HDTV: the end for servicers?

[Sofie]

Ray L. Volts:
I tend to be an optimist, so I would rather consider that my cup is "half
full" not "half empty."
Obviously things are changing rather dramatically (again) in the consumer
electronics service industry buy as one of my first reply posts
stated....... we have seen a measure of all of this before in previous
decades with other product and technology mileposts.
In my small town, yes, several shops have closed........ and, yes, business
has been generally soft, but with a few less shops in town I am able to
snare some new customers and keep the benches busy.
I plan on staying in the business and keeping busy in my shop...... I
obviously have to continue to be willing to change and do things
differently as the current times demand.
While it is important to be a realist, I temper that with a positive
mind-set and an optimistic outlook.
--
Best Regards,
Daniel Sofie
Electronics Supply & Repair
-------------------------------------------


"Ray L. Volts" <raylvolts@SPAMRIDhotmail.com> wrote in message
news:bf0tkh$irp@library1.airnews.net...

"Sofie" <sofie@olypen.com> wrote in message
news:vh5fclb0d0fee5@corp.supernews.com...
Ray L. Volts:
Reading between the lines of your posting here you are guessing that
there
will be a lot of techs and shops that will soon get out of the
business........ that is good for the ones that have make the proper
investments and are prepared to stay because they will now get the
repair
jobs that the out of business shops were once getting.

It's been occurring steadily for years here. There aren't many left right
now, so the number of those who quit will be small.
I live in a city of 80,000+ population, a fair mix of wealthy,
middle-class
and low-income. Ten years ago, there were at least half a dozen shops in
town. Now there are but 2 full-time video shops, only one of which offers
camcorder repair.

I've spoken with the owners of these and other shops in nearby cities and
all of them have expressed a steady decline in their customer base.
People
aren't leaving town in droves. Quite the opposite, population continues to
rise.

Shops are finding they must act in cooperative rather than competitive
mode
in order to survive -- trading parts, schematics, tips, referrals, etc.
These guys are highly qualified, have the latest Sencore gear (et al),
have
been in biz for decades and are scared.

The closest shop out of town is about 30 miles away. I seriously doubt
the
decline in customers here is due to them driving their units so far out of
their way or having the long-distance shops come to them. It wouldnt be
worth the hassle or, in the case of a home visit, the added expense. And
I
don't for a minute believe consumers are paying to ship their
out-of-warranty units for service.
No, their best choice would be to have competent, in-town techs do the
work,
and yet those techs are steadily seeing fewer jobs come in.

Even if a monopoly existed in town were one of the shops to close, I'm not
convinced the remaining shop will maintain a profit margin appealing
enough
to sustain it for many more years.

I don't know where you guys are, but I'm sad to say things look rather
bleak
in south Texas. If the news is this bad in a city of 80,000 folks, I can
imagine it must be even worse for shops in smaller towns.

-Ray-

 

[Ray L. Volts]

"Bill Renfro" <brenfro@charter.net> wrote in message
news:vh5mso3m61o0ae@corp.supernews.com...

Even with low-current devices the reliability rate may not be much better.
Just think for every engineer making the device work, there is probably
another engineer trying to make it cheaper, and someone else trying to
find
the cheapest way to produce it and get it to market.

The ideal device from a manufacturer's view would be one that works
reasonably well, is not serviceable, and then dies in a few years so the
consumer will have to replace it. Just like today. I doubt that HDTV,
low-current display devices, or ram based recorders will change that
philosophy.

Exactly the problem.
They design them to expire shortly after the warranty period does, and they
make them cheap enough that consumers deem repair cost unreasonable when
compared to the cost of a new unit.
If the new technologies are more reliable and last a lot longer, shops are
in trouble.
If the new technologies are made cheaply and are NOT more reliable, shops
are still in trouble.
If the new technologies are more reliable, longer lasting AND cheaper, shops
are in huge trouble.

If the new technologies are forever kept expensive AND they are not made
reliable, shops might have a chance.

Add to that the increasingly rotten attitude of manufacturers toward
independent servicers. Certain monitor manufacturers won't even sell
schematics to non-government entities. What's next? Only government
employees will be able to buy boards or proprietary components? And what if
all the rest of the manufacturers adopt this philosophy/policy? I wouldn't
put it past them.

I have often wondered what the tv would look like if it were designed to
meet the following criteria, and how much it would cost to build.
1. Money is not a consideration. Manufacturing cost is not a
consideration.
2. Best possible picture, using existing technology.
3. Most reliable circuit design.
4. Highest quality components available.
In other words what would it cost to make the best, most reliable set. I
only want to sell you one that will last forever.
5. Of course in the unlikely event this set ever does fail, say 40 or 60
years from now, it must be serviceable. No proprietary parts, or
unavailable service manuals, etc.

It would:
1)cost as much as people are willing to pay
2)never have a good enough picture to please videophiles
3)not be reliable enough to please everyone
4)see 1 above
5)have a built-in alarm to wake you from that dream

 

[Ray L. Volts]

"David" <dkuhajda@locl.net.spam> wrote in message
news:3f14d57c@news.greennet.net...

FYI the #1 reason these are board level repair is due to the construction
of
the boards themselves.

Most of the signal and driver boards use VSLI surface mount ic's with 168
pins soldered to the board. The boards are typically 4 to 8 layer boards,
not unlike a typical 1GHz computer motherboard.

That was my assumption. You don't bother with component level
troubleshooting when you already know the faults are most likely going to be
inside one of a few VLSI chips. And since packing all functions into fewer
and fewer chips is the norm, it means more and more jobs will entail board
level service. I suppose if the chips were available separately and the
tech really really enjoys using his hot air rework station, that's an
option. But since time is money, shops wouldn't bother with it. For
in-home service, it's more practical to do board level anyway. It just
holds less appeal for my analytical side.

