had a back-room with a recliner and couch, and grandma's sewing machine. That set got turned on Monday thru Saturday 7am-Midninght form 1967-1968 to 1981. It went thru 2 picture tubes and 2 flybacks. (my Uncle was a TV repairman) and when grandpa got a used 23" Chromacolor 2 to replace the CTC-31, that set stayed on the same time till the late 90's. The RCA even got sold used in my Uncles store when they got the Zenith as it was stilll working. I think grandpa got sick of putting in the 8 zillion 6GH8A's that sucker would go thru.

I work in the ultimate location for TVs that never get turned off: An airport!

Black-and-white CRTs last much longer than color ones in this job. There are a number of B&W monitors that were installed in 1979 that are still in use, though most of their CRTs are not nearly as sharp as when new. Of course, image burn-in is epidemic on CRTs that display fixed-position white characters on a black background.

Sony Trinitrons have been widely used in airports, and their biggest problem is/was loss of one color before the others. Early Sony sets needed regular gray-scale setup to keep proper colors (or for B&W display use); later models had auto-tracking circuits that worked well until the CRTs themselves went bad as described above. Some non-Sony sets actually have held their colors much better going on 10 years.

I know of one B&W monitor that was still in use as of less than a year ago, that is from probably the mid-1970's, and its CRT is in pretty nice shape (other than burns).

Menards was using Zenith 25A11 color table models as displays showing department personel names. As we all well know after 2 years of 18 hours per day, you can imagine what they looked like. Totally sick.

Another few sets werew those Funai "Magnavox" 19" TV/VCR/DVD combo sets that were made in the mid 2000's. Pieces of crap!!! The loaders would go south rendering the whole set useless as it went to shutdown after the click,click,click a million times. Those were placed in a special needs home that I used to work at. The guys there used them all day and night. There were 4 of these sets and one still works. The others rendered the ill fated doom of the vcr loader failure.

I have one of those seeing daily use and still going strong 10 years later!! :banana:

it's always been pretty amazing how much use some tv's got and still kept going. We had a neighbor that took a used TV from me and ran it 24-7 for a few years

We were in a Ruby Tuesday the other day and while they have LCD's above the bar, around the sides are still banks of Panasonic CRT sets. The pictures are definately looking a little washed out, and most of them have pincushion issues. A few minutes worth of adjustments could have all of them looking a lot better, I'm sure.

At this moment I'm watching a 9" B&W monitor that's been in use 24/7 since Oct. 1993, nearly eighteen years. It was bought from Radio Shack as their very first surveillance system offering, under 'Safe House' brand. The camera is vidicon based and the tube is still good, and the CRT in the monitor is still healthy. I've only had to replace the power diodes and a few electrolytics over the years. Quite a track record for a RS item.
Bill(oc)

I just turned down a late '90's Mitsubishi big screen. And, their standard CRT sets of the '90's had the same cap trouble. In fact, I will no longer fool with any late '80's or newer Mitsubishi TV.



In January 2010 we got a new Mitsubishi 60" DLP TV. It has a stunning picture! When it was about a week or so out of warranty it would power up to the welcome screen and shut down. I opened it up and found out that there's hardly anything in there! Pulled the power supply board and you can see another victim of lead-free solder, a bad joint at the inverter board connector. I redid a bunch of dodgy solder joints, reinstalled and same thing. The fix ended up being a programming error so a re-flash from the Mitsu web site. And all electrolytic caps I could see were Nichicon, so maybe I won't have any cap problems!

Another few sets werew those Funai "Magnavox" 19" TV/VCR/DVD combo sets that were made in the mid 2000's. Pieces of crap!!! The loaders would go south rendering the whole set useless as it went to shutdown after the click,click,click a million times..
Actually pretty easy fixes. I've done a ton of them, many still in warranty too, and I had to guarantee "my" work that it wouldn't break again within a reasonable time. Surprizingly few ever came back to haunt me.

Remember this thread?!
continuing on, I've been running a couple of sets heavily since this past june or july. Mainly the Philco 19" portable b&w s.s. This set dates from 1978 and I'm not sure who built it. says GTE. I basically play it to death as an experiment. garage attic, 14awg extension cord, snow. has gotta be six months of 24-7 by now..factor in the extreme temp's and this is kind of impressive. Note-this t.v. uses vacuum-type diodes on the crt socketboard. odd. for '78 from what I've seen.

also, my 'shop' tv which consists of an ATSC converter box and an '83 G.E. chassis type A.C. 13" ... crt looks like it was just installed.

