anyone else see this article?

http://gadgetbox.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/23/7926490-vizio-tells-owners-their-sets-are-unrepairable

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...And our 30, 40, 50 yr old CRT sets jus' keep on a-truckin'....Mbwahahahaha...

I decided to post something there to enlighten the folks on MSLSD about just how bad modern electronics are in tearms of reliability/repairability in historical context.

Repairability is not as good as it was in the past (for any mainstream electronic device, not just TVs), but reliability is far better in most cases. Remember, almost nobody ever posts online that their TV is still working! Maybe I should be the first... None of my numerous LCD TVs and monitors bought over the last eight years or more has EVER needed any kind of repair. That includes a 27" Syntax Olevia, a 42" Westinghouse, 46" Samsung and several computer monitors from 15" to 24". Except for the Westinghouse that I sold, they all still work flawlessly, like new.

Having said that, though, I do agree that it is best to stick with good brands if you want any hope of long-term support. Vizio is/was supposedly trying to move toward higher-end equipment, but obviously with a policy like that, they are no better than the $69 brand-X set on sale at Fry's this week. What a shame.

I can only hope my Insignia (rebadged Sylvania) 19-inch flat-panel LED/LCD TV lasts as long as your sets have, or at least longer than the warranty period.

BTW, what is the longest any flat-panel TV has lasted so far? Zenith/LG claims its sets' FP displays will last 60k hours, or over 20 years with average use ("average" being defined in their sales literature as eight hours a day). Someone mentioned here not too long ago, however, that the failure mode of many if not most FPs is defective electrolytic capacitors, not the panel. However, many FPs I have seen for sale on eBay are being sold as parts sets because of cracked or broken screens. I wonder if most FP displays, not just Zenith/LGs, would last 10-15 years or more if they are not physically abused or damaged by still images left on the screen for extended periods of time. :scratch2:

BTW (2): Speaking of screen burn-in, I recently asked one of the customer service representatives at Time Warner Cable whether the small, stationary network logos that stay on the screen during programs could eventually burn themselves into the screens of any kind of TV -- CRT or LCD/plasma. The answer was no, because the image behind the network logo is constantly moving. Test patterns or color charts, however, are a different story, as are program images that freeze on the screen due to problems at the cable headend. I believe most flat-panel TVs are designed to revert to standby mode if they do not receive an input signal for any length of time, but I don't know if this function works when a program picture is frozen on the screen.

I've seen LCDs and plazmas which are always left on the same news station with a logo "burnt" into the screen.

...And our 30, 40, 50 yr old CRT sets jus' keep on a-truckin'....Mbwahahahaha...

I know, I was talking about this to a mechanic I deliver auto parts too where a lot of today's flat screens are disposable whereas the older sets we have are reparable. I know if I look hard enough, I can still order parts for my 1982 Zenith System III, most often refurbished, but at least still available.

Within the past year, I ordered a brand new NTE tripler for a Zenith CCII. And, I don't think seperate HV tripler's have been used in 30+ years. So, yes, finding parts for a lot of the older stuff is often easier than finding parts for something that's five minutes out of warranty.

Someone brought me a 32" RCA LCD TV for repair that was just out of warranty and I could not get the necessary part to fix it. I was told that I could send the TV in, at my espense, plus $350 and they would send out a refurbished TV. For a little more cash, the owner could have bought a brand new set with a full warranty. The owner was not happy at all and I don't know what he did with the set after picking it up from me.

With today's electronics, if it's not a bad capacitor or other simple fix, you'll probably have an expensive door stop or, in the case of TV's, a giant "etch-a-sketch" on your hands when it fails.

Now, I think I'll watch a movie on the '79 Zenith CCII, that I anticipate will still be in service over here for a long time.

[QUOTE=radiotvnut;3014868]With today's electronics, if it's not a bad capacitor or other simple fix, you'll probably have an expensive door stop or, in the case of TV's, a giant "etch-a-sketch" on your hands when it fails.
QUOTE]

AH!....So that is what the fish tankers will do when they run out of CRT sets to repurpose!:scratch2: :lmao:

Tom C.

I recently asked one of the customer service representatives at Time Warner Cable whether the small, stationary network logos that stay on the screen during programs could eventually burn themselves into the screens of any kind of TV -- CRT or LCD/plasma.
I had a 13" CRT TV at work that had been left on CNN for a long time period (months or years even, perhaps) and did indeed have the CNN logo burned in the CRT.

