Stay away from??

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Zenith26kc20

The problem with replacing the Star system battery was the cusomer would not call until it failed. It was a regular carbon/zinc battery. Once replaced one would have the fun job of programming every cable station the customer had programmed in before the failure. If I remember right, the 25 inch Star sets had vertical trouble also.
The only reason we "disliked" them was the amount of time it took to reprogram everything.

Most non-technical people do not realize or care that there is a battery in these TVs. Further, most televisions had (and still have) a warning on the back cover not to remove said back, due to high voltage and electric shock hazards. This warning is enough to scare most people into keeping their hands out of the innards of the TV, even to replace a battery.

Even if they knew there was any kind of battery in the set, most people would not have the faintest idea what it is there for, let alone how to replace it. When the battery in these Magnavox, et al. TVs finally failed, erasing all channel programming, I imagine most people just left it alone, changing the channels manually using the keypad on the remote.

There is also the possibility of the dead battery leaking in its holder inside the set, but again most set owners didn't know or care about it. (I wonder how many of these Magnavox Star System and other TVs have been found with defective backup cells that have leaked and corroded the contacts of the holder, when the set is being repaired due to some other problem. )

The same thing can and probably does happen all the time with today's flat panel TVs, which I'm sure also use backup batteries for channel memory and backup of other settings, although many FPs quit and are junked long before said battery fails. Remember, most non-technical people know only three things about their TVs: how to turn it on or off, how to adjust or mute the volume, and how to change the channels, once the set is installed and set up. They couldn't care less about backup batteries or anything else inside the television, so long as the set works properly.