[yrly]

If it were nearly free to throw a $50 board and a couple of caps at it isn't a bad deal when you start filling spare rooms with TVs. I garbage picked a Gateway EDTV a bunch of caps later its been working for two months and looks perfectly fine. Some brands hold up better, I've got an even older NEC in the garage still humming along. The LGs you can replace the STKs yourself if you're ambitious but check the reason for the failure. Its likely bad caps and or heat. If its working now and a couple of years old tear it apart. The Gateway I pictured here had many domed Samwha caps. Lousy caps up against heatsinks, wonderful idea. Funny thing was it was the "gold series" ones on the power supply that were worse than the standard ones. I used what are likely counterfeit Nippon Chemicons or something along those lines from China but price was my primary concern, in all honest I really didn't need this TV (as you can see I hooked it up as a gaming monitor and my son was playing games on it when I snapped the pic), I just was curious as to whether it was garbage ready, which it wasn't. This one is supposedly impossible to fix, but really wasn't too bad.

I've also got a Samsung I got from a garage sale with a bad power supply that I fixed, notorious problem for the model. Costs maybe $25 to fix, $50 to have someone do the board for you.

I've got a Maxent that needs a Y-sus board but haven't gotten to that one yet.

The Hitachi sets were ALiS panels, which I believe were a Hitachi/Fujitsu joint venture.

I wouldn't sink a boatload into one unless it was a Pioneer Kuro or something, but if its at curbside I'd take a gander or $25 at a thrift perhaps.

All depends on how cheap you can find parts and how ambitious you are, if you're willing to repair the boards outright. If its multiple boards gone I'd say forget it, but those STKs are like $35 for those Y-sus boards, just a boatload of soldering involved. Cooling definately should be investigated, and again, check those caps, especially if its loaded up with questionable weird brands.