Current mood:

confused

Moving the TV - A Cautionary Tale
So, we decided to replace the 10-year-old Sony 27" TV in our family room. It no longer had working tuners. It had once had two, to support picture-in-picture. The picture itself was beginning to
bleed. Today we broke down and bought ourselves an early Christmas present -- a 37" HD LCD flatscreen. We brought it home and disassembled the entertainment center (it won't hold a TV this big), set the old Sony on a dolly, and wheeled it out to the deck. I HAD planned to put it in the garage, and see if anyone was interested in a partially working TV.

Then I got it onto the deck, and it shifted on the dolly skids, dropping, oh 3/4 of an inch... and the bottom corner of the plastic case cracked.

"Huh," I thought, I'll have to be more careful with it."



I realized it still had the bottom screws out of it, from when I'd opened the case a while back to see what kind of tuners it had in it. I figured I'd better put those back, since the thing was in delicate condition, and would have to be hand-carried. It weighed over a hundred pounds, if I had to guess, had no handholds (isn't it funny that, as CRTs got bigger and heavier handholds on TVs went away?) and was all rounded corners. Almost impossible to actually carry. But I set it off the dolly and put its screws back in... and two of the plastic posts which received the screws shattered while I tightened them, and fell back into the case.

Okay... so Renee and I, figuring no one would want this deteriorating thing, made to carry it to the truck, where it would ultimately go to the landfill. So we lifted it, and heard MORE pieces break off inside as it was lifted. We carried it down the steps, pausing once (did I mention it was heavy and had no handholds?) to let it rest, gently and with us still bearing its wait, on the second step.

At this indignity, the bottom of the TV shattered in four pieces and showered to the ground, where it shattered in countless more pieces. By the time we wrestled it to the bottom step, one screw on the corner remained valiantly attached, but the back of the TV was otherwise loose and swinging in the breeze. (Okay, there was no breeze, but still...)

We just got the two big chunks into the back of the truck. I took hold of the top corner to push it back farther, and the side of the cabinet came away in my hand, exposing the CRT beneath. By the time I got the tailgate closed, I don't believe any of the plastic shroud was left around the picture tube. Once it started going, you pretty much had only to look at it funny for pieces to snap off and fall.

I always wondered of 1/8" thick plastic was an appropriate casing material for a 27" CRT. Obviously, I was right to wonder. Ten years worth of heat had baked the plastic to the point that it could barely support the weight of the unit. We hadn't moved it for about five years -- since the new door was put in, I think. During that move, it had certainly not been so brittle that it couldn't be picked up and set down several times. I'm only glad that this didn't happen because we'd simply decided to re-arrange the furniture. It would have been distressing to have our TV that we were planning to KEEP disintegrate before our very eyes. Still, it was traumatic for the kids to see their beloved old friend scattered across the deck in pieces. I had hoped it would do someone some good, but unless there's a repairman out there who wants its guts, it's destined for disposal.

So be careful moving those newish old TVs. They didn't make 'em in the 90's like they had in years past, and thank god they don't make ANY of them like this any more. Let's hear it for LCD technology!