Very little is "premium" right now. View the stats; then view the reliability and deeply imbedded flaws in even the OLED sets...it's not fanboyism, it is objective truth that very few sets still carry a real premium in quality, and still hold it.
You may be right on one ouside of a few halo sets OTOH you can get a decent 1080p LCD picture cheap now just not Kuro style ...No such thing as a perfect display tecnology albiet I do like my 2013 1080P Samsung plama better than my 2013 1080p 2013 Sony LED/LCD so ........☻☻
OLED and the 2015 LCD premium WCG /HDR TV's aint that bad at all just not perfect by a country mile but at least you can watch them ouside of a dark room ( exactly why I bought my Sammy Plasma ) and the other 4 LCD sets here .
Pioneer is still in business, and found suckers to buy the name...years after production ended on their televisions. Know anybody else doing that?
General Electric , USA Westinghouse Electric ,Thompson SA , ( now Teccnicolor SA ) Raytheon, Phillips Television div. ( sold to an OEM )while Phillips remains as a conglomerate ,Mitsubishi ,Motorola, probably some others , and Toshiba is on the way to do just that with thier large semi conductor and volatile menory business .
Panasonic is highly diversified as is Sony ,LG and Samsung and they all dont (need the TV consumer sound or panel businsses at all ) to survive ........and Pioneer is failing at scale oustiide of Car audio and automotive navigation systems and ODD as a business case altogether.
FWIW Poineer is in a long standing trend of declining sales,profit and valuation and only a shadow of what thet were as little as 9 years ago so as a business case exactly how did the Kuro fit into all of this other than being an expensive (unsucessfull ) hail mary for the (now) non existant TV division .
OTOH Sony inc. is much more diversified with profitable assets in Imaging,games (PS3/4 and PSN ) entertajnment,TV production Music,Films,Finance and insurance etc.etc and has a higher market cap value and an owned TV subsiderary and internal consumer sound business unit (both) that may be sold while it continues to diverify into profitable business like medical technology and hospital and patent data management and imaging sensors etc.
TV and consumer sound are a small part of Sony inc. they could close down tomorrow and Sony would be fine ... as bad as Sony inc management has been they are miles ahead of Pioneer even without TV and consumer sound and have been much better at growth and diversification .
Panasonic is big into power system products aviation ,laptop PC dispays and automotive LCD diplays,solar power appliances in Asia and L I batteries all growth industries and apart from TV and consumer electronics. IOW these are companies that have done a much better job at growth and diversification than Poineer . My logic here is undeniable
This is not advise and some of this is specuation and should not be used for trading
OTOH Sonys net income is not so hot latley but not a net loss , the SNE TTM net income individually from 2012 -2015 FY are below with 2015 on the left and 2012 on the right . @ x1,000 USD .
($1,050,000) ($1,246,000) ($441,000 ) ($5,529,000)
http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/sne/fin...come-statement
Note : I used 2013 FY below to get a more typical business segment revnue avarage over 4 FY before any extraordinary charge offs or restructuring in 2014 FY .
Sony inc. Revnue by Business Segment Sales to External Customers in JPY x 1,000,000 or 1m
TTM 3/31/2013 FY
Imaging products 726,774 JPY
Game 527,110 JPY
Mobile &
communications 1,220,013 JPY
Televisions 581,475 JPY
Consumer sound 405,024 JPY
Other 7,323 JPY
Semi conductors
& comoponents
+ other 583,938 JPY
Sony Pictures 732,137 JPY
Sony Music 431,719 JPY
Financial Services 1,004,623 JPY
Other 532,558 JPY
Corporate 48,137 JPY
Consolidated total 6,800,851 JPY x 1m
http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/IR/inve...Statements.pdf
OTOH here is Pioneer's totaly dismal story below JPY x 1,000,000 or 1m
In a market that died during a major recession, run by morons trying to reboot that market with 3-D (how's that working out for ya as a yardstick of success), you have a very ironic question, there.
Why dont you look at Panasonics sucsess yardstick on the chart above and tell us all (strickly as a business case study ) how does that support a suceess story for Pioneer
What did the the Kuro Hail Mary do for Pioneer which in spite of being an excellent TV the fact is is that the
whole company is tenable on a good day unlike Panasonic , Sony inc ,Samsung chebol, LG chebol that can all survive fine without consumer electronics,LCD displays or TV .....we get back to diversification here no ? and Sharp has some of that as does Toshiba even more so .
This is
all Pioneer does below with lots of competeition again we are back to divesification and scale Panasonic doesent have and they might not even have all products listed below now .
Car audio and automotive navigation systems, ( Televisions ,CRT Lens and Plasma, former products ), PC DVD drives including PC DVD recorders, "set-top" DVD players and DVD recorders, Misc. DJ equipment
September 2014 : Pioneer would sell its disc-jockey equipment business to private equity firm KKR & Co LP for about 59 billion yen($550 million
-wikipedia-
Looks like Car audio and automotive navigation systems are most of all thats left and thats a competitive ,fickle and cyclical business .
Premium gear doesn't last forever, when people are broke, and quality isn't shaved to pry loose a few bucks. As quiet as that's kept.
Aside from a Rolex or *certain cars* most of it isnt worth much more than junk or old *stuff* at some point in the product lifecycle a 1986 Mercedes SL or Bentley anything fits that exmaple just fine and the 1999- 2000 and up some Benz SEL's and SL drivers and other premium cars go for chump change now compared to what they cost .
Nobody cares about the Poineer Kuros that doesent have one already and they dont have any halo products at all now on thier own .
All that being said Pioneer made a lot of good stuff for decades and what I owned of thier products including 2 late 70's vintage Silver monster recievers (not the small ones ) I still have but am not using now were all real real decent and I went through 2 of them and enjoyed them for many years before I moved on to better separates and speakers in my music configuration and 5.1 on the big TV . OTOH if they still made TV's I wouldent hesitate to look at one to buy .
FWIW I have a decent 2014 Pioneer in dash unit in my Truck running a 4800 watt aftermarket system just fine and if GM dumped Bose for premuum audio for Pioneer that was probably a good move . Bose automotive was never all that I turned it down on my last 2 new trucks .
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