Some manufactures will 'loan' out any special equipment required to
perform the
alignments following a repair in rural areas for authorized servicers.

I hope ya don't mind my picking your brains, but...
Interesting it should require alignment at all. I mean, the screen isn't
susceptible to magnetic fields as with a CRT, so no compensation is
required. Each pixel is fired independently, so no convergence, purity,
focus settings are required. I presume the tuner has been reduced to a few
chips and doesn't allow for adjustment there. Everything's digitally
controlled, so presumably there are no sync adjustments. What technician
adjustments are there with these things? Power supply voltages?

Is there a special rig that's required for testing the screen itself?
There's no gun structure and the emissive elements can't be accessed, so I
assume the method for testing one is to hookup a known good controller board
(or stand-alone generator) to it?

-Ray-

 

[Ray Carlsen]

A quick look inside any of the little LCD projectors we have tells me
what my future in servicing will be. The PCBs all look like computer
motherboards. Most of the 150 or so units in our campus classrooms have
been very reliable. When one does fail, it's usually nearly obsolete anyway
and the big guns opt for replacement. At any age, individual components are
not available (board level only), so keeping an old one going another year
or two may not pay off in the long run. The technology is moving too fast.
I suspect most of the repairable stuff we see now will be gone in a few
years. Broadcasting digital from studio to display device means most of
the electronics will be "motherboards". Tubes are going away and plasma is
a power hungry side step that will probably go away too.
When I decide to jump on the HDTV bandwagon, my choice for a monitor
will be one of those little projectors. They will display anything you feed
them from the video output of your Commodore 64 or IBM PC (analog VGA or
digital DVI) to 1080i HDTV. There is no such thing as screen burn. LCD
panels don't care what you display or how long it's up there. Your screen
can be a white wall. The downside right now is the expensive lamps they
use, but one demo I saw (Panasonic) has a switch to extend the lamp life at
the expense of image brightness, and another unit featured a 5000 hour
lamp. Gettin' better... almost ready for prime time.
Because there are so many different film size formats from TV 4:3 to
all the Cinemascope variations, with a direct view TV or rear screen
projector there is always some part of the screen that goes unused
(cinemascope bars) part of the time. Buy a big screen TV set and lose half
the viewing space to bars? Nuts to that. I'll take the little tabletop
projo. Prices have come down to match the piano-case projectors, and they
can't compete with the little LCDs for resolution and versitility.
Do I sound like a salesman? Nope. I just work with these little
beauties every day. My home TV is a direct view Sony 36" and I'm very happy
with that. Bigger picture? LCD projo.

Ray

 

[TV Fixer1]

And I'll keep taking those "not worth repairing" 6 to 10 year old big screens
and refurbishing them for resale to somebody who doesn't have $1000 to $2500
for a new one. I'll make $400 - $700 depending on year and size on every one.

 

[Ray L. Volts]

"Ray Carlsen" <rrcc@u.washington.edu> wrote in message
newsine.A41.4.44.0307170745320.22926-100000@homer18.u.washington.edu...

A quick look inside any of the little LCD projectors we have tells me
what my future in servicing will be. The PCBs all look like computer
motherboards.
When I decide to jump on the HDTV bandwagon, my choice for a monitor
will be one of those little projectors.
The downside right now is the expensive lamps they
use, but one demo I saw (Panasonic) has a switch to extend the lamp life
at
the expense of image brightness, and another unit featured a 5000 hour
lamp. Gettin' better... almost ready for prime time.

I wonder if, in the not-too-distant future, there will be high-output LED's
which will be suitable for projector use. We're already seeing LED
stoplights, brake lights, etc.

 

[George R. Gonzalez]

I have often wondered what the tv would look like if it were designed to
meet the following criteria, and how much it would cost to build.
1. Money is not a consideration. Manufacturing cost is not a
consideration.
2. Best possible picture, using existing technology.
3. Most reliable circuit design.
4. Highest quality components available.
In other words what would it cost to make the best, most reliable set.
I
only want to sell you one that will last forever.
5. Of course in the unlikely event this set ever does fail, say 40 or
60
years from now, it must be serviceable. No proprietary parts, or
unavailable service manuals, etc.

HP made a TV monitor once that would come close to your specs.
IIRC it was around $1200 in 1970 dollars. Yipes.

 

[Bill Renfro]

I bought a Magnavox Star System set (t995 chassis) in 1978. The retail on
it was $1200. Really was a good set, picture was as good as any and better
than most sets today. I still have it, and it still worked in 1998. (it's
been in storage since) The crt was noticably soft though. Too bad. It was
pretty much top of the line consumer set back then.
Wonder if any of those HP monitors are still working today, and how the
picture compares with new sets.

"George R. Gonzalez" <grg@umn.edu> wrote in message
news:bfh558$rhs$1@lenny.tc.umn.edu...

I have often wondered what the tv would look like if it were designed
to
meet the following criteria, and how much it would cost to build.
1. Money is not a consideration. Manufacturing cost is not a
consideration.
2. Best possible picture, using existing technology.
3. Most reliable circuit design.
4. Highest quality components available.
In other words what would it cost to make the best, most reliable set.
I
only want to sell you one that will last forever.
5. Of course in the unlikely event this set ever does fail, say 40 or
60
years from now, it must be serviceable. No proprietary parts, or
unavailable service manuals, etc.


HP made a TV monitor once that would come close to your specs.
IIRC it was around $1200 in 1970 dollars. Yipes.