Old CRT televisions - interesting failure report

[peterlonz]

Hi everyone,
I am new here & thought this might interest readers & its not a help request.
My 34" CRT Mitsubishi TV, now about 12 to 15 years old has given great service. At about the 11 year mark a capacitor was replaced, & just recently when we could not get any picture, it was off to the repair man. No mean feat BTW it weighs a ton!
The quality of the picture seems as good as the day I bought it, & its not obviously inferior to the latest TV's either, so long as the broadcast signal is not too weak.
Howevr I digress, sorry.
When I asked the repair chap what was wrong last time he said "nothing really - except numerous dry joints".
That surprised me but the explanation I was given is that over time &, particularly applicable to solder joints that get hot, the heat/cool cycles result in joint failure in much the same wasy as metal fatigues.
Apparently he knew the joints at risk & just kept re-soldering until he had covered all the joints at risk in his experience, about 20 mins work & bingo swith on a & all is well.
That's not the sort of failure you hear about too often & I wondered how much engineering & life cycle testing goes into this element of product design & construction.
I am particularly interested because my enquiries reveal that modern plasma & LCD TV's do not appear likely to come close to the fault free service life of older CRT TV's like mine.
And its not just the new designs - I have been asked to "look at" two less than 4 years old CRT's (both failed in less than obvious ways) & because they are medium sized CRT, they are just not worth the repair effort.
So I ask what's happening to quality control these days, this story can be reapeated ad nauseum about almost any "modern" electronic device.
Has the new high temp low lead solder now in use had an effect maybe?
OR is the throw away lifespan now so short that nobody gives a damn?

[jts1957]

Apparently people must have been yelling at the manufacturers' over the years:

"Cheaper" - "CHeaper" - "CHEaper" - "CHEAper" - "CHEAPer" - "CHEAPEr" - "CHEAPER!"

Now they're yelling:

"Make it last a little further past the warranty!"
"MAke it last a little further past the warranty!"
"MAKe it last a little further past the warranty!"
"MAKE it last a little further past the warranty!"
...
...
...
...
"MAKE IT LAST A LITTLE FURTHER PAST THE WARRANTY!"
_________________
You're over there, I'm over here.

[minnie]

You wanted cheap, you got it. When price is a concern, you sacrifise quality. So when your friends say don't take the extended warranty their idiots!

[peterlonz]

I'm not so sure this is as easily explained as it might at first seem.
Consider the massive increases in new vehicle warranties which can only reflect a very genuine increase in vehicle build quality whilst relative prices have fallen.
Is the vehicle (car) industry any more or less competitive than the elctronics industry, I don't think so.
Then there's the issue about whether quality actually costs more, some say no, & point to the Japanses gradual domination of the car, optical, motorcyle, & machine tool industries, to name just a few.
Basically people bought these products based on quality & price but quality was what set in stone the Japanese success.
Now everythings made in China or some other underdeveloped Asian country (Malaysis, Shri-Lanka, Indonesia ........) surprisingly the build quality often looks very sound, plastic mouldings are well finished, layout is good for both assembly & repair & products are generally feature rich.

But they just don't last & the complexity of the diagnosis & repair option is just too costly in most cases.
If they are price driven, that's OK, so long as you can determine this at point of sale, but when were you last presented with this concept:
"Sir we can of course offer you this somewhat more expensive product which in our experience will give you a far longer service life". Nah just does not happen.
So there we go, chuck away society which the planet can ill afford.
How to stop this.
And why pay for an extended warranty period that the product should meet anyway based on any "fitness for purpose test" which is generally at the heart of consumer legislation in many countries, if difficult to enforce.