On Jun 25, 2:58*am, Andrew VK3BFA wrote:
On Jun 24, 2:39*am, Too_Many_Tools wrote:

With the advent of digital OTA television, many people are choosing to
get rid of old televisions..some of them very nice.

Any uses for an older television other than the obvious use it with a
converter box?

Thanks

Mmm, yes, well - this is the view from OZ, where digital TV is
starting to bite...and as technician who used to make a living fixing
them, I can speak with some (imagined possibly) authority. In response
to some of the posts so far....

Here, we cant give them to charities because of electrical safety
requirements, they have to be "tested and tagged" by a licensed
electrician. This is a double blow, cause I used to pick up some nice
gear from charity shops.
Strip for parts? - how many audio IC's do you need, most of the rest
are, well, designed only for televisions. I recently scrapped a huge
collection of chassis I was keeping for spares. One or two its good to
pull out the degauss coil round the CRT perimeter, a big heap of nice
enameled wire for winding coils, transformers, making aerials.
Use a set top converter - fine, if the set has AV inputs - here, at
least, they don't have RF out. And some oldest sets don't have AV in,
newer ones have 1 input, usually with mono audio. And as people want
to run multiple external devices, eg DVD, games consoles etc.....I do
supply and fit AV switch boxes, now keep them as stock items in the
van. (Along with leads etc)
Give to the kids for game displays - now, that is a TRULY EXCELLENT
idea, LCD screens in particular don't take kindly to being poked by
kids - which is what kids do.....

Plasma are power hungry beasts, equivalent to a small radiator in the
room, so needs aircon in the summer (ours anyway) - they emit HUGE
amounts of radio frequency interference, wipes out any radio nearby.
When you hvae a whole suburb of them, and your looking for weak
signals on the amateur bands, forget it. I did hear the EU is going to
ban them as they are such nasty beasts from many viewpoints.

Heard from a fellow tech the other day, customer had a 52inch Plasma
LG, he had mounted it to a plaster wall using toggle bolts. It fell
off, smashed the screen (they are heavy brutes) - he actually tried to
claim under warranty from the maker, when they told him to "get
stuffed" he tried his home insurance co - same result.......

I see CRT sets on the side of the road, I know whats wrong with them,
can fix for a few dollars - then I cannot GIVE them away.
Our government (or at least the people pretending to be in charge)
recently reached an agreement with manufactures to recycle old CRT
sets rather than going as toxic waste to landfill. Hopefully this will
be more than window dressing.

So, "old fart syndrome" again - we remember how things used to be, and
don't like how they are. The pace of technological change is
accelerating, ever faster - a good example is the VCR, how long did it
take to be introduced, get cheap, now obsolete.....and given the
number of "old farts" here, there would be dozens more examples from
other fields.

Andrew VK3BFA.

Good post. ;)

TMT