4k tv next but... (1 Viewer)

[JohnRice]

Dollars to donuts, they don't see it that way. They're all the same so if you don't buy X are you going to buy Y if X and Y are the same? Firmware updates are great for what is in the box today. Firmware updates won't necessarily fix something that they don't even know exists, if that makes sense. For example, can you get HDMI 2.1 support from an update? (PS: Literally asking because I don't have a clue! That's a lie, since if I could, I would). As another example, on my Samsung, there was something called "Evolution Kit" which was some type of future proof for the TV. After the marketing hype, I never heard anything or used the evolution kit. Samsung never contacted me to say hey, let's update your evolution kit... Utter nonsense, it turns out.

I guess the moral is, if you're happy with what you have, enjoy it until the leds starting falling out of the back of the TV. If not, there's a wide array of new and better stuff always available.

My mom still has a freezer and a fridge they bought when they moved into our home in 1968. They just replaced the boiler a 4-5 years back. They probably have negative efficiency ratings, don't cool or freeze as good as modern units would but my mother has never said I need a new freezer, or whatever. Only after a bathroom flooding destroyed her kitchen did she replace the original stove and cabinets, btw, in the house since it was built. Different generation. Different needs.

The irony is, if your mother bought a reasonable new fridge, it would probably pay for itself in five years.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

The irony is, if your mother bought a reasonable new fridge, it would probably pay for itself in five years.

Yeah, definitely w/ something like a fridge... although that may not apply so much going forward (after a recent purchase) since the tech advances for that may have leveled off -- still, there are probably components that only perform optimally for so long in a fridge before its efficiency/effectiveness takes a nosedive, but probably not just after a few years...

OTOH, if you tend to be the sort to go for all the whizz-bang bells and whistles from a company like Samsung, your fridge may "die" every few years because of all those bells and whistles...

_Man_

 

[JohnRice]

Yeah, definitely w/ something like a fridge... although that may not apply so much going forward (after a recent purchase) since the tech advances for that may have leveled off -- still, there are probably components that only perform optimally for so long in a fridge before its efficiency/effectiveness takes a nosedive, but probably not just after a few years...

OTOH, if you tend to be the sort to go for all the whizz-bang bells and whistles from a company like Samsung, your fridge may "die" every few years because of all those bells and whistles...

_Man_

Yeah. In this situation, with a fridge that’s over 50 years old, the savings would be significant.

 

[edee_em]

The irony is, if your mother bought a reasonable new fridge, it would probably pay for itself in five years.

Oh, I know John. Been singing that song for decades! Stuck in their way generation: money not spent is money saved, regardless of savings that will happen because of spending money. She never has wavered from that.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Oh, I know John. Been singing that song for decades! Stuck in their way generation: money not spent is money saved, regardless of savings that will happen because of spending money. She never has wavered from that.

I, OTOH, am the sort who probably needs to check myself the other way so I don't "save" too much by buying much more than I can realistically use, haha... case in point w/ my movie collection 99.5%(?) bought at (often very) substantial "savings", but way too many still shrinkwrapped...

Well, at least I don't own (or have significant need of) a car, especially nowadays, that would probably cost much more than what I've spent on my movie collection, LOL... or so I tell myself anyway...

_Man_

 

[Josh Steinberg]

In short, manufacturers have turned televisions from being a household appliance like a refrigerator or washing machine that you’d buy once, repair as necessary, and would work on the same standards for decades, to something more akin to consumer electronics like computers and cell phones, where the tech evolves so quick that it’s no longer a lifetime investment but a lifestyle product you repurchase every few years. That switch by the manufacturers is what’s driven the upgrade from standard definition to high definition to 4K in less than two decades, which is astounding when you consider that standard definition was the, well, standard for seventy years. It’s not filmmaker driven. Most new film and TV productions are still being put through post-production at 2K, including films shown on the biggest IMAX screens in the world.

So it may be true that your new TV does make it more than five years, but the consumer electronic companies are still pushing upgrades and enhancements at such a rapid rate that I don’t believe it pays to invest in a TV the way you would with a refrigerator or even a new car. What I was trying to say before is that you want to think of it more like a cell phone or a laptop when you buy, and most people aren’t buying those types of products with the mindset that they’ll be useful forever. I also think it’s telling that it’s virtually impossible to insure/extend a warranty on a new TV more than five years, which to me tells you how long they expect these things to last. New $3000 OLEDs look amazing, but you can’t spend that money expecting that now you won’t have to worry about a new TV for ten or twenty years. So if it’s ten years out of your budget to pay for OLED, to me that’s not necessarily a great allocation of resources.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Its also the application use thats important. Gamers tend to trash OLEDs a lot quicker by pushing that frame rate into world of the excessive (120hz and all that).

