Folks -

I'm helping my mom figure out how to deal with her rather decent 27"
RCA from '89 clicking off after only a fraction of a minute or so.
Keeping it unplugged between uses helped alot for the past three years
it's been an increasingly worsening issue, but it fairly recently
apparently stays on for no more than a fraction of a minute. It would
generate a picture but then sometimes condense the picture into a
mostly horizontal central blob, ususally basically a simple line not
quite extending edge to edge, and sometimes being colored (not pure
bright white). Sometimes it would get itself straightened out & be ok
sometimes, but greatly increasingly so it fails to get itself
straightened out. Then eventually a relay clicks, and it powers off.
I don't remember a center band being burned into the screen; the
phosphor coating itself hasn't been noticably damaged by it.

There has been no buzzing or humming from it at all, nor smells, which
doesn't seem to suggest a winding gradually shorting itself out (no
clear indications of it at least).

Also, the TV's power button won't turn it off (must be done from
remote); I'm guessing simple worn / corroded / broken contact.

Either it gets fixed locally or she buys a new replacement. How
typical is fixing at least an older RCA a case of fix one thing, have
another part soon go bad? How easily fixed do those problems sound as
far as my info can define it?

If repairing a 14 yr. old RCA is unsound, then buying a replacement
locally seems to currently point mostly to the RCA 27V530T, Samsung
TXN2726 or Panasonic CT27SL13 27" units. How do RCA, Samsung and
Panasonic compare to each other and other manufacturers for
reliability? I read the Emerson TV post... Any reputations (RCA,
Samsung or Panasonic at least) for low-grade / mismatched /
mis-documented internals (i.e. capacitor special of the day etc.)?
I've also read about widespread quality control issues with Sonys
(i.e. bad image geometry).

The TV is the sole house TV and mostly used for usually infrequent
cable program viewing, but will at some point also be used for
occasional DVD viewing. Quality does matter here (hence my asking you
folks for guidance).

Many thanks for reading the long post, and for (hopefully) responding!

Roger