[Nobber22]

I am pretty new to this forum and am very surprised at the enormous number of threads about faulty widescreen tellys! Is it really so hard to manufacture a quality widescreen 32' or 36' box? I have never seen/heard so many complaints about new sets from supposedly market-leading manufacturers as Phillips, Sony and Toshiba. Perhaps its the web bringing so many upset people together.....but come on!!

I don't recall hearing about anyone in the 80's having a problem with his 4:3 telly and having so many returned with picture/contrast/scrolling lines etc problems. You just bought one and got on with watching it. Period.

Are the best engineers who designed, built and tested these "good old boxes" retired? Are they building plasmas or DVD players for their firm's R&D teams while young, inexperienced guys get the old-hat jobs making CRT's?

Why can't they get it right? If Sony/Phillips/Tosh can build a good 50Hz TV, why is 100Hz so difficult?

Are we as buyers so much more demanding? Have digital sources such as DVD put more pressure on CRT teams to produce a better image?

OR is it websites like this that get us all squinting too hard at our new screens looking for the same fault some guy has in Stoke/Sunderland/Southhampton/South Korea instead of just watching the bleedin' film?

[Oblivion]

OR is it websites like this that get us all squinting too hard at our new screens looking for the same fault some guy has in Stoke/Sunderland/Southhampton/South Korea instead of just watching the bleedin' film

The words nail head and hit spring to mind

Paul

[Grubert]

I disagree with Oblivion. Overall quality of TVs has declined in the last 20 years. The competition is ruthless and all manufacturers cut down on costs as much as they can. One of the easiest ways of doing that is minimizing quality control, which they did.

Twenty years ago all sets went through a pretty thorough set of tests done by engineers with test cards to adjust geometry and convergence, and to discard faulty sets before they leave the factory. Nowadays, they prefer to do a cursory test (often computerized) and send the device to its new owner.

The vast majority of customers are too in awe of the big telly they've got to notice any flaws, or to worry about them. As regards the few naggers out there, it is more profitable for the company to take back the set and send a new one than to establish an extensive testing policy.

[Oblivion]

The competition is ruthless and all manufacturers cut down on costs as much as they can

And a high end 32 / 36 inch Flatscreen set will cost between £1300 - £2000 would you be willing to pay double that price for a TV if it ment that corners had not been cut? I wouldnt and the whole TV buying public wouldn't either.

20 years ago there wasn't 36in widescreen flatscreen digital processing. Are you implying that geomatary on a TV 20 Years ago was better than geomatary on a new TV today??

The vast majority of customers are too in awe of the big telly they've got to notice any flaws, or to worry about them

All Tv have flaws. If all TVs were perfect then what would be the point of having low an high end options?? and before you say you expect perfection for your £1300 - £2000. That is the problem. £2000 is a lot of money granted but to expect TV nervana for that price???? well really.......

Paul

[Nobber22]

"£2000 is a lot of money granted but to expect TV nervana for that price???? well really......."

I disagree - why shouldn't we expect the best? £2000 is just about at the top end of the market for CRT! If you bought a £2000 amp or DVD player, you'd be furious (and rightly too) if it wasn't wonderful! And a £2000 amp isn't anywhere near the top-end.

So telly manufacturers selling such high-end products for £2000 have a responsibility to make them as close to perfect as possible and we as customers should be impressed, whether we are audiophiles or not.

[Grubert]

And a high end 32 / 36 inch Flatscreen set will cost between £1300 - £2000 would you be willing to pay double that price for a TV if it ment that corners had not been cut? I wouldnt and the whole TV buying public wouldn't either.

That's precisely my point. Marketing and sales departments set prices (along with lists of attractive features), which forces the manufacturing dept to cut corners.
Not that it would cost an extra £1000 to improve a set's quality visibly. But a mere £200 more would put them out of the market.

Are you implying that geomatary on a TV 20 Years ago was better than geomatary on a new TV today??

Yes, that's what I think.

[Oblivion]

So you would rather have a 20yo tv????

Paul

[Nic Rhodes]

People just don’t want to spend the money necessary for top quality engineering. £1500 - £2000 just doesn’t buy any tv without compromises. It can be done engineering wise but people don’t want to spend the money, unfortunately. £2000 may be loads of money but it isn’t enough to make a nd sell a tv without faults.

Pay more money for a CRT tv and you end up with a CRT projector. My unit probably cost near £20k when released. Who wants a tv at £20k? Not Many. If you want a conventional tv, Sony shows that it’s top monitors are brilliant. But you only get 22 ws for your £1500, not 36 inches. It therefore can be done but people just don’t want to spend the money.

I think people are much more critical now days as well. We have a HQ DVD source material to show up all the faults. TV pictures are also much better than say 85. In 85 VHS was cutting edge, try finding CRT faults when using VHS! Not an easy job.

Add to this we all want ‘bigger’ tvs now but we want them smaller and lighter. This isn’t easy with CRT technology. People desire ‘features’ as well that often do nothing for picture quality, 100 hz, digital processing etc. They all take their toll on picture quality. 100 hz does little for picture quality, you only have to look at progressive signals to realise that 100hz interlaced is like ****ing in the wind. Why do we have it? Simply the Germans want it. No other reason.

Why don’t we get test cards any more?

But for me the real nail in the coffin is the desire for flat screens. CRTs are not designed to work like this. Square peg, round hole. If you want flat, buy a plasma with all it’s faults……
Only £4k......

