How much cheaper can they make tvs?

[Keefla]

@ WalMart today : Symphonic 23" Flat Screen TV, front Av inputs, Closed captioning, sleep timer, blah blah blah....$89.00. They must have had 15 of them on pallets.

[kx250rider]

Ralphs Market: Kumho DVD Player $19 with $50 of groceries!

Charles

[andy]

Don't forget that you can buy a portable CD player for less than the cost of most CDs.

[radiotvnut]

And I just saw a "no name" dvd player in a sale paper for $16! Boy, that one should last forever! I remember my flea market friend selling a mid-late '80's 25" Sears (Sanyo) set with stereo sound and A/V jacks about 7 or 8 years ago for $175. Me and him were talking about that the other day and we agreed he'd be lucky to get $50 for such a set today (and that would be after it sat there for six months). People today would rather have modern looking sets with all the features than an older set that's going to keep going and going like the Energizer bunny.

[sweitzel]

I'm sure it's assumed here, but it bears repeating. DO NOT buy $20 dollar import DVD players or recorders (well, $100 recorders) You will be lucky to get 20-40 plays or records out of them before they begin to not recognize discs or freeze up during playback. My Cyberhome 1600 recorder is toast less than a year from unpacking it from the box. The Coby set top player my wife bought for the bedroom is skipping and freezing less than 3 months and 20 movies played. Conversely, my Pioneer DVD/LD combo player is perfect at nearly 10 years old and constant use.

[radiotvnut]

Yes, that's very true. My brother-in-law is very tight and they've gone through about 3 or 4 $24.99 DVD players of different brands in the past year. I think one was bad right out of the box and the others didn't last very long before they started showing out. He thinks he's saving money; but, he really isn't. If he'd spend a little more on a better quality unit, he'd probably get at least 2 or 3 years of service out of it. That would be better than buying several $24.99 DVD players over a year's time. I made the mistake of buying one of those $39 all plastic Emerson VCR's a couple of years ago. It lasted about 3 months before it started stopping on it's own and eating tapes. I spent about $25 more on a JVC and have not had any more problems.

It's gotten to the point where all people see is: CHEAP PRICE!!! In reality, it's like the saying "you get what you pay for."

[fsjonsey]

I've been wondering. How many all tube sets do you think are still in daily use by non collectors? There have to be a few still floating around out there among the general public? Do you think any of them will show up after the analog cutoff?

[Kiwick]

I think most of the problems with DVD players are due to bad filter caps on the SMPS secondary, i have fixed a few this way, there are 2 or 3 1000 or 1500 mfd caps, usually 10 to 16 v, if they go bad they will allow high frequency SMPS ripple to reach the digital circuits and cause them to malfunction.

Originally Posted by sweitzel

I'm sure it's assumed here, but it bears repeating. DO NOT buy $20 dollar import DVD players or recorders (well, $100 recorders) You will be lucky to get 20-40 plays or records out of them before they begin to not recognize discs or freeze up during playback. My Cyberhome 1600 recorder is toast less than a year from unpacking it from the box. The Coby set top player my wife bought for the bedroom is skipping and freezing less than 3 months and 20 movies played. Conversely, my Pioneer DVD/LD combo player is perfect at nearly 10 years old and constant use.

[dr.ido]

Originally Posted by sweitzel

I'm sure it's assumed here, but it bears repeating. DO NOT buy $20 dollar import DVD players or recorders (well, $100 recorders) You will be lucky to get 20-40 plays or records out of them before they begin to not recognize discs or freeze up during playback. My Cyberhome 1600 recorder is toast less than a year from unpacking it from the box. The Coby set top player my wife bought for the bedroom is skipping and freezing less than 3 months and 20 movies played. Conversely, my Pioneer DVD/LD combo player is perfect at nearly 10 years old and constant use.

Strangely, my experience has been the opposite. I have/had various Pioneer/Panasonic/Philips DVD players that are fussy about what discs they will read. When they fail completely it's usually the laser or spindle motor and they aren't interchangable between models.

