This is an awesome movie (though it makes me sad) - thanks for sharing the link!

Yikes. One really shouldn't ignore any light that is not operating properly (goes for LEDs too!), but I think often the incandescent mentality is still present, that if a light is "burned out" and not lit, that it's not drawing any power and is OK to be left alone until someone is ready to fix it. Of course, in the case of a stuck starter, it visibly IS drawing power, but maybe people still think it's fine to leave it like that.

The manual reset starters are not easy to find, but they would help minimize the chance of a stuck starter and stressed ballast. They could still fail, but usually the starters fail after a lamp has been blinking for days or weeks and that won't happen with the manual reset starter. I use those on fixtures that I might run unattended. Maybe adding inline fuses at the ballasts would also help - I have done that on a few vintage fixtures that don't have thermal protectors to avoid fires if there's excessive current draw in the ballast for some reason.

I had an ITT wall pack fixture that used a ballast with the two-wire ignitor; when I realized I couldn't use one of the standard 3-wire ignitors (which I have some spares of) to repair it when it failed, I changed out the entire ballast. I'm not so good at repairing electronics on the component level, but admittedly, the open style ignitors like this would be fairly simple to repair even if one's soldering skills aren't so good. Just have to find and order the correct component. Makes sense the capacitor would be the most likely failure point.

My DR-70H actually was a DR-70M originally, with the HPS ballast taken from a later model Electripak medium-base HPS version, so it has a standard ignitor. I'm very fond of those deluxe yard lights.

I've never encountered a choke in an HPS ballast that had problems...but have changed out many failed or failing ignitors. But there certainly are other possibilities, such as broken solder joints, broken ballast wire connections, broken weld or connection within the lamp itself. The field test for a 55V HPS fixture is to try an incandescent lamp in the socket, as mentioned previously in this thread.

Hmmm, the smell of gas... I repeat my last remark on this thread 

I happen to have a 70w Ceramalux Comfort lamp, but it's a low voltage/North American type. They are interesting lamps, but the White SON/SDW lamps definitely have a more incandescent-like look, whereas the Comfort looks more like an overdriven HPS lamp. Nonetheless, the Comfort seems quite comfortable to do work under.

Well, im gonna restrike this topic and tell you mine

Any discharge lamp starting.
Eol preheat tubes.
Finishing off a fluorescent tube on an instant start ballast, i like the swirling and it finaly losing vaccum.
The smell of gas.
Diesel engine stating in the morning.
Big generators starting.
Big air circuit breakers.
50 hz hum.
The sound of the old trams from my city.

We have lot of that going around in the US.   i have a grocery store called brookshire.  Being  prononce as Brook-sheer
 Ria as Texan called Jag  Jag-wire.   There a Texas town people get wrong is Mexia.  As it pronounce Meh- Hey-A.  English can be funny in some ways.  About closes feeling like UK in the US is the new england area with all them british names.

Also, the box of the Halonix blue 400w MH has a marking of three colour variants- red, green and blue.

Yeah that annoys me as well, my car does it and of course the reverse parking sensors activate as well, so when you're loading shopping in the back it's bleeping at you all the time..! 

Well you won't know until you light it, but I'd hazard a guess it's closer to orange than red, I've never heard of pink..! It will be interesting to see lit, anyway.