My RCA died! :(

[electronjohn]

Well..it's not dead yet...but a trip to the TV Graveyard is in the cards. My wife had it on yesterday afternoon when everything turned blue/green...no red, yellow, etc. A big storm had passed through earlier....but the TV was off at the time. I suspect a delayed reaction to a nearby lightning strike or something. Either that, or the red gun decided to give up the ghost. So...I'll pull the 31 incher out of the cabinet, hold the appropriate rites, and dig out the 27" Zenith I have stored in the garage. Not interested in a flattie (couldn't afford one right now even if I was)...but, there's TONS of 32-36" sets out there for $100-200. Gonna stay CRT, thank you.

[Sandy G]

Good man !

[electronjohn]

Yeah...I've been extra alert for something on the curb...but being in a lessly-populated area doesn't provide for many nifty curbside finds. The Zenith should be interesting...I've never plugged it in. Fellow gave it to me, saying he lost the remote and couldn't figure out how to run it. I would suppose a universal remote would be all I need. I don't know the year, it has a bit of faux wood on it, but a pretty squared-off screen hints that it isn't all that old. We'll see how it goes.

[wilkes85]

what a coincidence, so did my RCA.

Now i got another RCA going... I hope that fucker doesn't kick the bucket too.

[electronjohn]

Well...fired up the Zenith yesterday. Nice set...too bad the picture isn't a whole lot better than what my RCA was delivering. It's a stereo set, nice audio...might have a problem with convergence, and the color's not quite right. I was able to access the menu thru the front panel controls and messed & messed & messed with all the settings but wasn't able to get things looking right. I thought things looked best when the "Color Sentry" was activated, but my wife didn't like the way it looked and asked me to "put it back the way it was". Whatever. So...the plan's in place: haul the RCA to the shop. They still work on CRT sets, and if it's fixable for $150 or less I'm OK with that. I'd have to spend at least that for a used set (and be unsure of what I was getting) , can't find any on the curb, don't want a flattie...and I miss the great picture that RCA delivered even at about 14 years of service. The Zenith will do back-up duty til the RCA returns. All this hoohah did give me an opportunity to neatly dress all the cabling in the entertainment center and give everything a good vac & wipe, though.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by electronjohn

Yeah...I've been extra alert for something on the curb...but being in a lessly-populated area doesn't provide for many nifty curbside finds.

