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Old 05-21-2012, 01:57 PM
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radiotvnut radiotvnut is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Meridian, MS
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Yeah, don't consider anything with the Zenith name on it from the '90's or those "digital system 3" sets from the late '80's. I have a friend who paid around $1600 for a 31" Zenith digital system 3 console around '89. The reason he bought it is because it had a feature called teletext that would allow him to access all sorts of information. That TV was a POS from day one. When the Zenith dealer wasn't working on it, I was. I rejuvenated the CRT at least twice while he owned it. A few years ago, he told me to get it out of his life and I brought it home, replaced a bunch of bad electrolytic caps in the power supply and vertical sweep circuits and rejuvenated the CRT (again). Then, it developed a tuner problem that I think was just a loose connection; but, I wasn't going to open it again. I paired it with an old VCR to use as a tuner and I gave the set to the SA. Most any '90's Zenith you find will have a bad CRT, no matter how "high end" the TV was supposed to be.

Mitsubishi's had good pictures; but, that's a set you'd better be prepared to change every electrolytic cap on the chassis and clean up the mess from the old leaking caps. It finally got to the point where I wouldn't accept a Mitsubishi for repair.

I remember the Proscan hype in the early-to-mid '90's. I worked on a few that used the CTC169 chassis; which, wasn't a terrible set. However, they are now getting to the age where the CRT's are getting weak and the chassis will come near having too many problems. Most of the problems I had with the 169 had to do with bad caps in the PS/horizontal output/vertical sweep sections, blown HOT's, blown power supply parts, and blown audio output IC's. There was a CTC170 chassis that was a total PITA that I refused to work on. Then, there was the CTC179 that was an OK performer; but, they were difficult to work on and the flyback was a high failure part.

Sony's were a decent set; but, the CRT's tended to go bad after a few years.

If you consider a set to buy, look at the picture. If the greyscale is off, displays a soft picture, has color bleeding, or any combination of the above; you likely have a weak CRT and you'd be better off to move on to something else.
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