That capacitor idiocy didn't last long. Nowadays the nearest remnants are zero rating on some simple categories such as children's clothing.
Back then TVs were luxury items. Official statistics kept track of the proportion of households which had B&W and later colour TVs; the strictly monotonic increases indicated increasing prosperity.
A familiar case to most in the UK will be Jaffa Cakes.
Jaffa Cakes are a form of biscuit to anyone with two eyes, but not to the law. Chocolate covered biscuits are taxable because they're considered a luxury. Plain biscuits, and all cakes are not. Er, why? No idea. Historical HMRC decision. So when HMRC said, "you can't call these cakes just because they've got cake in the name, pay up on the VAT", McVities went to a tribunal where they argued their case. The story goes that they baked an extra-large Jaffa Cake based upon the ingredients of the biscuit-sized product and demonstrated, just like a cake, that it went hard when stale, not soft like a biscuit. They won the tribunal and as a result, Jaffa Cakes are still zero rated VAT, even though most other chocoloate-covered biscuits do attract VAT.