I’ve never had problems with any of my TVs, and the ones we had when I was growing up seemed to last forever, too.
My current TV is a 32" Sony Trinitron I bought at Sears about 10 years ago. I’ve had exactly zero problems with it. The TV before that was a 19" Sears brand that I bought when I was in high school - I had it for about 16 years - the picture started to distort a bit on the edges, but it still worked ok for the most part, and I never had it repaired. I gave it to my brother for the niece and nephews to use for the video game - I think they used it for a couple more years before they finally junked it.
I had a Zenith 56 inch screen tv that lasted only a year. Got it repaired and got rid of it quick. Then got a sony 27 inch and it’s lasted for over 3 years now. Also have a Magnavox that is 10 years old and is going strong.
We had a 19 inch Panasonic that we finally got rid of last year. The sticker on the back said “November 1982”, so it was almost 20 years old. It originally belonged to my aunt, who later sold it to my parents when she moved, and then they gave it to me when I was a sophomore in college. The sound worked well, but sometimes the picture would mess up (a quick rap on the top would fix that, but it was doing it more and more often until it finally became too annoying), and there would occasionally be trouble tuning in a specific channel (The dial said “5”, but there would be no picture and the sound was from channel 4, things like that.) It spent about four years in semi-retirement in our bedroom before we decided that getting up every five minutes to bang on the set to get the picture to come back just wasn’t worth it anymore.
Its replacement is a 27" Toshiba that is about five years old. We bought that at Montgomery Wards, so that set has at least outlasted the store we bought it from!
Boy, am I bitter. My TV is broken at only five years old. No longer shows color, just black and white. Never will I buy White-Westinghouse again, let me tell you.
I’d just like to chime in and say ALL my Sanyo stuff has lasted ages. They’re a cheapie Wal-Mart brand, but the little boombox I got when I was 10 still works just fine.
My parents have a TV that is, I believe, more than 20 years old. It has a push-off-pull-on-volume knob, and then dials to get channels 1-5. It’s going to outlast their marrage: they’re splitting in June. We used to have a fridge (Kenmore in harvest gold) that was also 20+ years old; it was still working when they replaced it in favor of a newer frdge that was more energy efficient.
The TV that I have in my apt. is a Crown from '90 or so. No remote, no cable. I run it though the VCR.
The TV in the bedroom is a Panasonic from about 1980. The channel up and channel down buttons don’t work so great, but the picture and sound are just fine.
I had a 13 inch Toshiba that I got as a present when I was Bar Mitzvah’ed (13 yo) and I finally retired it last year, at the age of 14 years. I joked it was old enough to get Bar Mitzvah’ed itself.
It probably would have lasted longer if one of my stupid ex’s hadn’t dropped it back in college. Shook something loose that wasn’t ever quite right again.
My parents were given a black and white TV by my dad’s parents when I was 5 years old (until then, we had to go next door every week to watch Lassie), that was already probably at least five years old – I have no idea what the brand was – but that stupid thing lasted until after I went to college. Developed a slow vertical roll over the years; I still remember trying to stop the damn thing from rolling so I could watch Neil Armstrong make his historic “one step for man…one giant leap for mankind.”
Current main TV is a JVC bought by my ex in the late '80s. Can’t access the menu any more because the original remote long since died, but the TV’s still working great.
27" Panasonic is approx. 10 years old and working fine. Only thing is if an image has a lot of white in it it’ll make a high-pitched whine. Happens seldom enough to not be an issue.
Guestroom TV is an RCA that’s at LEAST 20 years old and still works great. No issues with color/tuning/etc. Only hassle is it pre-dates all the convenient input jacks so the VCR is hooked up to it, and then the DVD & video game system is hooked up into the VCR. Sort of confuising to figure out which setting everything needs to be on to watch what.
14 year old RCA that I’m getting ready to replace, because it won’t connect with my dvd player and the remote doesn’t work for volume or on/off. Otherwise, it’s in pretty good shape.
