Some manufacturers are just not learning from past manufacturing mistakes.  Or they just don’t care about how long the stuff they make will last.

One of the faults with some electronic equipment is a glue used in manufacturing that becomes conductive with age (or age and heat).  I first found out about it back in the 1990s when I was repairing CRT computer monitors at Phillips Electronics.  It caused all sorts of faults.

Fast forward to the 2020s and there is still problems with conductive glue.  Here is the insides of a Digistar DS-612T set top box.

The unit appeared dead but it eventually produced a display but that was about all.  There is conductive glue in the power supply and around a logic ic.  We got readings as low as about 1.5MΩ which will cause problems in any high impedance circuits.

We had to scrap the unit.  What a waste.