In sci.electronics.design Tom Bruhns wrote:
"Henry Kolesnik" wrote in message ...
Over the last few years I've acquired quite a few consumer electronincs pcbs
including TVs, VCRs, stereos, etc, so when I discovered that I needed a
tantalum to repair some test equipment I was going to salvage a tantalum. I
couldn't find one anywhere, so I assume they're too expensive or too
unrelaible for high end consumer electronics. A couple of the boards were
from my personal stuff purchased new. One example is a MGA Mitsubishi rear
projection TV that operated flawlessly for nearly 20 years of daily use.
Most of my test equipment comes from hamfests and is surplus after becoming
obsolete and non-operative in less than 20 years. That leads me to wonder
what the real story is behind tantalum capacitors. What do the experts have
to say?

snip
along rather swiftly these days. If all analog TV signals were
discontinued with only digital available, your old rear projection TV
would also be obsolete. Test equipment is commonly much more

To take this as an example, set-top boxes to act as a TV tuner will be
available for a long while after analog switchoff.