Sony 34" XBR HD Widescreen----best overall TV?

[yakkosmurf]

Don't know if these were tube failures, but at the AV store where my friend used to work, they've had periodic batches of Sony TVs where several of them would just fail out of the box or quit working within a week (over half of their early production Sony Wegas failed).

There were some problems with the early models, but I don't remember seeing statistics that said over half. Anyway, the newere models have proven very reliable. Reading the reviews on this site is a good way to get a feel of how many people have been happy with that 34" inch model.

[Woochifer]

There were some problems with the early models, but I don't remember seeing statistics that said over half. Anyway, the newere models have proven very reliable. Reading the reviews on this site is a good way to get a feel of how many people have been happy with that 34" inch model.

That 50%+ failure rate was just at the store where my friend worked. I would not expect that to be a norm. But, he's encountered other Sony production runs with failure rates almost as high, not necessarily just with the Wega line. My wife and I have had so many Sony product failures in recent years that we've basically quit buying their products, and my friend had so many lost sales with various Sony lines that he started to only demo their products if customers specifically asked about them.

[yakkosmurf]

That 50%+ failure rate was just at the store where my friend worked. I would not expect that to be a norm. But, he's encountered other Sony production runs with failure rates almost as high, not necessarily just with the Wega line. My wife and I have had so many Sony product failures in recent years that we've basically quit buying their products, and my friend had so many lost sales with various Sony lines that he started to only demo their products if customers specifically asked about them.

There's no point in picking on any one brand. I've owned a lot of Sony products for a long time, and never had any problems with any of them. TVs, DVD players, CD decks, car stereos, and more all with no problems. I have a lot of friends and family in the same boat. Other brands have given us lots of problems though. Mitsubishi and Hitachi RPTVs have been terrible. Pioneer car decks, receivers, and CD players have also been terrible. Ironically, a number of JVC items and an RCA TV have been running forever trouble free. Go figure.

Point being, you can quote all the instances you want, but someone else's experience is going to be different. And when you look at the numbers of items sold, 150 that have catastrophic failures is a small number. It's like quoting those statistics that a child is abused every 10 seconds in the US. With 100 million children in the country, every 10 seconds is a small number. It's still a bad thing, but twisting statistics to blow something out of proportion is not a valid argument.