ABSTRACT
The expected life until breakdown occurs of domestic equipment such as television sets, DVD recorders, washing machines, central heating boilers, etc., is important to the consumer. Failure means the temporary loss of the facility and expense. A television set, for example, has a large number of components, and the failure of just one of them may cause the failure of the set. Increasingly, individual components now have high levels of reliability, and the reduction of the likelihood of failure by the inclusion of alternative components or circuits is probably not worth the expense for a television which will suffer some deterioration with time anyway. Also, failure of such equipment is unlikely to be life-threatening.
