Hi Folks: I was given a JVC GR-SXM320V to 'look at'. I was told it was dropped a few times and when it failed, the tape got stuck inside. They bought it to a repair shop, who was able to extract the tape, but didn't fix the camera. That's how I came upon it. The transport mechanics didn't move. The screen came up with ERROR 02 or something, and "REMOVE AND REPLACE THE BATTERY". After poking around with it for a while, seeing very little voltage on the transport motor, I traced the transport motor circuitry back to a BA6866KV chip by ROHM. I hunted the internet for this chip. I got suggestions to try JVC, which didn't help. I found a repair shop in my area that could get the chip. $68 and change!!!! Well, I went for broke, took the chance, bought the chip which they got in a couple of days! I put that in with my pencil iron and stereo microscope (fun if you know how big this chip is), and now it's working! Whew. I added a resistor in series with the motor in case it binds. The owner is happy, but, was it worth $68? Where do youi suppose they found this chip? I think they added $50 bucks to it. What a ripoff. This is the first mini-camcorder I worked on but the first component I had to buy for one. I'll fix no more if parts are going to be this out-of-site. Take Care! Harry
Parts -- especially the increasingly prevalent proprietary ones -- are often NLA (for non-authorized centers for sure) and/or sky high in price because manufacturers DO NOT want their old models repaired. They want to move new products. That's where their profit is; not in ensuring older units keep working. The industry didn't move to plastic gears and levers JUST to reduce weight. They're weaker than metal and therefore more prone to wear and breakage, helping ensure a shorter product lifespan. They probably cost quite a bit less to manufacture as well, thereby enhancing the company's bottom line. Your last line is precisely the industry's strategy: to remove the incentive for repair and enhance the incentive for replacement. Don't expect this trend to reverse anytime soon. Of course, shops and customers deal with this on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes it's substantially less costly to pay for repairs. For example, $300 to repair a $1200 camera. The vast majority of consumers, however, don't pump that kind of money into their gadgets, so repair is a decreasingly attractive option for most. I doubt the vast majority are willing to put their money where their mouths are when it comes to environmental (i.e., landfill) friendliness, also.
I think the second reason is more likely, that there is demand for cheaper products. And once something is cheap, the cost of repair becomes an increasingly large percentage.
Forty years ago, the average house had very little in the way of electronics, and they were pretty generic repair wise, the tv set, the radio and the stereo or record player. Few of the parts were specific to the set, so the local repairman could deal with them, getting the parts at the local electronic store, that also catered to the electronic hobbyist since the parts pretty much overlapped. When the items were bought, they were a big occasion.
Then solid state and even moreso ICs came along, and lots of things that were prohibitive (in size, if not in cost) were feasible for the average consumer, so they started arriving. There are almost infinitely more electronics around the house today than in 1966, or even 1976.
And it's always been a trend to cut production costs in order to lower sales prices, to increase the number of units sold. Indeed, the current cornucopia of electronic devices in the home is a result not just of demand but of lower prices. At the very most I'd buy one of those digital clocks thirty years ago, if I could afford it, but that LCD clock I bought the other day for $1.99 was too cheap to not buy.
So far from manufacturers setting out to make equipment that fails easily, I would argue they cut costs to meet consumer demands. And then when they do break (and I don't know whether things break more or less than before, I have little failure and most of the things I have came to me used; it may even be that things don't break more often, but the amount of electronic equipment around the house simply increases the chance that something will break), the cost of repair has more or less remained the same (compared to income) but the cost of repair is a far bigger percentage of a new device, which makes people think twice.
I got my first printer in 1982, for five hundred dollars. Not a very good one, not very fast, but about as cheap as I could get one here in Canada that year. If it had needed repairing (and it never did, it lasted until I gave it away years after I'd moved to a better printer), the investment of the new printer would mean I'd either have it repaired, or live without a printer. Now you can get near infinitely better printers for under a hundred dollars. That cost reduction has to come from somewhere. Even a decade ago, inkjets would have carried a price that warranted repair costs. But that decade old inkjet likely is still running, because better mechanical components could be afforded because of the higher price. Of course, few want to run those decade old printers because the art has advanced since then, and they want better.
That's another factor, if things are still on a development curve. If something better is coming along next year, and at a cheaper price, because demand feeds development, then that leaves the people who buy early on at high prices in the dust. If something better (and I do mean significantly better features or specs, that the buyer actually wants rather) comes along, why spend so much now? Note that I am not saying the manufacturers are limiting equipment so they can sell it a second time, I'm saying that when something arrives they may not see that something better can be made, or they don't anticipate the demand.
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