Lets celebrate the few reliable flat TVs!

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Eric H

I was just over at a friends house for dinner, they have an eleven year old Panasonic Plasma in their Living Room, still looks like new, it cost them $11,000 dollars back in the day though so I guess it should last a while.

That sounds almost incredible, to me anyway, in this age of "throwaway" flat screens that last only two years or so. Your friends' TV must be built like a tank and with quality components (as I would expect from a set costing $11K). How big is the screen on their set? Have they had it serviced since it was purchased?

Flat screens must have been made a lot better in 2001 than they are now, although Panasonic has been synonymous with quality, at least until recently. I don't know who owns the Panasonic name today (the company itself may not exist any longer), but when your friends bought their plasma TV the firm was probably still alive and well, and probably building electronics (not only TVs) a lot better than they do now.

Today's Panasonic may well be little more than just a brand name plastered onto flat screens manufactured by goodness only knows what offshore electronics company. The fact that today's flat panels are selling for much, much less than $11K (my 19" Insignia FP was only $130 at Big Lots, and you can probably get the same set for even less today, seven months later) and that the TVs are not lasting nearly as long as the old CRTs did, should tell us something -- that the quality of these sets went down along with the price.

I have seen FPs, with brand names I have never heard of, selling for under $100 in ad flyers in my Sunday newspaper. Goodness only knows how long these sets will last, as they are probably made in a slap-dash manner by an offshore company. Trying to get these sets repaired when they do eventually go bad will be a heck of a problem, as service data for off-brand TVs is probably darn near impossible to find. One guess as to where these sets may and almost certainly will wind up when they stop working after only a year or less.

When are TV manufacturers, who by and large just slap the name of a former American TV maker such as Zenith, RCA, Magnavox, etc. onto a television that, more often than not these days, goes West just after the warranty expires, going to realize that most people simply cannot afford to replace their TV every two or three years?

If this continues for any length of time, I can see a day coming when people will simply stop watching TV when the set goes bad. This will set off a chain reaction of sorts: folks will stop watching TV because they cannot afford to replace their $xxxx "Magnavox" (for example) giant flat panel that went bad days after the warranty expires; then the TV networks suffer because fewer people are watching; then local TV stations start losing money left and right as people stop watching the networks with which these stations are affiliated; stores that sell these short-lived flat screens will lose money as they sell fewer sets . . .

Good Grief!!! Where will it all end?