I’ve always found it interesting how brands that are either not household names or have been mostly forgotten shaped technology that we use every day. You can find LED bulbs or cheap electronics with the Curtis-Mathes brand nowadays but back in the 60’e and 70’s, they set the standard for repairable TV’s, at least in the US. They basically modularized everything to where there were like 10 replacable parts and the repairman carried all of those with him. They could swap out a bad component in minutes.
Another one that was never a household name is Allen Organ Company. They make electronic pipe organs, which replicate the sounds of an actual pipe organ, sans pipes. In the early 70’s they created the first fully digital organ. It had a small computer that generated the tones. Even though it had a several large PCB’s and a pretty big footprint for its limited capabilities compared to computers today, at the time it was a pretty impressive feat.
I_Fart_Glitter@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I haven’t owned a tv since 2002. A friend’s kid thew a remote at their’s and cracked the screen. I asked if they could get it repaired and everyone looked at me like I had two heads. “You just get a new one…!”
NarrativeBear@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Gone are they days were people get things repaired, especially the “simple things” like getting a good leather shoes sole replaced, or getting a couch redone. Though planned obsolescence plays a role in this as well.
It also means these services are more expensive as a result.
tdawg@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I was lucky enough to find a shoe shop that does really good resoles in my city. Not impossible to repair stuff, just hard
IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
when I lived in the UK there were shoe repairmen everywhere, they were great, and if the repair was easy they wouldn’t even charge me.
in the States I haven’t seen a single one
shalafi@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Sad, ain’t it? I repair all kinds of stuff. Have a 50" TV that only needs a new board when I can afford it. The 55" on my wall needed 2 new capacitors, $8 on eBay.
echodot@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
There’s a shoe repair shop in my town. People absolutely do get simple things repaired what you can’t get repaired are things like TVs anymore.
But things don’t break like they used to, it used to be that a component would fail and you could just replace that broken component but everything’s integrated these days so if one thing goes down the whole thing is dead.
laranis@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Shout out to Bosch… I have a 10-year old dishwasher from them and the drain pump stopped working. It was so easy to replace and readily available. I was actually happy to have it break, all told.
A lot of enshitification has happened in the last decade so no idea if their products are still like that, but when the time comes to get a new one I’ll certainly be giving them my first look.
IWW4@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Even when Tv repairmen were common, they never repaired broken screens. TV repairmen used to swap out components but not the screen.
MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Not least because CRT screens were nigh on bulletproof (and heavy as fuck, containing vacuum reliably needs mass).
some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
CRT “screens” are non-repairable for different reasons, but yeah
driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 3 weeks ago
If the glass of the screen is broken the TV is gone. You cannot fix that. If there are other things it could be. Mine had the back lights out and for like 20$ I bought them online and changed them myself.
qupada@fedia.io 3 weeks ago
Really the most you can hope for these days is to encounter two broken TVs of the same model, with different faults.
Luck holding, this lets you wind up with a single working unit.
jqubed@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Yeah, most of the cost of the TV is the panel. If you’re buying a replacement panel the part would cost basically the same as a new TV (or maybe even more).
By contrast, my parents had a TV that started boot looping the morning after a thunderstorm and they’d had at least one lightning strike very close by. They got a local TV repairman out and he was able to get a replacement mainboard and the TV worked perfectly after that. I think the board was $100 or $150 and his time and labor was $100, coming to their house to do the work. If I remember correctly we could see scorch marks on the bad board near the Ethernet port.
Getting the new board was a bit of a hassle; that manufacturer didn’t sell parts directly and I think it took him 3 tries to get the right board. It seems like they have the same board in a lot of models but they flash them for different screens, so even though they were labeled as being for my parents’ TV it took a few tries to get the right one in. I feel like that’s a problem that would’ve been easier if the manufacturer supported repairs better.
Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
You may not own a tv but do you own a computer monitor? No one fixes those either and a tv is essentially a monitor with an extra control board. The screen is the device.
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Just bring it to carglass, they inject their special resin, and Bob’s your uncle! Good as new!
BaroqueInMind@piefed.social 3 weeks ago
Replacing the LED panel of a common 65in flat-screen TV costs almost the same amount as a brand new TV and months of time, and money to ship between the repair center and your home due to the weight; lol of course they looked at you like that, you sounded silly, innocently ignorant and ridiculous.
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 3 weeks ago
That’s true for pretty much any size panel. Especially in 2002, when the TV had barely a processor inside.