Newspaper reporter working on story about old TVs, new TVs and planned obsolescence

[rca2000]

Originally Posted by fsjonsey

My father is one of those, IM NOT PUTTING MY MONEY INTO CRAP!!!!!111 kinda guys. So, he goes out and buys new crap...

Sad refrain...on a similar set.

A guy who is involved with my radio club told me last year that he heard of a school that was tossing a bunch of those 32" philips sets. He got one out of the trash, took it home and was not sure of the problem. I told him about the drive cap and the transistor it sometimes kills, and what to get to fix the set. He later told me I was right...and he had made a deal to get a BUNCH of those sets from the custodian of the school BEFORE they hit the dumpster, for fixing one or two for him. Last I heard, he had fixed a couple for the guy with the cap and maybe the transistor , and was now going to get a number of them to fix and "flip" for himself. Most likely ALL of them will have the same problem. It is unfortunate tha the school decided to trash them and buy new flat screen sets--when he could have fixed their old ones a lot cheaper, and MORE reliably than the disposable flat screen LCD sets!!

[NowhereMan 1966]

I have a 1982 Zenith System 3 that is a daily watcher since we get her in 1983. Just think, I was a 16 year old sophomore in high school when we bought it and now I'm 41 and still watch the same TV. I think it is sad we live in a disposable society where if the TV breaks, get a new one. Inside every TV are parts made from Mother Earth, some of them rare metals, some of them toxic to the environment. We need to get back to a fixable item and recycle parts that are still usuable. Earlier this year, I went "dumpster diving" and brought home a console stereo CD player, a GE model made in 1984. The only thing wrong with it is that the CD tray does not eject, reason, the original belt is worn out. If I order a new one or use a rubber band as a stopgap, I'm back in business. Yet, it was tossed because of it.

I think the "bottom line" in today's business world is hurting us, we lost our factories to Mexico and more often, Red China. I might be getting a little political here but I believe we are committing national suicide by sending our money to Red China as we buy their products and one day, it will come back and hurt us big time. Already, Red China holds a lot of bonds and if they call them in, our economy is sunk (although it is already). Although this has gone on a long time, I think between the Clintons and the Bushes, both have sold out the average American and has bankrupted this nation. We don't have a value added economy anymore, just a service one that pushes the money around like a game of Monopoly. Plus most jobs that are left are ones that pay a lower wage than the ones we lost and there are times the workers cannot buy what they make or would have made because they don't have enough money. We are seeing this with the General Motor Delphi planet in Ohio where the wages have been lowered so much that they would be lucky to buy the entry level GM cars if at all.

Sorry for the politics there but I just wanted to say that we need to get back a value added economy where we take raw materials from the earth and make something with it, thus adding value to it. Instead we ship our raw materials to other nations and they add the value to it, in short, we are reduced to an economic colonial status much like the British did in the 1700's.

Again sorry for the rant with politics in it, but I had to vent and this gave a me chance to say my piece. In short, "that ain't no way to run a railroad."

[sampson159]

most of todays electronics are disposable.my son works for a company that handles returns-they refurbish or destroy. over 60% are destroyed!many high end plasmas,lcd,etc. the older things were built to last and when they didn t work you had them repaired.the old tv man was like a part of the family.we are all so fast paced and pressured that there is no leasure time. i have a 15 year old toshiba that has ran non-stop for the last 13 years. my son never turns it off. my set is a 106 inch infocus dlp hd projector that i am very happy with. i do have a 21 round ctc12 rca from 1962 that is still working. most homes had one tv and the whole family would watch it together. hd is nice, i like the roundie!