In recent years, most broadcast network logos seem to be just shadow/outline images that are probably much less likely to ever cause a burn-in. CNN's logo was definitely solid white letters for a long time and may still be.

LCD screens can get "image retention" and some other odd effects when fixed images are left on them for long periods (think of airport flight information displays, or screens with seldom-changing public information or directions). Supposedly, these effects can be undone by putting moving/changing images on the display, but it might take just as long to fix the problem as it did to cause it, and the ill effects do not usually show up until after a year or more of having the fixed image displayed. At some point, maybe I will have a chance to test these theories.

I worked at an image processing facility and many of the LCD screens had burn in... login boxes, and areas of the screen that always had a blue background. I never tried to "un-stick" one of them.

-Jason

I have a 20" samsung LCD monitor i bought brand new in 2007, Still working and no repair has ever been done to it.

I have an off-the-wall chimei brand 19" LCD monitor beside it, it was bought in 2009 and it works still.

I run the backlights at reduced output, i dont need full brightness. maybe this is why they last?

I have been able to repair modern electronics pretty extensively, been able to chase down odd issues with newer TVs, such as vizio. I have ran into a few of their sets where the mainboards have failed, instead of finding another mainboard, i have been able to fix them, they are notorious for their regulator circuit failing causing a white vizio logo with no picture, or sound.

Fixed a sony once with a bad mainboard as well, needed a new FDS transistor pack in one of the DC-DC buck converters. had a few laptop motherboards this way as well, bad/shorted buck converters and capacitors in the CPU/GPU core voltage regulator circuits. Gateways with thier bad solder on the northbridge IC causing no-post, Bad SIS southbridge ICs on the old dell inspiron 1000s with no IDE functions. Not to mention countless xbox consoles that I had to perform GPU swaps on. Gotta do what I gotta do to bring in money these days, its hard. and dying fast.

Had a samsung DLP, older style with bad solder on the TI DLP processor IC. notorious for that. Run it under the IR workstation and reflow the solder. Had an Nvidia 9800GTX from back in the day, go all lines in the picture and fail to load the drivers. Reflow on that chip fixed it as well.

Acer Aspire 5532s notorious for the southbridge starting to get intermittent, corrupting the CMOS/BIOS. The new HP all-in-one models that have come out recently, starting to find them to just die randomly and never power up again, traced them back to an 8051-based ASIC that runs the system power management, fans, thermal sensors, LED/panels, etc... that glitches and wipes its programming onboard the IC. no fix for this. Call HP and ask for a hex file to flash onto the IC via a JTAG interface? HAHAHAH yea right.... But i did manage to find a leaked schematic out of HannStar for that though.... Thats how i figured out the IC had failed. Plus its pretty obvious when that ASIC has full standby power, 3.3V and 5V, but the internal pull-ups that go to the keymatrix arnt enabled, the chip is bad.

I have found with laptops that appear dead, no lights, no power, first thing i check is the charge controller/power selection circuitry. If the 8 pin SMD MOSFET is engauged and supplying mains power to the system board, and no shorts appear in the DC-DC circuits, usually that ASIC fails. laptops have them as well, and they are used in laptops to scan the mouse touchpad, keyboard, all the system buttons, fans, LEDs, etc...

have a 36 in Sony vega flat crt 2003 still working good had a 94 27" trinitron from 94 to 07
still worked when i got rid of it have a 2 yr old lcd will see how it lasts had an 80
Magnavox bought new only lasted a little over 2 yrs red gun and tuner went out

have a 36 in Sony vega flat crt 2003 still working good had a 94 27" trinitron from 94 to 07
still worked when i got rid of it have a 2 yr old lcd will see how it lasts had an 80
Magnavox bought new only lasted a little over 2 yrs red gun and tuner went out

Pre-Philips Magnavox's were never that trouble free. They put the poorest quality tuners in their tube sets and they were always plagued with loose connections on the PC boards.:sigh:

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Love my Toshiba 36" CRT set seven years old and most days runs from 6AM to 8PM solid, still makes a picture that looks like new. Never had the back off. If I ever have to I'll need two weightlifters to help....

Yep, some newer sets have an outstandingly positive track-record. My 35" Sony from 1999 never had the back off and still looks great. Meanwhile, however, I bought a brand new Sony Wega in '04 (KV27FS120) where the tube went into iK shutdown and the crt was bad. got 2 years out of it.

I've got a Samsung 32" flat screen in the living room, only because it came free with the purchase of a car :D

The 1986 RCA Colortrak 2000 console that we had been using was put in the basement to play Nintendo on. I figure that once this flat screen craps out in a year or two, the basement set will come back to "main watcher" status.

