My point of view...

[PowerAmpFreak]

I've been involved in electronics repair for 15 years. Today I run an own firm focusing on electronics repair and development. We do about 75% audio products (mostly amplifiers) and 25% other which includes plasma and LCD TV repair. Back in 1995-99 I remember we did about 90% CRT TV's. It was very few sets which went to garbage because of unavailable spareparts.
Well, a few sets were scrapped because a faulty CRT. But not very often.
Then market changed and everyone must have a flat TV. So, noone repaired their crt tv's anymore, a good excuse to upgrade their livingroom with a new impressive flat tv. This forced us to change focus, from TV to audio products.
Recent years we see a growing part of plasma and LCD TV's in our shop. But, the situation today can't be compared to the old days of crt repair.
Now it appears the spareparts are made unavailable when the specific model is terminated in production. What a coincidence...
This makes it hard to bring the faulty TV's back to life. Of course, there's a chance to buy older spareparts on E-bay, but since we must give our customers some kind of repair warranty, buying used spareparts on E-bay is not the best solution.
This makes a few year old plasma TV's stand in need of a new SSB, or an exotic powersupply with absolutely no technical information anywhere.
Not even the service manuals recommend repair on component level. Mostly, board replacements is the way to go if the manuals are followed.
Boards which is not available anymore.........
The market force us to buy new TV's instead of having parts available.
It's genious in a way, but it's an environmently disaster from my point of view.

[Topcat]

Re: My point of view...

^
Having been in the TV/VCR repair business about the same era you were (1992-2000), I know exactly what you're talking about.

Remember when you had to use your oscilloscope, HV probe, schematics, and a meter to diagnose problems? Not anymore. TV repairmen are the same as car repairmen today.....meaning, they don't know how to diagnose and actually fix anything today. They're just board hangers.....which anyone deaf and dumb could do.

[PowerAmpFreak]

Re: My point of view...

Exactly!! I sure remember those times as you describe. A faulty object, service manual, oscilloscope, fluke, and a fresh cop of coffee. Great times!
Good example you mention about car technicians. This is pretty much the same. Module changers! I heard a story about a car where the electric cooling fan didn't work. Of course this would be an easy task some years ago. But, this lead to replacement of the engine ecu since the cooling fan was controlled by it.
This means finding a used ecu (like we search for that special SSB or PSU) or pay $$$ for a new ecu. Changing the ecu is so simple that the owner himself could do it, but probably the ecu needs to be programmed with option codes and so on (just like we do with option codes when changing a SSB).
The joy of fixing that special fault, finding a shorted diode somewhere deep deep down in the mud is virtually gone.
Replace the board and hope for the best, if it doesn't help change another board. This can't make anyone glad, except for them who produces the garbage we all try hard to repair!

[Toasty]

Re: My point of view...

Was going on 20 years before either of your dates (70's). Board hangers became prevalent with the intro of "modular" televisions. Just swap the module, and send the old one back as a core. At least they didn't end up in a landfill at that time.

Then the bottom fell out of the retail pricing where you couldn't sell a picture tube job anymore. $150!! Are you nuts? I can buy a new set for $200, and it's eight years newer with 14 different functions.

[smason]

Re: My point of view...

I worked for Philips in '78ish, when I was just a teenager. I didn't officially repair electronics, I was the low man on the totem pole, fixing small appliances, supposedly working my way up to audio/tv.
I raced through the backlog of blenders and shavers so I could work on the odd TV or stereo (we still did a lot of tube TVs back then) I loved it, but really hated fixing blenders with nasty crap in them , and shavers full of crud.
I do wish I had stuck with it, though my IT career pays much better then a repair tech these days...

The field quys did board swaps, but in the shop it was component level all the way.
Ahh the good ole days....

[cadiman]

Re: My point of view...

I have seen 3 electronic parts stores shut down in the last 5 years where I live. It is depressing.

The retail industry around auto repair has pushed for hanging parts not because the tech can`t fix the car ( sometimes). It is because they make up to a 400 percent profit on selling the parts.
GM pays their techs 18 min. to diagnose any problem with a car under warranty.