The 9" monitor mentioned in post# 20 is still going, but the camera's vidicon tube is getting weak and will no longer do low light. So it's only good for daylight hours now. If the system lasts till October, it'll be nineteen years. I have a new all-SS wireless system alongside it now. Wonder how long it will last. :tongue:
Kinda sad to see the old soldier fading.

back in 1979 I used to work for a stupid little company that built "cameras" intended to transfer video images from CAT scanners to Xray film. We used mostly 9 inch B&W monitors inside a box that also had a lens and Xray film holder. The monitor CRTs were usually blanked off, but likely ran 24/7. I wasn't there long enough to know how long they lasted.

How does the lifespan of a CRT change under blanking anyway? What if you took two identical sets and had one on a fully white scene for maximum beam current & one totally blanked. It would seem the crt ran at full white would lose cathode emission sooner but what about the rest of the set?(let's assume solid state)

I have a feeling most of the cathode degradation is burnoff from the heater. The old round crts were almost white hot where the newer crts were a dull orange.
The later BW crts seemed to last for ever. Im sure they have a hour life rating...30-50k hours??
I would be suprised if a round color crt was good for even 10k hours.

Once they start going they go fast. I have worked on monitors on equiptment that start getting dim so i turn the screen up ever month and they fade out and go fast. Thats what the life test is all about on the tube tester

The CRT in my 19 year old monitor is still nice and bright. All the issues are with the camera, which has also developed ringing "jailhouse bars' halfway across the image due to drying-up electrolytics. It'd be worth fixing if it weren't for the vidicon going weak. But it's still good in daylight because the 'bars' are blanked out.

...

hey Andy. Sadly this data is hard to find(specific c.r.t. lifespan estimates) Furthermore, I'd never 'torture' valuable or collectible sets in this fashion, so it's always the cheapies...Which always have oddball crt numbers.
I was in the shed today and that b/w set is still chugging along. The picture still looks great with a converter box...
I have another set here that gets heavy use although not 24-7...the 13" color 'Xam' with Toshiba Blackstripe crt #370AUB22 from 1976. The brightness and color fidelity suggest that it was hardly ever used when I obtained it.
Use it for various 'video experiments' including UHF DX(which is lackluster these days) and I.T.C. with a Sony Handycam hi-8 and a vhs deck acting as an rf modulator.
That xam set, if I intend to use it again in the same day, is put on channel 4 (where 3 is the nominal channel) so as to blank the raster completely. It gets rather warm in blanking which is why I asked about the behaviour of H.V. in this state. I maintain line voltage at 117VAC with a Bendix isolation tx.

...Also.. wa2ise,,, i recall you mentioning that job before..And I must ask, do you think there exists today any firm which makes x-ray prints from crt like you describe? Seems like a novel way to do it...i'd love to see an operation like that in real life.!

We had a Panasonic video system at our jewelry store that ran for well over a decade. The switcher had a 9" screen which in turn fed a 15" monitor out on the sales floor. We had three Panasonic cameras. Two aimed at the the two rows of showcases and one aimed at the cash/wrap area. In all that time, it only had one failure and that was one of the cameras that had become weak and out of focus.

Most of the bars around here have 20" Panasonic tv's from the later 90s going 'round the clock. Some have retrace lines and one has a short vertical. It's amazing how many sets get thrown away due to simple fixes like adjustments...We're alreadys seeing most of the bars and shops upgrading to LCD sets (brands like Dynex, Vizio, Apex; i.e.-the cheapest ones they can find.) We'll see if they hold up to 24-7 use for over a decade.

Most Ruby Tuesday's have LCD's over the bar but those Panasonics (maybe 27"?) elsewhere. Most of them look pretty crummy with vertical and pincushion issues. Annoying to think that they could look so much better with a few minutes care.

...Also.. wa2ise,,, i recall you mentioning that job before..And I must ask, do you think there exists today any firm which makes x-ray prints from crt like you describe?

I doubt it, but used machines are still kicking around. See
http://www.multiimager.com/products.cfm?page=product&content=productDetail.cfm&ProdNum=MMAT-0MI7110&ProdMfg=10 for an example.

Does the medical field still use film? I would have figured that they would have it all as stored jpegs or similar computer files. Come to think of it, a couple of years ago I was at a doctor's office where they did a chest Xray, with film, so I suppose a need for the above machines still exists.

Hmm. Well, I ain't a doctor but I suppose some of them opt to use traditional methods with this type of thing.

it's particularly fascinating to me since i'm into urban exploration & many pieces of obscure medical gear are abandoned often..

updated.:
I've taken a newfound likeness to the GTE and have decided to let it rest. It's been resting since yesterday afternoon.
New 'torture set' is a '76 XAM (made by general corporation of Japan, later Fujitsu) which is a 13" color modular ss with a stripe crt. But unlike the other set, this one will be utilized heavily as it always is. (video experiments)