Frederick
Second Unit
- Joined
- Mar 9, 1999
- Messages
- 400
Taken from Reuters:
LOS ANGELES, June 22 (Reuters) - A California man has sued Sony Corp. of America in a proposed class action, claiming the electronics maker failed to warn consumers that the center of the screens of its widescreen televisions darken if watched frequently in "normal" mode.
Sinclair Cohen of San Jose spent "thousands of dollars" repairing his widescreen TV after Sony refused to fix it under warranty when the center of the screen darkened, the lawsuit, filed on Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, said.
A Sony spokeswoman could not be reached for comment.
Broadcast, satellite and cable images are displayed in a 4-to-3 aspect ratio -- the proportion of TV screen width to height -- while a widescreen television boasts a 16-to-9 ratio to display movies on DVD and high definition television.
In the "normal" mode, the widescreen television displays the 4-to-3 screen image by drawing vertical gray bars on either side of the image to narrow the screen.
"If you watch a lot of normal TV, you'd watch it in this (normal) mode with these bars," Cohen's lawyer, Daniel Warshaw of Tarzana, California, said. "When you put it back to the widescreen image you see lines down the sides."
Warshaw said Cohen's TV set was "fairly new."
The suit said Sony should have warned Cohen and other customers that using the "normal" mode would ruin the picture.
His lawsuit accuses the New York-based subsidiary of Sony Corp. of false advertising, deceptive acts and unfair business practices, and asks a judge to certify a class of people who bought Sony widescreen TVs since 2000.
The lawsuit against Sony was filed the same day that a Florida man accused the U.S. electronics arm of Pioneer Corp. of selling defective high-definition televisions.
In that proposed class action, also filed in Los Angeles, the plaintiff said HD televisions built by Pioneer Electronics had an "over voltage condition" that caused permanent streaking lines across the screen.
Freddy C.
LOS ANGELES, June 22 (Reuters) - A California man has sued Sony Corp. of America in a proposed class action, claiming the electronics maker failed to warn consumers that the center of the screens of its widescreen televisions darken if watched frequently in "normal" mode.
Sinclair Cohen of San Jose spent "thousands of dollars" repairing his widescreen TV after Sony refused to fix it under warranty when the center of the screen darkened, the lawsuit, filed on Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, said.
A Sony spokeswoman could not be reached for comment.
Broadcast, satellite and cable images are displayed in a 4-to-3 aspect ratio -- the proportion of TV screen width to height -- while a widescreen television boasts a 16-to-9 ratio to display movies on DVD and high definition television.
In the "normal" mode, the widescreen television displays the 4-to-3 screen image by drawing vertical gray bars on either side of the image to narrow the screen.
"If you watch a lot of normal TV, you'd watch it in this (normal) mode with these bars," Cohen's lawyer, Daniel Warshaw of Tarzana, California, said. "When you put it back to the widescreen image you see lines down the sides."
Warshaw said Cohen's TV set was "fairly new."
The suit said Sony should have warned Cohen and other customers that using the "normal" mode would ruin the picture.
His lawsuit accuses the New York-based subsidiary of Sony Corp. of false advertising, deceptive acts and unfair business practices, and asks a judge to certify a class of people who bought Sony widescreen TVs since 2000.
The lawsuit against Sony was filed the same day that a Florida man accused the U.S. electronics arm of Pioneer Corp. of selling defective high-definition televisions.
In that proposed class action, also filed in Los Angeles, the plaintiff said HD televisions built by Pioneer Electronics had an "over voltage condition" that caused permanent streaking lines across the screen.
Freddy C.