most disturbing TV experience?

[dr.ido]

There is a certain Rifa foil cap usually used as a mains filter cap that has a habit of filling a room with smoke. They were common in both Thomson monitors and the Astec power supplies used in TRS-80 model IIIs. Both were common at our user group meetings at the time. So common it became kind of a running joke around here as to when the next one would let go. Every so often one would let go, we'd laugh and keep on doing whatever we were doing as would the monitor or TRS-80 that was creating a cloud of smoke. The reaction from those who weren't aware of it wasn't so calm though.

I'm quite sure I still have at least a couple of these monitors in storage waiting to let out their smoke.

Why these companies put a 250V cap across the mains in units for sale in countries with 240V mains I will never know. I have never seen the 400V version of the same cap fail.