I hear ya. I live in a small town (population 3,215) outside Cleveland, and have seen very few (if any) old TVs on the treelawns lately (the last one I remember seeing was a 1978 RCA color console on the next street over from my apartment, about seven years ago). Perhaps the reason I haven't seen any flat panels around these parts (at all, yet) is that folks around here are taking advantage of the TV recycling options offered by Best Buy, but that still doesn't explain why I haven't seen more CRT sets by the side of the road on trash day. I would think that with all TV being digital now, folks would be getting rid of their CRTs left and right and replacing them with FPs. Oh well. Perhaps they are holding on to the old sets and using converters, or maybe, just maybe some of them have gotten tired of having to contend with the OTA reception problems, don't want cable or satellite, and have given up altogether on watching TV. I wouldn't be surprised if they are having reception problems, as in this area, one channel (WKYC 3, NBC in Cleveland) never even reached here in analog and probably would not get here in digital either; channels 5, 8, 19, 25, 43, and 61 reach here, all right, but the reception using rabbit ears is fair to poor at best, with channel 19, the CBS affiliate, is really the only station that comes in well enough to watch with an indoor antenna, and that was when the station was transmitting an analog signal. The digital signal from this station is probably the only one anyone using an antenna around here will be able to watch, without going to either a converter box or cable/satellite. Many people don't like paying for TV service (even ultra-basic or what I call "bare-bones basic" service such as Time-Warner offers, which is local channels only and is something on the order of $11.70 a month), but here, most folks have TW cable or satellite, having done away with their old antenna years ago. In the far eastern Cleveland suburb where I grew up, cable didn't arrive until 1982. Before then, many people in that suburb had to use rather large antennas to get decent pictures on the network stations (my neighbor in my hometown, for example, had a very large far-suburban antenna installed on her chimney, with a mast-mounted preamplifier and coax downlead if I remember correctly, when she got a new color TV), but still could not receive certain channels such as PBS very well. Don't get me started on the reception problems that sprang up like mushrooms when FOX bought out channel 8 in Cleveland. That station had been a CBS affiliate for more than 40 years and, in many cases, was the best-received station in our area. (I know it was at my home at the time.) The CBS affiliation went to a 3.7-megawatt ERP UHF station in an eastern Cleveland suburb immediately thereafter (the two stations effectively swapped networks, as channel 19, the new UHF station I am referring to, was the FOX affiliate at the time). And then the problems began. Channel 19 reached the east side of Cleveland over-the-air just fine, but viewers without cable west of the city either could not get the station at all (this station, like all others in Cleveland and the rest of the U.S. at that time [mid-1980s] was transmitting solely analog) or else they received it with much less than a city-grade signal. This did not put the station in a very good light, as it was now an affiliate of CBS-TV. I don't know if anything was ever done to improve their signal or to reshape their signal pattern to better serve all greater Cleveland, but I guess that doesn't matter these days since many folks now get their TV reception by means other than antennas. Even when 19 would sign off at 2 a.m. (in the days before infomercials and 24x7 TV), it would not mention where its transmitter was located, although 43, 55 and 61 (the only commercial UHF stations in Cleveland) weren't afraid to mention the city from which they transmitted their super-power signals (43 eventually installed a 5-megawatt ERP transmitter so it could reach the Akron-Canton, Ohio area, 30-some miles south, as well as Cleveland and environs.

Reception problems (with analog) such as the ones with Cleveland's CBS channel 19 were bad enough then. The problems folks can and likely will have with receiving that station's (and others--Cleveland has seven commercial OTA TV stations and several translators) digital signal with an antenna and a box in some areas could be huge indeed. I bet the cable operator in this area is being kept busier than a one-armed paper hanger, doing bare-bones basic cable installations in homes all over northeastern Ohio--including the outlying areas far beyond Cleveland.

[electronjohn]

Well...the TV shop called. No good news...bad CRT. I asked if they tried to rejuvenate it...but a bad gun is a bad gun. Rats. $60 "screw removal" fee down the dumper. No sense replacing the CRT...that's be an arm & a leg (if one were even available). I'm going to check & see if they have any 31-32" sets they've taken off folks hands after a flattie upgrade.

[electronjohn]

TV shop had a nice 25" Sanyo they'd taken in...but no A/V inputs or anything. They'd pretty much do an even trade for my $60 "screw removal" fee...but I don't think I want it. It'd make a great set for someone who just wants to hook it up to a cable box or converter...but I'm not interested in jerry-rigging something into the HT setup. Gonna go look at a 32" LXI after work...$50 OBO. Anybody know anything about LXI sets? Meanwhile, I'm continuing to fiddle with the 27" Zenith that's doing temp duty. Activating Color Sentry and fiddling with color, tint etc. gives a much better picture...still a little on the green side, although the red is showing better. I was tweaking it during the Twins game last night since I know exactly how the blue background behind the plate should look as well as the correct yellow on all the Best Buy logos festooning the park. The red in the Twins logo looks right but the field is still too green. Game 2 against those @#$%%^^ Yankees is tonight...more tweaking during the game.

[radiotvnut]

The LXI will likely be a rebadged Sanyo or RCA. LXI is the Sears house brand.

