I'm sure there are a 1001 exceptions to what I said, but you have to admit after the mid 1990's, things did change.
The key phase to what you wrote is "authorized service centers".
It used to be mostly independent shops that did repairs prior. Sure there were the crooks and ones that did poor servicing but after the mid/late
90's, most (both good and not good) all disappeared leaving only the authorized ones, mostly because of the parts distribution getting locked up.Here in Chicago, not counting tv repairs shops, we used to have at least a half dozen parts stores. Some handled GE, some Zenith, RCA, Panasonic. If you walked into one for a part and they didn't have it in the back, they would let you know when you could pick it up.
When those places started to go under one-by-one, the writing was pretty much on the wall that independents in the repair business were going to fail too. No parts, no repairs.
I mean it's like owning a car, sure you can take it into the dealer everytime for service and know you are paying top dollar for it but independents, even though they may not have the latest and greatest with service info, they still could do a reasonable repair for a reasonable price.
Why the tv manufacturers wanted to go down the same path does seem to support the conspiracy of "they want you to buy new, not fix", but that's just my opinion.
I mean I know the technology changes to where repairing some things just doesn't make sense. Like take plasma and dlp tv's, those are barely 10 years old now tech wise and are totally obsolete.
-bruce snipped-for-privacy@ripco.com