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Starting in about 1991, the quality of Zenith/Rauland picture tubes started going way downhill and got even worse by about '93-'94. These horrible CRTs were made until about '98, when the CRT plant was closed and Zenith started getting tubes from other suppliers (mainly Philips/Sylvania and RCA/Thomson). Those later Zenith tubes would prematurely get weak and/or intermittently short. Heck, I've seen some new Zenith sets from that period that looked like they had a weak CRT out of the box. When they shorted, they'd cremate the power supply and/or blow out parts in the video driver stage. You could replace the cremated parts and the set would work for five minutes, five hours, a week, or a month and then the tube would short, causing those parts to blow up, and then you'd have a call-back on your hands that generally resulted in refunding the customer for the repair. These intermittently shorting tubes would not usually show up on a CRT tester and it got so that when I saw one of those sets with cremated parts in the power supply, I condemned it on the spot. As far as when the tubes went weak, they would not take a hit from a CRT rejuvenator (kind of hard to rejuvenate something that was crap to start with). At best, they'd look good for a brief period and then fall back down to worse than they were to start with. The Philips and RCA tubes that they started using in circa '98 were far superior, but the damage to Zenith had been done. I believe it was '99, when LG fully took over Zenith and a few years later, the Zenith name was all but mothballed. I think 2004 was the last year for a Zenith console and I know someone who has a Zenith console from 2002 that is still in use. I can't remember if it has the Philips or RCA tube, but the last time I saw it, it still looked pretty good. Those '90's Zenith tubes are, without a doubt, the worst I've ever encountered and most of the sets that used them are now in the landfill.
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