I am a fleet mechanic. I get paid to not hang parts. I get paid to repair. A portion of my job is electronicly controlled hydraulics. I use a fluke and a scope. Nobody is paying me to have two profesions.

Find an older mechanic you can trust. He will carge you a fair price and repair your car right the first time. Stay out of the dealers or franchise repair centers. They will ripp you off! I know... I have worked for them.

I still have more fun fixing tvs and amps!

[Toasty]

Re: My point of view...

I hear you!

Everything in South Jersey dried up about 20 years ago. I worked for Resco Electronics back in 79-81. They closed the NJ store shortly thereafter and kept one open in Philadelphia and one in Baltimore. I think they are now gone or they merged with some manufacturing group and have lost their identity.

When the parts stores went, they took a lot of businesses with them. Guys were just unwilling to travel to Phila. and as I said before, previously profitable jobs just stopped coming. Sure they could get parts shipped to them, but there was something about the hands-on, smells, conversation, meeting other techs camaraderie kind of goings on in the store that no one today can appreciate. These guys were 45 to 65 years old then. Probably most are gone now.

It was either adjust to the "new way" or go away. A lot chose the latter. I haven't seen a private TV repair shop in this area in at least 10 years.

[cadiman]

Re: My point of view...

There are two big tv repair shops near me. All the tvs I pick up from C/L are high repair estimates from these shops. I think you need to sell tvs and repair them to stay in business, but the big box stores took that away.
Toro did that to their mom and pop stores when they put their products inside home depot and only left warranty and service for the small dealers. Repair costs went up to make up for the lost sales and made the products throw a ways. It has NOT been a good business model to say the least for our economy. Small business makes this world go around and tv repair was a part of that as well.

The second problem is a big one.
The... "get a new one now generation"

Why fix the old one when you can get a newer, bigger, and better one and just charge it!

Now I am just getting all worked up. Sorry!

[PlainBill]

Re: My point of view...

Well, it's good and it's bad. 25 years ago I worked in electronics manufacturing. At that time about 1/3 of the people we hired from tech schools were actually interested in and capable of learning how the circuits worked. The other 2/3 were just parts changers. I doubt if the ratio has improved in the last 25 years.

When someone paid $2000 for a TV 3 years ago, he is a little upset to discover that repairing it will cost more than half the cost of a new one that has better features. And in truth, the manufacturers have few options.

Repair is usually done at board level because that's the only way the average tech can handle it. Yes, an extraordinary one can troubleshoot to the component level. But for the businessman, what's the point? If Joe (costing $100 an hour to keep around) can find and replace a leaky diode in half an hour, it's still a $100 repair by the time the invoice is written up. And if Joe takes ah hour, then has to replace the board, it would have been cheaper to have a screwdriver jockey replace the board in the first place.

The good part is that some of us can repair these and make some money at it - or at least get a good TV cheap.

PlainBill

[Innov8tive1]

Re: My point of view...

I had about 14 years of consumer electronic repair under my belt. When I started the vast majority was VCR, CRT tvs were a close second then came audio and all the other smaller stuff. I was growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of manuals, difficulty finding parts, complexity of circuits, surface mount components etc. and a boss breathing down my neck making sure that I was "making him money" every hour he paid me for. I changed careers in 2006, just when the first generation plasma/lcd sets were dying. I now fix office equipment, larger copiers, printers, fax machines etc. which has it's own set of challenges. Now every machine is connected to a network and is much more than just a copy machine. I hardly ever use my electronics experience as most breakdowns are mechanical, the electronics in these machines are pretty solid.
I still take older CRT and CRT rear projection sets and fix 'em at my shop at home. Works out good for the customer as there really are no shops locally any more that fix 'em and to take them go a bigger city for repair is cost prohibitive. I can do things cost effectively and still make a few bucks at it. I tried a couple of plasmas and finding boards isn't hard on ebay but you're really not sure if they are good or not. Once I finish the one that's in the shop now I will NEVER work on another one. It's not worth my time and frustration level.