I'm "not electronically minded", and the only hope I'd ever have of fixing a tv is if I was to open one up and be able to spot the circuit board that was burned-capacitors leaking or a VERY OBVIOUS wiring problem. Even then, fixing it would be hit or miss depending on what else might be wrong and would probably require some soldering skills. Maybe son needs a basic electronics class before trying this.

Unfortunately as televisions have grown increasingly complex, the infrastructure, service literature, technical support, replacements parts, parts distributors, lose of several major manufacturers, and increase in off-name manufacturers has all but destroyed repairability, especially during this economic turndown.

Any television, found thrown into a dumpster, is usually even more damaged and well beyond repair.

Many things are now made in a single production run.

Once the run us over the item will be changed/updated and another run made.

The manufacturers have no interest in stocking spare parts, shipping spare parts, or keeping them on hand.

Only the simplest commodity parts can be replaced.

Many of the newer electrons contain custom chips that are NOT available for general sale.

The manufacturer had a batch made and purchased them all.

IBM remains a huge semiconductor manufacturer, yet none of their parts are generally available.

They are a contract manufacturer.
They make parts for another company and sell the parts only to that company.
They will not even divulge WHO the buyers are.

Without the manufacturing test fixtures it is painfully expensive and difficult to do anything but 'part changing' at the module level to try and get things working again.

TV and radio repair was never a huge profit maker, and the has only gotten worse as the complexity of the equipment has become higher.

had a big sony console crt tv. the tuner went bad. picture would slowly fuzz out. and than come back. tech hauled it down to shop and sat on it for 1 month. said he got it working but wanted to keep an eye on it. what the heck? maybe it took him 3 weeks to even start work on it. who knows. fixed and never had another issue with it. till we sold it for $25.

"the tuner went bad."

And now with broadcast TV going digital you only need one channel anyway, the same with cable.

"the tuner went bad."

"And now with broadcast TV going digital you only need one channel anyway, the same with cable."

I'm not sure I understand your point. If the tuner was bad, which is actually rarely a discrete assembly anymore, you could still not receive RF signals.

Using channel 3/4 NTSC modulated RF from a STB is the worse form of degradation to the received digital SD or HD signal. While an ATSC converter box does not pass the HD signal, it will produce a much better output using composite or S-video outputs.

Cable boxes, on the other-hand can usually provide various outputs, including HD capable connections such as component and DVI/HDMI, that will provide the display device with it's maximum resolution capabilities.

the tech said something was wrong with the tuner/input section. we had cable tv back than but did not use a cable co tuner. just co-ax input and used the tv tuner.

i have a hd capable tv with a SD cable co tuner. am using co-ax inputs. pic looks very poor as is common. i think box has rca outputs. would using those connections make image any better? yes i know a HD tuner is the preferred route but i hate paying for multiple HD tuners. we have 6 tv's. several are HD but most are old school SD crt sets.

The sequence from poorest to best for interconnecting two pieces of video equipment is:

RF (ch 3/4 over coax) ----> Composite video (yellow rca connector) ----> S-video (round connector with 4 pins) ----> Component Video (YUV w/3 RCA connectors) ----> HDMI (Flat 19 pin connector)

Note: DVI is also compatible with HDMI with an adapter but does not include audio and the DVI product must also be HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) capable.

While using the best available connection will give you the best picture quality from the equipment, it still comes down to the quality of the original signal you are receiving and as well if it contains it's own artifacts such as MPEG compression.

yes. old school SD cable connections. tried composite and picture text is slightly better. box is supposed to have s-video but there is no jack. comcast says there are several tuners with s-video available. mine should have it according to manual which can be downloaded. might see if i can find one. now, where did i put my s-video cable.

"Using channel 3/4 NTSC modulated RF from a STB is the worse form of degradation to the received digital SD or HD signal."

Oh the horror of degrading a signal.
We only survived it for what, 30-40 years?

With the low quality of most of the junk on TV it is hardly worth working that hard, especially on an older set that even HAS a tuner.

It id not like the picture quality increases that much feeding in a better signal to a plain old CRT.

maybe my post was vague. this tuner is used on a new plasma set. hey, i did not get a dvd player for 2 years after i bought my HD rptv 10 years ago. no HD for probably 5 years? a new flat panel HD set deserves a HD tuner from comcast but i choose to not do so.