Quote:
Originally posted by andy
Post Thomson RCA tubes have been surprisingly good. They do have a rather high defect rate, but if you get a good one they seem to go on forever. I've never seen one that was too weak to use.
The bad Zenith CRTs started in late 1993. After that 3 years was about all you could expect out of them. Of course, a bedroom TV that's only on an hour a day could still look fine.
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Andy, I forgot to mention that my Zenith Sentry 2 was my main watcher the first four years I had it, and I used it a lot. It wasn't until I moved in 1999 and bought a new RCA XL-100 that I relegated the Zenith to the bedroom of my apartment. I don't use the Zenith much anymore, but still fire it up every once in a while just to see if it still works. It does, and well, even after nearly a decade, but I notice ghosting, windshield-wiper and other interference on certain cable channels, which does not show on the XL-100 in the living room. The reception on the broadcast channels and most cable channels, however, is excellent on both sets since the cable system in this area was completely rebuilt this past spring.
The only conclusion I can come to about my Zenith Sentry 2, which, BTW, survived the move (15 miles) from my former home out here to the small town where I live now (no components shaken loose, etc.), is that this set was one of the rare ones that had a "good" CRT, despite having been manufactured in 1995. What can I say, the set works, even after all these years.
BTW, I must have gotten an RCA with one of the so-called "good" CRTs as well. As I mentioned in my last post, my set now has almost five years on it and the picture looks great, as good as when the set was new. The one time I had the set serviced, the technician resoldered every connection around the onboard tuner; the set has been working fine with a cable box (for Comcast digital service) ever since. The only other problem the technician pointed out to me was a slight defect in the "jungle" signal-processor IC, but that doesn't seem to be affecting anything as far as I can tell at this time. (Heck, the set's been working like a charm since that repair, which was over three years ago now--what can I say?) I did not have the problem repaired because the tech told me it would cost over $100 to replace that chip (that estimate was not so much for the chip itself as for the time spent reprogramming the thing, and other expenses which go along with any TV repair job).