[electronjohn]

And the only way I'd be happier would be if I'd found it on the curb. Fellow had it out in his garage, hooked up a DVD player for a test, and everything looked great. The moment I started messing with the menus I knew it was an RCA under the skin...they were exactly the same as those on my defunct 31". A look at the back confirmed it: CTC177...assembled in Bloomington, Indiana US of A. Sweet! His ad said $50 OBO and my offer of $40 put it in the car. Got home, pulled the backup Zenith 27" out of the rack and rassled the LXi in. Just the tiniest bit of tweaking during the Twins game (!@##$%^ Yankees!) and I had a perfect picture. Nice, nice set. The only cosmetic problem is a snapped-off front foot...but I don't buy a TV as a fashion statement...I buy it for a great picture. Now the problem is: what to do with the backup Zenith? It's a Sentry 2, very nice condition, and a short session on the bench giving it a thorough alignment should produce a good picture. I think I've done all I could with the menu controls...the back needs to come off.

[RobtWB]

CTC 177'S produce a great picture, have 2 of them, both CTC 177AM2's.
Both have thousands of hours on the CRT's and are still fantastic.
And yes, both of them have had the tuner resoldering done.
Those mid 90's RCA's as a general statement, have excellent pictures, and notwithstanding the tuner issue and ocassional flyback issues, seem to be exceptionally stable sets, capable of thousands of hours of play time.

[electronjohn]

I couldn't agree more. I don't recall the model of my dead 31", but I'm thinking it was a couple years older than the LXi. Some rough calculations showed right around 25,000 hours on it before the red gun died. Only one $125 repair about 10 years ago...otherwise near-continuous use. Don't think a 2009 flatttie will run like that.

[electronjohn]

Well...went to the TV shop & picked up my dead RCA. (CTC-187. BTW) Took it to the TV graveyard. Cool thing though: I get 1/2 my $60 "screw removal fee" back...so my new-to-me LXI actually only cost $10. Sweet!

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by electronjohn

I couldn't agree more. I don't recall the model of my dead 31", but I'm thinking it was a couple years older than the LXi. Some rough calculations showed right around 25,000 hours on it before the red gun died. Only one $125 repair about 10 years ago...otherwise near-continuous use. Don't think a 2009 flatttie will run like that.

I have an RCA CTC185A7 XL-100 19" TV that I bought new in 1999. It worked great out of the box, and still works well today...almost ten years later. I only had one repair on mine--the RF port for cable/antenna snapped off the tuner PC board. The repair, done by the local TV shop in the next town, was not cheap and had to be redone after a year (!), but after that, no problems whatsoever. This set has an excellent picture on Time-Warner Cable, and I swear, since TV went all-digital last month (TW had converted to all-digital about a year prior to the transition) the picture on every one of the local channels (I have basic cable that gets only broadcast channels) is now better than ever--like a good photograph. This TV has also fallen off its stand and survived, requiring only a sweep or two around the screen with an old speaker magnet to remove a few color splotches on the picture. That did the trick, removing the splotches and restoring the nice clear picture this TV has given me since the day I purchased it.

I agree with you one hundred percent as to staying with CRT TVs and computer monitors; that's my feeling on the subject as well. I have nothing against flat-panels, but I do think, after reading several posts here regarding the superiority of CRT TVs over FPs, that I will keep my RCA CRT set until it dies. When it goes, I have a 14-year-old Zenith Sentry 2 that will replace the RCA set. When the Zenith finally goes belly-up, then and only then will I get a FP.

Who knows? Perhaps by then (I'm thinking several years from now), FPs will be as inexpensive as 12" B&W portables used to be, 30+ years ago. I bought a Zenith 12" solid-state b&w portable in 1978 for $62; that set lasted 22 years and was still going strong when I got rid of it in 2000. I put it out by the trash barrels in back of my apartment; it was gone the next day (before trash pickup). I do hope that whomever got that set was or still is getting some use out of it, as it still had plenty of life left in it. The only reason I got rid of it was that I had moved to a very small apartment (the unit I live in today) and only had room for two color sets--the Sentry 2 and the RCA CTC185.