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

OTOH, most of us aren't getting any younger... so we can likely appreciate some new tech advances (of these kinds) only so much as we age, so...

I *was* planning to upgrade my faux-K Epson 5050 projector several years from now whenever they make some much desired, huge leaps in (H)DR (for the circa $5K level) that's been lagging way behind direct-views, but who knows? Might realistically be closer to 10 years than 5 before that happens, especially given my new, unexpected circumstance... at which point I'll have entered my 60's...

_Man_

 

[Bryan^H]

There's a lot of extremist wording being used here. How about we look at the details for a moment?

I expect most TVs made today will last more than five years, but I wouldn't count on them lasting ten. That's just the way of SO many products. Not just TVs.

Now, let's look at the value we get from what we buy. Last year I bought a 65" Vizio P Series (a higher end model) 4K QLED for the same price I paid in 2009 for a 42" bottom-of-the-line Panasonic plasma. The Vizio is much bigger and positively blows away the picture quality of the plasma in every conceivable way. In addition, the power savings of using the QLED will probably pay for most of the TV over its life span. For half the price of the 2009 low end plasma, today I can get a larger, 55" Vizio M Series that will still beat it in image quality in most aspects, and doesn't heat up the entire house.

To me, I'm getting much more for my money in the long run, because the TVs cost significantly less for better performance. The other side of that coin is they don't last as long. I'm actually OK with that trade.

I’m aware of the improvement in technology, and the consumer friendly energy savings. The extremist wording is obvious guessing (and highly doubtful). Without proof it is just speculation that newer TV sets do not last as long as those from a decade ago. Once again I am not trying to argue your point, just want to know where the source is for the info about newer hardware being inferior to that of a decade or more prior.

 

[Clinton McClure]

I’m still using a 2009 Panasonic plasma in my HT. The tv in our living room is a 2010 Toshiba LCD. My daily-driver MacBook Pro is a 2012 model. Until last fall, I was using a Yamaha flagship receiver from 1999. Until 2018, I was driving a 2000 Toyota Celica.

I’ll never be convinced that companies have a 5-year planned obsolescence on anything that’s not bottom of the barrel. My parents have had bad luck with TVs but that’s because they keep buying $250 Sanyo TVs from Walmart every few years when they burn up.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Look no further than HTF’s own @Todd Erwin ’s recent experience with a four year old TV he had purchased from Best Buy with a five year warranty - long story short, they weren’t all that interested in even attempting to repair it, they just issued Todd a refund for the cost of the TV. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about - not that the TV will simply drop dead automatically when it hits the five year mark, but that they become nearly impossible to repair over time, compared to older sets where one might consider a repair rather than a replacements.

I stand by my earlier point: TVs used to be household appliance purchases akin to buying a washing machine or refrigerator, expected to last a long time and worth repairing, and now they’re consumer electronics purchases akin to smartphones and laptops, not really expected or designed to last for the long haul.

 

[Clinton McClure]

I supposed I missed that from earlier, however, I’ve never bothered trying to have a tv repaired.

 

[edee_em]

Look no further than HTF’s own @Todd Erwin ’s recent experience with a four year old TV he had purchased from Best Buy with a five year warranty - long story short, they weren’t all that interested in even attempting to repair it, they just issued Todd a refund for the cost of the TV. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about - not that the TV will simply drop dead automatically when it hits the five year mark, but that they become nearly impossible to repair over time, compared to older sets where one might consider a repair rather than a replacements.

I stand by my earlier point: TVs used to be household appliance purchases akin to buying a washing machine or refrigerator, expected to last a long time and worth repairing, and now they’re consumer electronics purchases akin to smartphones and laptops, not really expected or designed to last for the long haul.

There used to be a whole industry to repair TVs back in the day. Hell, it was a viable career choice for many. The TV was a TV like every other TV and had to be fixed/could be fixed, if you wanted to watch TV. They even made house calls, didn't they! The key, I think, is that the TV was a TV and a new one wasn't going to get you anything different, so you fixed it. We didn't see many advancements in TV tech other than color, early on and transitors later on. It was cheaper to fix it than to buy a new one. Today, when a TV needs to be fixed (if you can find someone to do it and or justify the expense) a new TV will probably offer you way more than the one you're trying to fix. My take. No science. No data.

Another example, my 2009 Sonata. The wife mandated that our son would never drive it because it didn't have bluetooth, hands-free capabilities and certainly, no back-up camera. Too unsafe. So off I go to the car stereo store. Over $2,000 to replace the head unit and install and that was with keeping the factory speakers. Not going to happen when that is a nice down payment on a new car with all that and more in there already.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Today, when a TV needs to be fixed (if you can find someone to do it and or justify the expense) a new TV will probably offer you way more than the one you're trying to fix.

