A short history of television faults, and why they happen. 
When televisions first came out they were not that reliable. That is because they were largely still experimental. Depending on when you were born you might not remember that after turning on the television you had to wait around two minutes for it to warm up. In around 1975 color televisions were launched and these also were not that reliable. They had too many circuit boards.

By 1990  televisions were starting to become very reliable.
This was down to the fact that solid state electronics had got to the stage where the TV was built well. It had few moving parts,  and one main circuit board did all the work. These televisions would last around 15 to 20 years and many are still out there working even today. By the early nineties though televisions were on the move again.

Manufactures forgot the early lessons and introduced multiple circuit boards, and  remote controls were introduced. This now meant that your household television was never actually turned off as the power supply was always working supplying power for the remote part of the circuit. Inevitably this started big problems. When owners went on holidays they would often unplug the television. This meant that the power supply would cool down. On start up when the owners returned from holidays they found that the television would not start. Often this was caused by expansion and contraction of solder joints and it caused major problems.

With all this heat that was constantly  lurking in the back of your TV it soon caused a secondary problem. Often the television set contained many electrolytic capacitors. These are like a small battery that contain a fluid. The heat trapped in the television would often dry out the liquid and cause the capacitor to fail. This might cause many symptoms depending on your brand of TV but common faults would be not starting. Noisy sounds. Buzzing and much more, and occasionally the odd bang. 

Then we have the big one. Dry solder joints. Modern televisions now  have many hundreds of tiny parts. Each one soldered in a factory. During the nineties someone thought it would be a great idea to remove lead from solder. For the TV industry it was a disaster waiting to happen. Lead free solder is terrible to use. It does not flow well. and it is prone to dry joints. A dry joint is a solder connection where the lead looks to be connected but the solder has not taken to the joint. Heat, vibration, cold, temperature variation can all effect these solder joints.

If just one solder joint fails the television can stop working. Now given that there is around 300 parts in the average modern TV and around 500 solder joints with poor solder used in the factory it is only a matter of time before your modern TV fails. They simply have more parts than older televisions, they use lead free solder, and given the fact that if your television is 5 years old it has been working non stop from when you first plugged it in. So in effect your television has been working for one thousand eight hundred and twenty five days non stop by the five year mark. 

When you turn it off with the remote control  only the sound and vision are turned off. The power supply is still working day and night in the stand by mode.  When we fix your television we re solder solder joints using a special solder that is 60 percent tin, and 40 percent lead. This ensures that solder joints will last for years to come.
​We hope you enjoyed this short history of the television.  Now you might understand why modern televisions seem to fail a month out of warranty.     This history was brought to you by sheffield tv repair.