[Grubert]

Well, for a start, nearly all TVs made 20 years ago have been dead for a while.

Secondly, there are now features that we need or want. We need SCART plugs, and teletext. Many people discovered they were annoyed by flickering, so they need 100 Hz.

But it never ends. Buyers want real-flat screens, ultra black tubes, ambient light sensors, smart video noise reduction filters, motion compensation, picture-in-picture, mosaic mode, wireless speakers, integrated subwoofers and so on and so on.

But how often have you seen 'perfect geometry and convergence' in those bulleted lists? That isn't a sellable feature.

It's like the marketing of cars. 15 years ago nobody (except Volvo) used security as a selling point. It was considered counterproductive (who's thinking of having an accident when he buys his car?), but the public gradually became aware that it was something good. Now most car makers proudly list the number of airbags, ABS, ESP, etc.

[Nobber22]

[QUOTE But how often have you seen 'perfect geometry and convergence' in those bulleted lists? That isn't a sellable feature.

It's not specified in the list of features on the side of the box, but surely that is the least one could expect from a manufacturer of a quality product?

[gringottsdirect]

Originally posted by Nobber22
[QUOTE But how often have you seen 'perfect geometry and convergence' in those bulleted lists? That isn't a sellable feature.
It's not specified in the list of features on the side of the box, but surely that is the least one could expect from a manufacturer of a quality product?

20 years ago when you bought your 22" ITT/KB colour tv from a high street store, paying the inflation adjusted same cost as a small car, it would have been prepared for sale by the shop's on site service engineers.
They would bench test the set, optimise geometry and convergence as required and tune in BBC1, BBC2 and ITV, there wasn't anything else to worry about. Oh, and build the stand. The customer would be delighted.
These days sets are often sold by retail park sheds, dropped off by white vans, taken home by customers or sold by mail order suppliers who operate on the premise of selling it for less in the hope of never seeing it again.
The customer is invariably underwhelmed.
Yes, £1500 is a lot of money to pay for your new tv, but the costs of setting it up during manufacture, or at point of sale, and using top quality components, would mean a set of the latest specification should cost considerably more.
What would you like?
Best price?, best product? or best service?
It possible to have two of these but not all three.

it's not the customer who wants all the added gizmos and rubbish-they are put on to give perceived added value.all i want from my tv is a bloody good picture. it's like a lot of other daft add ons, give me a watch that just tells the time and a phone that just rings (or doesn't) call me old fashioned but wheres the bottom line going?

[gringottsdirect]

Originally posted by stranger
give me a watch that just tells the time and a phone that just rings

That's fine for me too.

[MartinImber]

All I want from a TV is good sound and picture, reliable, plenty of connections and future proof.

Apart from the BBCi inspired BEEP BEEP, and no digital sound out it's there!

BTW only older Sony IDTVs suffer the beep beep - waiting for my fix!

[QUOTE]Originally posted by MartinImber
[B]All I want from a TV is good sound and picture, reliable, plenty of connections and future proof.

Apart from the BBCi inspired BEEP BEEP, and no digital sound out it's there!

my point is that there are lots of tvs with unecessary gimicks when the money could have been used for the main purpose of the tv in the first place, as you rightly point out-picture-sound-conections and reliability-it may be out there but not for all tvs and not always at the right price.

[Oblivion]

The thing is people like us are in the minority when it comes to TVs. Most people buy TVs either on looks (which i a good thing because we now have TVs like the new Tosh and the Picture Frame) brand loayty and the sound and pictue as a whole. Not everyone has DD amps ect, and so want the TV as a "picture only" device. The manufactures have to sevice the majority of the public, and unfortunatly it does not seem to be us.

How many High end CRT 32inch+ TVs have Just standard Nicam?? Almost none. It seems if you want a top of the range TV for PQ then you had to have all the added DD sound which boosted up the price!! Toshiba seem to have done the right thing at last buy releasing 2 different versions of there new TV. A standard Nicam Model, and then the exact same TV but with DD, so atlast we, the Home Cinema Fans have a choice.

Paul

[DVDcake]

My Sony 32-FQ75 cost me £1700 when it first came out and has just standard Nicam sound and they still could not get the picture right, scrolling bars, geomatry off, etc...

[Kevo]

Originally posted by Nobber22
I don't recall hearing about anyone in the 80's having a problem with his 4:3 telly and having so many returned with picture/contrast/scrolling lines etc problems. You just bought one and got on with watching it. Period.

That's probably because you never went on an internet forum about TVs back then.

So how would you know that people didn't have any problems back then?

You can't compare what you read on this forum today to something that didn't exist 20 years ago.

Kevo,
You do have a valid point. However, under the circumstances all we can do is go back to the eighties and try to recall if we, or other people we new, had problems with their tvs. I've had Sony tvs since 1984. The first one from that year was scrapped about 12 months ago. Not a bad life. I brought a 29" Sony in 1995 (as a wedding present for my wife-she weren't too happy, said she'd have preferred a honeymoon in the sun) and it has performed brilliantly since. It is now with my sister.

I brought a combined Sony 21" tv/video about 12 months ago and today found it wouldn't record the channel I was watching but timer recording works fine. I brought a Sony FS70 36" last September and suffered from scrolling bar problems which Sony said no one else had reported. I'll let you draw your own conclusions on Sony QA.