Anecdotally, that’s my experience as well. When my 2012 LG plasma stopped working, the cost of the repair was more than the cost of a new TV, so I instead purchased a TCL Series 6 model, which quite frankly, was cheaper than the LG was when it was new, and is in every respect a better television.

 

[jcroy]

Back in the day, the times I had a "short lived" tv set was completely unrelated to its intended usage.


One of my old cathode-ray-tube (crt) tv sets only lasted a few years. Apparently the screen tube was kicked in during a wild party, and we threw the destroyed remains over the balcony into the dumpster directly underneath.



The next crt tv I had, lasted longer than 15 years until it finally died.

 

[Clinton McClure]

I think my parents had a tv repaired once in the mid-80s. It was a huge, ugly Philco console tv. That was when TVs were considered furniture. They also had a Philco vcr that kept breaking and they kept taking it to the same repair shop and paying to have it fixed.

 

[Lord Dalek]

Look no further than HTF’s own @Todd Erwin ’s recent experience with a four year old TV he had purchased from Best Buy with a five year warranty - long story short, they weren’t all that interested in even attempting to repair it, they just issued Todd a refund for the cost of the TV. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about - not that the TV will simply drop dead automatically when it hits the five year mark, but that they become nearly impossible to repair over time, compared to older sets where one might consider a repair rather than a replacements.

I stand by my earlier point: TVs used to be household appliance purchases akin to buying a washing machine or refrigerator, expected to last a long time and worth repairing, and now they’re consumer electronics purchases akin to smartphones and laptops, not really expected or designed to last for the long haul.

This reminds me of how you can't get Vitamix to work on blenders msde before 1995 anymore. They''ll just give you a coupon for a new one.

 

[edee_em]

This reminds me of how you can't get Vitamix to work on blenders msde before 1995 anymore. They''ll just give you a coupon for a new one.

I had a dehumidifier that died. I had an extended warranty with Best Buy (the failure happened in the second year of ownership). They sent out a tech to look at it and analyze the issue. He looked it over (said out loud he really didn't know what was wrong with it) and told me he had to send his report to Best Buy and that they would contact me as to how they were going to proceed. I guess he had to send in an estimate to repair to Best Buy and they make the decision to fix or replace. They sent me a store credit.

This is not so surprising because the cost of the item to them is much lower than what it costs us. We get stuck on the retail price, obviously as that is what we pay, but to them, their cost price is maybe half of that, or less? Add to that the fact that every "professional" out there thinks they are worth at least $100 per hour, it is more cost effective for them to replace a $200 humidifier than fix it, especially if any diagnosis needs to be undertaken. Imagine the cost if the unit goes into the shop for a week!

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

It's just largely the economics of it all right now on top of all the tons of bells and whistles that products of old didn't incorporate that could fail on you, especially all that relies on fancy, often design-flawed, bug-prone, "smart" electronics.

Each feature and component you add to the whole thing adds another failure point. Even if each of them are just as well made as before, you're accumulating/multiplying the number of potential failure points that didn't exist before... and there are a ton more than 2-3 decades ago.

Your fridge, oven, car, etc rely on all that extra complication much of which centering on CPUs that used to be domain of general purpose computers (that few people knew/understood much of), not everyday appliances and vehicles... and that (r)evolution isn't slowing down w/ all the promotion of "smart" devices/appliances/homes/vehicles of the near future...

_Man_

 

[Todd Erwin]

Look no further than HTF’s own @Todd Erwin ’s recent experience with a four year old TV he had purchased from Best Buy with a five year warranty - long story short, they weren’t all that interested in even attempting to repair it, they just issued Todd a refund for the cost of the TV. That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about - not that the TV will simply drop dead automatically when it hits the five year mark, but that they become nearly impossible to repair over time, compared to older sets where one might consider a repair rather than a replacements.

I stand by my earlier point: TVs used to be household appliance purchases akin to buying a washing machine or refrigerator, expected to last a long time and worth repairing, and now they’re consumer electronics purchases akin to smartphones and laptops, not really expected or designed to last for the long haul.

Well, it wasn't quite that easy and simple, for those that have the time to read the entire thread. Living outside of Best Buy's service and delivery area made it much more difficult to get it even diagnosed, having to deal with a third party service tech who is the only game in town and has no problem treating most of his customers like dirt. We had a "disagreement" and therefore refused to work any further on my TV, claiming that I was the one refusing service. It took several hours on the phone to get it resolved by a Geek Squad agent, who simply replaced the TV once he advocated for me and got permission to do so.

Unfortunately, appliances do not last as long as they used to, either. I had a refrigerator fail just six months out of warranty (we failed to purchase an extended warranty on it), and fought tooth and nail with the manufacturer to get them to fix it at no charge. The thermostat on the fridge side had gone bad. Two years later, the thermostat on the freezer side went out. Nearly everything is disposable these days.