i don't watch much tv. never have, likely never will. ("not much" is no more than half an hour a month.)

i definitely watch no live tv at all as that amounts to cruel and unusual punishment; instead i use my fairly old twin-tuner topfield disk recorder which does time-shift pretty well.

even so most of the time the topf is switched off (it does have a proper 'dumb-but-complete' switch). on thursday i thought i'd switch it on for a few minutes, just to get my monthly reminder why i prefer reading books.

POOUF (and tinkle) is what that sounded like because the mains MOSFET switcher IC blew its top, literally.

(au! is what it sounded like later when i got zapped by 300V+: i had forgotten to discharge the mains capacitor before handling the power supply board. ah well, live and learn.)

the interesting issue is whether the mosFOOM was the primary problem or a secondary indication of meh; these chips being dirt cheap i did order two so we'll see in a few weeks.