if dad couldn’t fix it with the tube from the grocery store kiosk.
I’m both bemused and curious what in the world that might mean.
We used to have TV repairmen who would come if dad couldn't fix it with the tube from the grocery store kiosk. Weird.
Submitted 2 days ago by shalafi@lemmy.world to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Comments
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 21 hours ago
BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
My best guess is that they are probably referring to a degaussing hoop. You used to be able to rent / borrow those to try to fix your TV if you kid played with magnets near it. If never describe it as a tube though.
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 16 hours ago
I remember those, but for tape deck heads, not TV’s.
Anyway, Scirocco came with the very likely correct analysis, if you can see the other comments in this chain.
Hupf@feddit.org 20 hours ago
It means the shower might have been too hot?
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social 19 hours ago
I’m afraid I’m more lost than ever.
This is about TV repair, right?
jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
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 2 days 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 2 days 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.
laranis@lemmy.zip 14 hours 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.
tdawg@lemmy.world 1 day 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 1 day 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 1 day 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, $8 on eBay.
echodot@feddit.uk 1 day ago
There’s a shoe repair shop in my town. People absolutely do get simple things repaired what you can’t get repaired are things like TVs anymore.
But things don’t break like they used to, it used to be that a component would fail and you could just replace that broken component but everything’s integrated these days so if one thing goes down the whole thing is dead.
IWW4@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Even when Tv repairmen were common, they never repaired broken screens. TV repairmen used to swap out components but not the screen.
MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 1 day ago
Not least because CRT screens were nigh on bulletproof (and heavy as fuck, containing vacuum reliably needs mass).
some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world 1 day ago
CRT “screens” are non-repairable for different reasons, but yeah
Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
You may not own a tv but do you own a computer monitor? No one fixes those either and a tv is essentially a monitor with an extra control board. The screen is the device.
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Just bring it to carglass, they inject their special resin, and Bob’s your uncle! Good as new!
driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 2 days ago
If the glass of the screen is broken the TV is gone. You cannot fix that. If there are other things it could be. Mine had the back lights out and for like 20$ I bought them online and changed them myself.
qupada@fedia.io 1 day 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 1 day 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 $100, coming to their house to do the work. If I remember correctly we could see scorch marks on the bad board near the Ethernet port.
Getting the new board was a bit of a hassle; that manufacturer didn’t sell parts directly and I think it took him 3 tries to get the right board. It seems like they have the same board in a lot of models but they flash them for different screens, so even though they were labeled as being for my parents’ TV it took a few tries to get the right one in. I feel like that’s a problem that would’ve been easier if the manufacturer supported repairs better.
BaroqueInMind@piefed.social 1 day ago
Replacing the LED panel of a common 65in flat-screen TV costs almost the same amount as a brand new TV and months of time, and money to ship between the repair center and your home due to the weight; lol of course they looked at you like that, you sounded silly, innocently ignorant and ridiculous.
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 1 day ago
That’s true for pretty much any size panel. Especially in 2002, when the TV had barely a processor inside.
ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Yes, but the TV cost inflation adjusted lowered dramatically since then.
If a TV were to cost 1000$ in the 1960 today it would cost 8$.
elephantium@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Can you even find a black-and-white CRT for sale anymore?
RebekahWSD@lemmy.world 1 day ago
A now abandoned building at the end of the block use to be a repair store. Tv, vacuum, any other machines. I’m sad I never got to see it.
toynbee@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
It was weird to see an actual vacuum repairperson on Breaking Bad. I understand that that wasn’t their primary function, but it seems like in the modern world the front wouldn’t stand up or at least would be subject to extensive scrutiny.
atropa@piefed.social 1 day ago
I’m still trying to repair everything myself, but de prices of materials are skyrock….
Rhaedas@fedia.io 1 day ago
That or the price of advancement has made things impossible to fix without swapping out entire components or just get a new one. Which has been taken advantage of by making things fail a lot sooner. So much easier to make it cheaper so it gets replaced, and it keeps the company in business and is more profitable.
fartographer@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
A good friend of mine who recently passed away told me about purchasing his first car, brand new, using money he made from repairing TVs around his neighborhood. He started by running tubes to the local store, testing them, and replacing them. Then, he bought a tube tester and a small stock, which he’d carry in a wagon.
There was a doctor in his neighborhood with the first model of a color TV, and the tubes would constantly overheat and pop. This was the cash cow that bought him his first car. He eventually realized that he could solve this issue by adding some active cooling to the TV by running a small fan off of one of the TV’s circuits. And that’s how he accidentally killed his first job.