I've got a Samsung 32" flat screen in the living room, only because it came free with the purchase of a car :D

The 1986 RCA Colortrak 2000 console that we had been using was put in the basement to play Nintendo on. I figure that once this flat screen craps out in a year or two, the basement set will come back to "main watcher" status.

There is no telling how long your flatscreen set may last -- it could be two years or ten-plus; besides, once you get used to watching TV on a high-definition flat panel, you may not even want to go back to the old CRT set. Today's flat-panel TVs are built to last much longer than their predecessors; witness Zenith/LG's FPs, in which the company claims the panel will last at least twenty years with eight hours of use a day, longer with average use. However, I understand (from reading a response to one of my posts to this forum on the subject of longevity of FP TVs) that the usual failure mode of most flat-panels is not the LCD or plasma panel, but failed electrolytic capacitors; it used to be that the video-driver ICs would short or otherwise fail, making the set instant junk because these chips are or were molded into the cable between the chassis and the display, and therefore could not be replaced.

How long is the warranty on your flat-screen TV? I am not familiar with Samsung FPs (except for knowing my landlord has one), so don't know anything about their warranties. My own Insignia (Best Buy house brand, rebadged Sylvania) 19" FP has a 2-year (!) warranty for parts and labor, so even if my set should fail within that time I'm not concerned about how I'll get it repaired; even if it comes to that, the repaired set may last another two, three years or more....it depends on the quality of the repair parts. For all I know, I may get a refurbished set if mine goes bad; that seems to be the trend nowadays with off-brand FPs, although the better makes such as Zenith/LG have actual service policies, in which the company will provide in-home service should the set need it. The makers of the off-brand sets do not, and indeed cannot, offer such service because their TVs are made to sell cheaply. In fact, it is usually not cost-effective to have a cheap FP TV repaired, as the cost of the repairs could and often do exceed that of a brand-new set.

Unfortunately, these sets, like everything else these days except automobiles, are built to be unrepairable throwaways when they fail. Too bad, but that's the way of it in the 21st century. :no:

The warranty is I believe a taillight warranty (once your taillights are out of view, the warranty expires ;) ) because I have no receipt for it. They just gave me the set when we drove away in my fiance's 2006 Beetle.

Personally, I have no love for the HD picture....it's okay, but it's not something that I would call "vital". I watch mainly the news, or Law and Order, or Restaurant Impossible and Chopped (love those shows!). I'd be just as happy watching about half of my programming on a black and white set, although the lady of the house would feel much differently ;).

i bought a toshiba 36 inch set approx 13 years ago.actually purchased two of them.both were priced as 27 inch models at j c pennys outlet.259.00 each.i used them for about 8 years myself and my mother has one that goes 24/7.the other was sold to an aquaintance of hers.it is going strong.the crts are very good after all these years.both have never been serviced other them me fooling with all the factory settings.one of the few newer items that i found to be reasonably longer lasting.

I have a Panasonic Vierra 26"LCD from mid 2007. I bought it used in 2008 and I hope that it is "old" enough to still be one of the quality generations of sets before the major cost cutting stepped in.

It was very expensive new, around 600 bucks I think. I paid just over $400 for it. So far so good. Now $600 will get you in the 50" range, but probably not much past the warranty period.

Personally, I have no love for the HD picture....it's okay, but it's not something that I would call "vital".

One thing you would have to get used to if you went back to a 4:3 NTSC CRT TV is the letterboxing of programs broadcast in 16:9 HD, unless your ATSC->NTSC converter box or digital cable box has a zoom feature that expands the picture to fill the screen as most of today's HD flat-panels have. (Early 1980s-vintage Zenith color sets also had a zoom feature that probably could be used to compensate for the size difference between 4:3 and 16:9 formatted images.)

I have also read that the two bars at either side of a letterboxed picture can burn themselves into the screen (especially on CRT sets) if the image is left on-screen for any length of time. However, I watched letterboxed pictures on my CRT set for several years with no damage to the screen, but I always try to zoom the picture to full-screen on my FP set due to the increased risk of damage to the panel, if 16:9 HD images are viewed in LB format. The proper zoom level can be difficult to find, however, when I watch the "CW" network affiliate in Cleveland in HD -- which isn't often. I usually have to settle for a well-overscanned picture that cuts off part of the network logo at the lower right corner of the screen. However, this effect, including the possibility of the image being cropped at full zoom, is mentioned in my set's online instruction manual and is normal, so I don't even think about it.