Sorry if this appears twice - it's not showing on google, so...
Well our teac CTV finally died - a tech teacher I knew preferred AWA/Mitsubishi CTVs, but I noticed they are made in china now. Our other choice was a brand that JB HiFi sell - "Conia". (There's only $30 difference between the two.)
Should we go the AWA? Or not much difference between the two now, or neither!? LOL! : )
Allan.
Hello Allan, one of my pet gripes is lack of servicing information. Enquire about the price and availability of the service booklet. No book no buy. Regards, John Crighton Hornsby
Con Ya.
Brand names still work better.
They have higher standards. If you try to take a Conia or palsonic CTV back due to distortion or colour problems they pull out some piece of paper and say its within 95% of correct and it meets their standards...
Its these standards that set the quality of the TV.
That and the cheap buttons and speakers and likelyhood of failure of the conia... if the circuits are run out of tune they fail quicker too.
back
and
Since so many "brand" names are the same Chinese sets with different badges these days, it seems they have really conned ya.
Even my last Sony was a bigger POS than my cheap Chinese set. Service support was no better either.
I'm sure there are some good quality sets still, but you not only have to pay more, you have to know which ones. The badge on the front is little help.
MrT.
"Fred Ferd" wrote
They have higher standards. If you try to take a Conia or palsonic CTV back due to distortion or colour problems they pull out some piece of paper and say its within 95% of correct and it meets their standards... That and the cheap buttons and speakers and likelyhood of failure of the conia... if the circuits are run out of tune they fail quicker too.
***** Aw Strewth,the mind boggles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Brian Goldsmith.
On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 00:55:14 +1100, "Mr.T" put finger to keyboard and composed:
I have to agree. Sony was badge engineering over a decade ago. In the aftermath of the VHS-beta war, Sony was left without a VHS product, so they used Sanyo mechs. In later years their low end offerings had the same mechs as Palsonics. To see for yourself, just compare the belt kits in a WES catalogue.
I'm prepared to pay a price premium for a quality product, but which one? I'd hate to think that my extra cash was paying for the marketing manager's sports car instead of QC and R&D.
- Franc Zabkar
-- Please remove one 's' from my address when replying by email.
Agreed. I'm prepared to pay more when I know *exactly* what the difference is, not some marketing exec's wet dream.
MrT.
If supporting the local industry matters to you, Panasonic make most of their large screen TVs at their facility in Penrith, west of Sydney:
Don't really know what Panasonic are like quality wise, but at least they are made in Oz.
Dave :)
Yep - that's pretty much the feeling I got. The AWA had the same control layout (and jungle chip, from the on-screen menu) as another brand a few sets along the shelf. ("Aiko?" I think it was...) I spent a lot of time adjusting picture controls too, to try and compare
- and didn't really see any difference in picture quality between sets
- except with one LG, which was double the price. (It wasn't THAT many years ago, the picture difference was obvious between sets.)
Yep, I didn't think of this at the time - and I should have. Oh well... We went with the AWA - it had DVD/component video inputs + 2 sets of normal AV inputs plus 1 AV output, S-video & a headphone socket... Several JB staff kept telling us the Conia (and all other
68cm around that price) only had one or two AV (RCA) inputs. (They were wrong - the Conia had the S-video as well.)The AWA was $328 at BigW - and the other sets we could find with component inputs was double that price. When I got it home, I found a deep "razor cut" in the plastic shell - at the bottom where it meets the screen. (It would have bugged me.) So back it went - and I had to open another four boxes (all that they had) to find a reasonable one. One had not had it's painting completed - you could see the plastic underneath right along the bottom edge of the tube. Another had paint rubbed off on the edges (even though the box was sealed), and yet another had a deep 1cm scratch right in the middle of the screen!
The one we finally got had some light scratches on the top - but I figured it would get that way eventually anyway, so I asked for a further discount - and got another 5% off.
We bought several items the same day - a Panasonic VCR was one of those. Hope it works better than it looks! It's controls are plain and poorly laid out, like they're from the early eighties. (Pity the build quality doesn't look early 80s..)
: )
Allan.
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.