I have finally accepted my fate and purchased a new TV.

Wonder if I'll be able to get a new driver board or something and be able to make use of the old panel somehow.

Still very annoyed, but I can't say it's an intermittent fault any more. It's more like it's intermittently working OK.

@mike ... poot ... ours is working fine (touch wood) but it won't for ever ... would really like there to be models that have the minimal bloat/spyware ...

@mherbert yeah if I could just buy a dumb panel with an HDMI input that'd be ideal.

This one has webOS but it doesn't matter because I'm just going to plug some other device into it anyway and probably never connect it to an internet itself.

@mike ... surely we're close to the point where the TV will refuse to do anything until it's got an Internet connection ...
@mherbert I'll blow that bridge up when I come to it.