It's getting bad...

[radiotvnut]

By the late '90's-early 2000's, I was hearing "$50 for a 19" TV! I can get a new one with a warranty for $99!" I usually wouldn't argue with them. I'd just tell them to go get it.

Then, when CRT sets started to be phased out and flat screen sets were still high, I experienced a brief period of getting somewhat decent money for CRT sets from people who could not afford a new HD TV.

Now, like what's been said, flatscreen's are getting cheaper and cheaper by the week. Most people can now afford one, rather than "settle" for an obosolete used set. And, if a big CRT TV is now only worth a few bucks; then, it's really not worth bringing it home and wasting my time to repair it. Even on the BPC sets that I do fix, I don't spend much time on them. If it's not a routine problem that I can solve in 30 minutes (or less), it gets tossed. A long time ago, I'd work on one until I either fixed it or determined that it would cost too much to fix.

Last Wednesday night, a guy at church was telling me that his 8 year old RCA 36" TV (probably a CTC203) had developed an intermittent picture. As most technicians know by now, this is caused by loose connections, especially on a small coil in the horizontal driver circuit. Failure to fix the problem will result in the HOT shorting and possibly taking out the power supply. I told him that it would likely be a simple fix now and I warned him what would happen if he continued to use the set. He said that since it was so heavy and was probably close to the end of it's life, he'd probably just dump it and buy a new TV.