If I were a television manufacturer, I would have already colluded with other television manufacturers to produce units that would spontaneously fail after 2 and a half years.

Gold Star (now LG - "Lucky Gold Star", not "Life's Good" as they claim) used to be infamous among electronics service techs for powering everything from the CRT filament to the audio stages from the flyback transformer. Crank up the volume too loud and for too long, fry the audio amplifier, which overloads the flyback, which takes out the horizontal output transistor. Now you have a dead TV and a service bill more than it would cost to replace the set.

They did that a *long* time ago. The days of 20+ year lifespans from TV sets are long gone. It's like the days of the 20+-year-old Maytag washer.

(In other news, I have a Sony Trinitron KV-1710 from 1975, and a KV-1926 from 1988, both of which still work perfectly. My first color TV was a 1970 Admiral Solar Color, which I had until 1996. But I see lots of newer sets (2-5 years old) at the curb.)