I had this fault in a similar set and it was a small square plastic capacitor next to the HOT. Sorry, can't be more specific.

In my opinion CRT has better color rendering and crisper picture in SD TV and uses approximately the same power to run as a modern set since both technologies are quite efficient. Just look at the specs, a big 28"CRT draws 95W of power, a similar size LCD can go up to 130W.

Going HD on a CRT is not impossible, I did some experiments years ago and could get up to 1920x576 resolution on a standard TV. It requires a Scart input with RGB capability (I belive it is not common in America but it is in Europe). Using RGB you can send any horizontal resolution you want and most sets I tested actually displayed that level of detail fine (of course native 50Hz sets, not line doubled 100Hz ones). The vertical resolution is limited by the scan circuits so we can call that almost-HD. Commercial HD decoders with Scart RGB outputs can output all horizontal resolution but I do not know if all of them actually do.