Hi folks. Are there any threads here that discuss the long term reliability of the various manufacturers? I've used the search function plugging in various terms and can't seem to find anything like that. I have a found a few general discussions of individual models and some references to Consumer Reports (not my favorite source, BTW).

As you might guess, the reason I'm asking is that I got burned bad on a purchase. Magnavox 37" LCD died less than two years after purchase. Cost to repair is about 70% the original cost of the set. Want to try and do my homework this around.

Thanks in advance.

Jim

It's a reasonable question, and the topic certainly comes up frequently, both in product-specific and topic threads. But the problem as I see it is that forums are not a good place to get a reading on overall patterns. The reason is that unhappy people are far more likely to post (often repeatedly) than people who are happy with their TVs.

That said, my impression from four years of reading on this forum is that all makers can have dogs, but that in general the "old-tech" sets from established makers give the best long-term service.

Most rear-projection sets are out of production (largey due to reliability problems) but Samsung LED projection are still being made and seem to work quite well, but they haven't been around long enough to be sure.

In LCD flat-panel, alll the makers have picture quality issues (sparkles, blobs, bands, motion blurs etc) but generally they are more reliable than rear-projection. If you find one you like it should last as long as you stick to the name brands (Sony, Toshiba, Sharp, Samsung). If reliability is most important to you, get last-years models as they are being phased out.

I'll leave comments on plasmas to those who follow them more closely, except to say that Pioneer is now considered the standard of excellence.

Thanks for the reply, Davegow. I guess you're making a good point about unhappy people. I just kind of assumed that as busy as this site is, there might be a area some place that I was missing that tracked reliability issues. So, does anybody know of a place on the Internet that does actually track these things?

I have another question. What is considered "old tech" these days in television? My assumption was that old fashioned tube type (CRT) TV's were the "old tech" of the industry, and that LCD, DLP and Plasma would be considered "new tech". Is there a more subtle distinction I'm missing?

Again, thanks for the help.

Jim

I'd always be interested to find out who has the oldest of each 'new' type of TV (DLP, LCD or plasma) and how it's holding up.

My Sony KD-34XBR2 died yesterday after about 7 hard years of use, it was well worth the 4k i spent on it. I am using a Loewe 38" Aconda as a stand by TV, the Aconda was in for service work for a bad board but is working fine.

In my Bedroom i have a Mits 52628 DLP, bought it in Nov of 05 and have never had a problem with the set still even has the factory bulb.

I'd always be interested to find out who has the oldest of each 'new' type of TV (DLP, LCD or plasma) and how it's holding up.

By "DLP" I presume you mean "rear-projection", which includes LCD and LCoS as well as DLP. My JVC LCoS is going great into it's 4th year, but these kind of sets are no longer being made. I'd certainly buy another one if they were available.

But a 3 or 4 year old set is far different than current sets. Plasmas in particular are much less prone to burn-in than they used to be. Bad pixels are far less common in both LCD and plasma flat-panels. So I'm not really sure how much you can learn about sets being sold now by looking at the history of older sets. That's one of the many mistakes that Consumer Reports makes when they give their ratings.