[Jeffhs]

The CTC203 was the first Thomson chassis to use a tuner that wasn't mounted on the set's main PCB. The tuner was mounted remotely from the chassis, with cables connecting it to the main board. The earlier Thomson sets had the onboard tuner, which caused no end of trouble when the ground points around the shield broke loose from the board. This allowed noise to enter the jungle IC, ruining said IC (by scrambling its programming, among other things) in no time flat.

I think RCA/Thomson used the remote tuner design (mounted separately from the chassis) with every one of its TVs from the CTC203 chassis to the last NTSC one. The remote tuner may be and likely is used in Thomson's flat screen sets as well.