Expected lifetime of new TV sets

[radiotvnut]

Originally Posted by waltchan

Does this also apply to my 25" RCA CTC-121 chassis? The FCC-ID code shows it was designed in 1983 but my set was made on Janauary 1984.

As far as I know from Consumer Reports, in the early 80s, Sony and Mitsubishi tied #1 in reliability back then. Then Panasonic took over after 1985 and stayed #1, until 2003 when Sony, Sanyo, and Toshiba are now more reliable than Panasonic after more than 20 years of absence. I wonder what caused the Panasonic CRT reliability to drop after 2003.

I was recently asked to fix a later model 36" Panasonic CRT flat screen. All that was wrong was the AC fuse and the chassis appeared to be much better quality than the '80's and '90's Panasonics. The ones from the '80's and '90's usually had bad flybacks, a ton of bad solder connections, and weak CRT's (mainly on the 19" and larger sets). Panasonic made a chassis for GE that was to be used in 25" sets from the mid '80's. It's the one that used the TLF14423F flyback (I know some of you old TV men know what chassis I'm talking about). Every one of those I ever got had a bad flyback, weak CRT, loose connections, or a combination of the three. I finally got to the point that I would not go any further if I discovered that chassis in a set.