One of my televisions died today. I was about to feel bitter towards a certain Japanese manufacturing company until I read this excellent post on usenet and realized that the set had lived a long and useful life, between 25000 -30000 hours without any special care or preventative measures.
Well I fdor one think the life expectancy of a TV is short..........We used to be strictly Zenith, and the last one we bought died in a short time.......same for the Magnavox.Bought two Panasonics, one died one half alive..........So about two years ago we decided to buy a good TV and bought JVC......its color is all faded and its on its last legs as well.........but my old, and I mean old Samsung 19 inch color in the shop is still kicking butt and taking names and is like the day it was made
From what others tell me S>===One of my televisions died today. I was about to feel bitter towards a
REMEMBER: "This is worth repeating for benefit of al newbies! Jo Ann asked Dr. Solo to remind people that while she has retired from selling GF (and sold the business to Ken Fischer
I have an NEC with 20+ years and a Panasonic with 28+ years. The NEC is still in daily use and works fine, the Panasonic is out in the shop and hasn't been on for a year or so. But it worked the last time I turned it on. Both have had minor repairs (by me), but not for the last 15 years.
I bought an RCA 25" set in 1986. About 5 years ago, my wife did a switcheroo with cable providers, and the tech that came out to install the new cable told us that the color was bad on our set. I didn't see much wrong, but it was all down hill with my wife, and pretty soon a new
45" Hitachi was sitting in the corner. I ran an ad on the local Usenet forsale group, asking $25 and explaining that the color was bad. Some guy bit, and when he showed up, I was explaining the color problem to him. My 9 year old daughter overheard and darted over to the TV saying, "No Dad, here's what you do to fix the color!". She fiddled with something and the picture became perfect! The buyer looked surprised, then slyly fished the $25 out of his pocket. I had to laugh at myself while I helped him load it.Some TVs last a long time. And I think we should give our kids a whole lot more credit than we do.
Maybe the environment where the TV's reside is detrimental for electronics? I have a 19" Mitsubishi (22 years) & a 27" Sony (10 years) that have had zero problems so far. Both are on every day for about 6 hours each.
The video operation that I used to work for had some old equipment.....A couple of our primary switcher monitors were 1950's Ball's. Had the round tubes and pretty much open cases. Last time I was in the facility, about 8 years ago, the Balls were still going but they had been relegated to serving as security monitors within the truck garage. If I remember correctly, Ball quit building TV's and monitors somewhere arround 1963.
Craig C. snipped-for-privacy@ev1.net
I worked for Ball Computer Products in 1975 and we were using the CRT divison's 9" monchrome monitors then. I think they were around until about
1980.Your point is well taken though.
Y'mean Alabama?
I've got a 1979 "vintage" GE 13 inch B&W TV here, works great. Pulled it out of the trash one day, never had to repair anything in it, just kept on workin- go figure!
Tim
-- "I've got more trophies than Wayne Gretsky and the Pope combined!" - Homer Simpson Website @
When he originally had the problem, he asked me if I could fix it. I told him the price of a new tuner module, which he considered to be too much, so instead I hooked it up to his VCR and let him use that tuner. After a month of that he decided to just get a new set (another Magnavox 27"), and ended up giving me the old one.
I never did replace the tuner module, since I prefer my VCR tuner anyway. I had a resistor go bad last year, preventing the unit from any functionality, but $0.50 later it was back in business.
Although it's 22 years old, the color is flawless, and the picture is crisp and sharp. They don't make them that way anymore, though, so I consider myself lucky to have this one.
Jon
The Panasonic 25" I bought in 1982 is still going strong. It's so old the tuner can't receive channels above 71, but the picture is still good. The only failure was the remote -- it died in '90, and we're using an RCA substitute.
ff wrote:
REMEMBER: "This is worth repeating for benefit of al newbies! Jo Ann asked Dr. Solo to remind people that while she has retired from selling GF (and sold the business to Ken Fischer
Well, it pays to be a packrat. I remembered the old set, a '79 vintage Toshiba was out in the garage still. It doesn't have the composite video inputs but the tube is still good and by using the VCR as a tuner, receives all channels. That will do while I shop around for the next generation--a flat screen HDTV.
Fred
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