The MODERN TV Repair Tech

[FrizzleFried]

OK...so I have a monitor that I swapped tubes, yokes, rings, etc.   I got the purity PRETTY decent....but not 100%.  And because I am an anal pain-in-the-ass I called around to see what it would cost me to have the yoke/purity rings adjusted by a professional to get that 100% kick-ass look.

Well...let me tell you...evidently working on a TV is a lost art that only a choice few are willing to dive in to.  I called a good number of businesses listed as a TV REPAIR shop via the webs "local directory"... the majority of them don't work on TV's...they replace them.  Of the two I found that actually WORK on them,  they both had absolutely NO CLUE as to what I was asking...with one going so far as to saying "We work on TV yokes all the time"...and even though I explained to him that the tube is a TV TUBE,  he refused to work on it.   The other said he would "check with his boss" and get back to me.

Grrr...

AHH....guy just called back as I was writing this...check this out...$80-$100 to adjust the friggin' yoke/purity rings.   What a crock of crapola.

[grantspain]

difficult job the yoke setup,very time consuming
i guess you started with green using a grid and then add the red and blue one by one

[Ken Layton]

Alot of consumer tv sets come with the yoke bonded (glued) to the picture tube. That way a tech doesn't have to ---fudgesicle--- with it and if either the tube or yoke go bad you have to buy the whole damn thing (tube and yoke preassembled/aligned).

Remember that yoke and convergence setup is time consumming and many tv shops charge at least $50 an hour now for labor.

[FrizzleFried]

Remember that yoke and convergence setup is time consumming and many tv shops charge at least $50 an hour now for labor.

Yup...and that would explain why there aren't many repair shops any more.   Why would I cough up $100 to have this monitor "rapaired" when I can get a brand new one for $134?   

I understand WHY they charge that much...but it doesn't change the fact it isn't worth it.  I will live with my amateur job...it's not bad at all...but not 100%.

[Level42]

Well.....let's face it. Although it will still take a while, the end of the CRT is coming close. However much I regret it. At this moment, I still think a CRT is the best thing for watching television/DVD's. Even with all the drawbacks CRTs have, no LCD or Plasma can beat it at color, black-level and viewing angle. For (classic) arcade games, well playing them on anything else than a CRT is simply not the real thing.

An interesting thing is the coming of SED though but this will still take a bit of time to become mainstream.

However, the majority of people are buying LCD/Plasma TV's now. CRT's will become more and more rare. Production of CRT's move to ever lower-wage countries. (Like the market for CRT's is !) Let's hope that the CRT will survive in some way, just like radio (amp) tubes and good-old vinyl records (which both still sound better than any digital stuff by the way).

Or am I just stuck in the 70's/80's

With the downhill ride of CRT's, the knowledge about the technical stuff will go downhill as well.