Very simply, this type of equipment is often almost worthless after just a few years and therefore not worth repairing.

If you add in poor serviceability and poor audio performance, compared to even modest hi-fi stereo gear, you end up with very few reasons to repair this stuff and why mjuch of it is simply thrown away when it breaks. Don’t shoot the messenger, these are facts.

I always ask one critical question about equipment being considered for repair:

“Is repair economically viable?”

Even some of the cheapest hi-fi gear from the ’70s is sought after for its performance, reliability and serviceability. The same cannot be said for the plethora of average sounding, cheaply-made and obsolete home cinema equipment from the last 30 years or so.

Most of it is essentially worthless after just a few years due to useless feature creep and poor serviceability which kill retained value and therefore repair viability. Most of this gear is at best only marginally serviceable, because:

• Much of it is so cheap or now worth so little that it’s barely worth opening, let alone repairing
• Critical parts are often no longer available and SMD chip-based boards like HDMI controllers are not designed to be repaired

There are some notable exceptions, but generally, I’d suggest you forget about repairing home cinema gear.