Craig Graham wrote:
Colin Brook wrote:
Hello, I've had this problem for a while with one bulb; I spoke to
Philips technical help line who said that this happens from time to
time
with particular specimens of the bulb - change the bulb to a different
one and it goes away. It occurs when the bulb is used in a two or
multi-way switched environment and the rest of the explanation about
voltage build up leading to the bulb thinking it was going to strike
but
then not was not, for me, very complete or convincing.

Possible- I guess the bulbs are very high resistance when off, so induced
voltages won't dissipate. The unit then gets to the point where it sees 240V
on the input and tries to switch on, but as soon as it draws current it
loses the voltage. If so, shoving a resistor in excess of say half a megohm

I'd guess this is voltage fed into the bulb, and rectified into DC to feed
the storage capacitor (this is used to eliminate flicker).
The leakage on this is probably well under a microamp.
Any current over this will cause the capacitor to gradually be charged.
Once it gets up to somewhere over a hundred volts or so, it'll try to start,
but as it's only got the energy in the capacitor, and none more coming in,
just flicker.