I find plently of dead no name cheap players, but they are usually easy repairs (the most common fault would probably be the capacitors in the power supply). The parts are usually interchangable between models as while there are countless "brands" the parts inside are usually the same.

Most of the cheap noname CRT TV's I find are easy repairs. Though more recently I've started to see more of them with bad CRTs, so I guess the manufacturers have found some more corners that can be cut.

After wrestling with a friends LCD set I'm still not sure if I've found the fault or not. I do know that I don't want to see that set ever again. I'd rather work on the cheapest/nastiest CRT set than these things.

[Sandy G]

I had a friend who worked for Bendix for awhile, they make braking systems & such, he said after demand drops below "X" units a year for some electronics board used in an automotive computer system, not only do they quit making it, they toss the tooling & parts...He said that certain cars built after '85 or so will be virtually unrepairable when some little board in 'em somewhere dies...

[dr.ido]

Fortunately for at least owners of some of these cars the parts that actually fail aren't the unobtainable custom parts. I have repaired several Mitsubishi ECUs (used in the Patrol, Magna and others). Like so many other things it is bad capacitors that cause problems.

Dry joints, bad realys and the burnt tracks that they cause are also common and relatively easy to repair. As more cars equipped with this stuff reach the age that these parts start to fail it may be worth coming to an arrangement with the local mechanic. With the companies the sell "reconditioned" ECUs charging around $400 + changeover there's more money in fixing them than there is in fixing TVs.

[veg-o-matic]

Originally Posted by kx250rider

Ralphs Market: Kumho DVD Player $19 with $50 of groceries!

Heeheehee! He said Kumho!

veg

[Earlsays]

Originally Posted by dr.ido

Fortunately for at least owners of some of these cars the parts that actually fail aren't the unobtainable custom parts. I have repaired several Mitsubishi ECUs (used in the Patrol, Magna and others). Like so many other things it is bad capacitors that cause problems.

Dry joints, bad realys and the burnt tracks that they cause are also common and relatively easy to repair. As more cars equipped with this stuff reach the age that these parts start to fail it may be worth coming to an arrangement with the local mechanic. With the companies the sell "reconditioned" ECUs charging around $400 + changeover there's more money in fixing them than there is in fixing TVs.

So, does this mean that there should be an AK-offshoot? "ECUKARMA.ORG"

I can see it now....

"Wow man, I just re-capped my car's computer, it runs WAY better now!"

awesome.

Actually, I could see a solution making itself available at some point--there are already aftermarket engine control units....used for performance type apps, but I don't see why something like tihs couldn't be done to keep a vehicle going...it would be nice to be able to get 10-15, even 20 years out of my thunderbird....there's already a LOT of unavalilable parts though and the car is only 13 years old....

As for TV sets...where do you guys get these great deals on used awesome TV sets? I can't find anything decent--well, decent, yes, but not what I want. All I ask is that my set is color and has composite video in...component would be NICE but it's not necessary.

Friend of mine gave me a circa 1984 13" color set...haven't even plugged it in, why? I don't watch broadcast TV, and I can't stand the picture quality that coax brings for things like laserdisc.

Another friend gave me (okay it was site unseen, or else I wouldn't have taken it) circa 1988 Montgomery Wards color set-aboot a 20" or so...it works fabulous, has L/R RCA AUDIO OUT, however only has coax in for video...hooked the LD up to it, and while it wasn't bad, it could've been better...

Don't want to sound ungreatfull here...just wihs I could get a deal on a set that I could actually plug stuff into...without one of those converter boxes.

[colortrakker]

Originally Posted by veg-o-matic

Heeheehee! He said Kumho!

veg

I laughed at that, but for a different reason: Kumho is more famous for making tires than DVD players.

[andy]

Here's one brand we won't be hearing from for a while:

http://www.cyberhome.com/