Manufacturer questions I always wanted answered

ha scritto nel messaggio news: snipped-for-privacy@f16g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

Japanese, but has factories everywhere, like Sony and many other brands. Today some Sharps are made in Turkey by Vestel (quality dropped)

Zenith went in bankrupt around 1993-1994. Zeniths after this year are trash bins (:))

BOH

I'm italian and i don't know USA laws. Here in italy there's a two-year warranty for everything electronic.

I don't know if Zenith ever made C.R.T.s. ..

I don't know

The first VHS was from Matsushita Electric and sold under Panasonic and National brands. Maybe sold under JVC too

Ahem.. we have the same problem here in Italy. In past times schematics were complete and with a lot of explanations. Now there are only schematics without explanations, or, no schematics! Some times schematics cant' be found in Internet, and we don't have schematics (grr)

Links? About what?

from italy bye

I am talking about their older units

yes they did.

The links are my signature which state my qualifications so that techs here know I am one of them and not a garage hack.

4)Why did the law in USA for manufacturers (any kind not just electronics) being responsible for backing their products by parts & service change from 7 years to 5 then nothing now?,meaning now you can buy a product with no warranty and when parts are needed "sorry NLA".

The "parts for 7 years" has always been an urban legend.

Warranty and parts availability at least in the USA, has not been controlled by law, but whatever the company thought was in their best interest.

It's getting really bad in some cases: for example a lot of $899 HP printers that are just a year or three old do not have ANY print drivers available from HP for the latest 64-bit XP.

Panasonic is a JVC trade name. They're quite good parts actually.

See above. JVC. Japan Victor Corporation.

I've *never* see a schematic in an owner's manual ever !

Graham

Simple. Don't buy HP !

Graham

The answer to most of your questions is ..its the consumers fault . 98% of consumers want everything for a low price so all the manufacturers cut every corner they could to lower the prices resulting in low quality and poor service .

It's a Japanese company. Malaysia is the location of at least one of their assembly plants.

Panasonic is one of Matsushita's trade names (along with National and Technics). Matsushita owns a 50% share in JVC (and has since the

1950s), so they should show their preference to components produced by their corporate overlords.

Probably JVC, and it was adoped by their parent company (and a bunch of other companies) to compete against the Sony Betamax alliance.

They're not user servicable, so no need for a manual. It would just cost extra money, encourage people to electrocute themselves, and their survivors might sue.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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I didnt know that was even possible. (British models will be different sets to the US ones.)

VHS tapes are not an invention, theyre a product design.

that hasnt been done here in a very long time. Its not in manufacturers interests for several reasons. Theyd far rather people buy replacement machines that have some repair them, some get electrocuted by them, and some do such crap repair jobs it undermines their quality image and gives them additional warranty headaches.

NT

ha scritto nel messaggio news: snipped-for-privacy@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

Malaysia, Japan, Philippines, and many others..

oh..

all right.. i am a garage hacker :)

4-There never has been a warranty law in the US. The manufactures simply have to honor any stated warranty. A select very few U.S. States have laws on the books that the manufacture must supply repair parts (or a prorated replacement unit) for up to 7 years, but the laws have not made any difference. Only one of the laws address the cost of the parts, but it uses the manufactures suggested retail price for a basis on the parts price. 5- LG Electronics knew that CRTs were short lived due to the new technologies being developed. Zenith had several CRT manufacturing plants already in place, so they used them knowing they would be phased out in a few short years. It was a simple matter of business. Plus now LG could control the gun assemblies being used rather than the cheap China made ones Zenith started using around 94. 8- Manufactures CANNOT by law give schematics or service information to customers in the users guide or manual. The simple fact of putting a schematic in the OWNERS manual will keep it from being UL certified for sale in the USA. Even the European standards for the low voltage directive include a clause of reasonable misuse or abuse. I would say that putting a schematic in the users manual would make the user think they can take the unit apart no matter what warnings are in the manual or on the unit. I have yet to find any manufacture that will not sell at reasonable cost to a qualified servicer the service information, some even provide them for free, Hitachi for one. Realize that many newer units have boards and proprietary parts that should not be serviced in the field due to the cost of the equipment and skill levels required which most shops do not want to afford.

Some States, like MA have laws of this sort, but only a handfull.

Then you have not tried to service many of the newer products. Infocus, BenQ, Viewsonic, Dell, and many more of the vendors currently selling consumer products will not sell you parts nor manuals. Hitachi is a very atypical vendor, providing excellent service support for free to any qualified (actually, any shop that is a legitimate business, not necesarily qualified to do very much) servicer. Most other vendors do not supply training materials beyond their ASCs and many manuals are not reasonably priced at all. It very much depends on the vendor.

Even many of the traditional TV makers are providing very limited support for field service on boards that are easily serviced. Sharp and Panasonic, for instance provide NO SCHEMATIC in the service manual and no parts list for some power supplies that are easily repaired.

Until servicers and consumers pressure manufacturers, the trend will likely continue. Gateway, for instance, would not sell part for their PDPs until just recently. They have changed their tune after many customer complaints and lawsuits. Even so, their service support is virtually useless, other than guessing at what board to change.

When the auto service industry began to limit support to independent servicers, the ASC negotiated with them to solve the problem, avoiding action in Congress. They took a proactive stance insupport of servicers and consumers. Too bad NESDA in the USA has amounted to nothing more than a group of "good ole boys" who get together for a party once a year.

Leonard

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That's the retailer's fault. They never show you a good reason to spend more than the minimum, and when they do try you get the impression that they are motivated by a bonus and not a desire to help you.

Think that's the wrong way round. Panasonic is owned by Matsushita, who took over JVC in the '50s.

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    Dave Plowman        dave@davenoise.co.uk           London SW
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Not always true. There are lots of quality dealers out there that understand the differences between price and value, and between selection and choice. The consumer demanding more for less, combined with the trend in retailing toward box-moving effiencies at the expense of value added and intelligent decision making are BOTH at fault. When consumers demand more, they generally get it. The success of specialty retailers and custom installation and integration services is evidence of this. The retail and service industries in general lack creativity, knowledge, and vision, and the result is the lowest common denominator. There are notable exceptions, though they have to be sought out beyond the laundry lists disguised as full color adds in the Sunday paper.

Leonard

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The plot thickens.

Graham

I always assumed Panasonic was the premium brand of Matsushita. They are or were heavily into the broadcast market. MII was the rival to Sony Betacam, and arguably of better quality - so the VHS/Beta situation got reversed there as Betacam was by far more popular.

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    Dave Plowman        dave@davenoise.co.uk           London SW
                  To e-mail, change noise into sound.

The schematics were shipped inside the TV for decades. All UL cares about is if the set will catch on fire, implode, or tip over. They test for any reasonable safety fault, nothing more. Be sure not to forget their high testing fees, of course.

Have you ever met a real, live UL inspector? I have, and all they were worried about was the paperwork process used by my employer.

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Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

That's how I remember it - from 40 years ago.

Matsushita came up with the Panasonic name when they entered the US market, to sound "More American". They felt the use of Matsushita would hurt sales because it didn't look or sound "American"

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida