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I think I read where there was a lawsuit; but, I don't know the outcome.
I think '92 was the first year that the "tuner on board" was used (CTC175, 6, 7 chassis). The main symptoms were intermittent snowy picture and intermittent vertical sweep issues. If the problem was not fixed, the EEPROM IC would eventually become corrupted and the set would not power up at all. I made a lot of money off those sets; but, I still think it was a bad design. These sets also had failures of tiny surface mounted components inside the tuner. On any other set, you'd simply replace the tuner module. On these RCA's, one is forced to repair the tuner. About 1.5 years ago, I had a nice 27" CTC177 console with a half dead tuner. Fortunately, the set had A/V jacks; so, I was able to feed it a signal through a DTV box or VCR. I gave the TV to a friend and I think he still uses it.
RCA used the "tuner on board" until the early production CTC203's. After 8 or 9 years, they finally figured out that the traditional seperate tuner module was more reliable and later CTC203's had a real tuner module that was soldered to the chassis and could be replaced. I've also seen a couple of late production 19" CTC185's with a seperate tuner module. Besides the integrated tuner issues, these were not bad sets.
After the CTC203, RCA quality really went to crap and Thomson eventually sold the name. Post-CTC203's are so crappy that I've now gotten to the point where I won't bother to open one. I really think RCA and Philips were in competition with one another to see who could build the junkiest TV set.
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