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I have to pretty much agree with Andy on this. TVs have generally always been made as cheap as possible(with Zenith being a possible exception). I Have TVs with the cheap wafer tuners that always need to be jiggled to make connection(even after cleaning). I also remember this being the case many years ago in the 1970s. Due to cost, almost all of the old tube type TVs have very poor FM sound detection systems(and the B&W sets lack DC restoration) as well.
As to modern TVs I still use my mothers 1980 Sears solid state TV in my workshop. Other than some buzz in the sound it works great with no repairs. My mother had a Goldstar(cheap Korean brand) that went 15 years until the CRT became so weak it was unwatchable(no repairs ever). I personally had a Mitsubishi TV that lasted about 15 years with not repairs(lightning got it). I presently have Sanyo that has lasted since 2004 with no repairs.
The old TVs are great to restore, but were not that reliable, even when new. That is the reason so many TV shops were then in business. As to the reason no one works on new TVS:
1. They are cheap. Pretty much no one worked on Transistor radios in the 1970s either. Also the complexity of the present TV (even CRT ones) design and manufacturing is many times what was done in the 1960s. Surface mount technology, multilayer PC boards, ICs with millions of transistors in them(This is a great bargain compared to 1960s stuff) make repair inpractical.
And this is continuing-I just recently went to a presentation that stated Intel and IBM are now putting billions(not millions) of transistors on some of their chips-These are for the internet server market, not TVs, but some of this will trickle down.
2. All of the electronics in now in the integrated circuits, which are not repairable and may be harder to get than 1960s TV(or even 1920s radio) vacuum tubes after 4 or 5 years. Luckily integrated circuits usually last many times longer than the old vacuum tubes(especially the power ones).
I like restoring the old TVs, but am glad they are not my daily watchers.
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