Television Warranty Advice - Before You Buy

Every year new Televisions hit the shops after the SALES end and before summer. This coincides perfectly with electrical faults which reach their highest percentage of failure rates per-day during springtime. The average expected lifespan of a new TV is 6 years 7 months, which is equivalent to 60,000 hours of use. A warranty which will see you through 3 year long lifespan is usually another cost on top of that TV price. John Lewis and Digital Direct include a 3-4 year warranty respectively in with their online prices on all TVs. If you don’t have your TV on continually it will last longer, thus 3 years is a safe bet, and the odds are in their favour with a 3 year warranty.

Is renewing a TV warranty really worth the money? A personal testimonial means far more to hear than from some article your read on hdtvprices.co.uk, imagine your good friend from the pub says how brilliant their LG TV is and how many years its lasted, you would have proof LG make good quality sets lasting a long time. So why the warranty? Well one reason is good TV sets have a lower failure rate, so for peace of mind you can pay £100 to guarantee your set lasts at least 3 years. Manufacturers design their sets to last the same time by using cheaper components of lower quality for chips and circuit boards to achieve the cost cutting. The technical name is MTBF (mean time before failure) often expressed in minutes or days. TV repairs can be very costly if you haven’t had the pleasure. Dead pixels and replacing the LCD is just too expensive, a sudden loss of sound is often worth the repairer’s parts and labour.

Do manufacturers need to make long lasting TV sets? Today it seems we live in a disposable society. Technology is being pushed at us from everywhere; whether we need it or not, we are somehow all under peer pressure to keep up with the Jones’s and buy the 1080p HDTV for the sake of having the same standard as next door. But what does 1080p have over terrestrial Analogue TV? Millions of colours less per inch, and a mega bright contrast ratio to blind you 8000:1. If you notice the picture is pixelated, your right, the only solution is to move further back until your vision blurs due to distance. Jokes aside. It’s vital brand “A” keep up with brand “B” in the battle of best TV brand stakes. Samsung have just produced an LED TV which is ultra slim in TV world. At an amazing 1-inch thick, being over 2-inches slimmer than my own Samsung LCD set! It’s a one of the kind. Suddenly LCD and Plasma seem to be so last decade. To this affect Panasonic must have a new technology label for their Viera. I believe they’re using the name of Motion Pro Picture, a picture enhancement technology. There we have it. When Sony produce supermarket grade Bravia sets, the 3-year warranty is a must. What else could explain the vast difference in price between two Sony Bravia’s – the cheap components of course. Not that there is anything wrong with Sony; demand for cheap TVs forces big name brands to drop prices to sell their stuff. The best way is to use older models using older technology – that way everyone is happy.

Final thoughts: 1080p HDTV has 1080 vertical and 1920 horizontal pixels. This is termed as true HD, although some argue HD is above 780p. I’m with the latter and have 20/20 eyesight, with a recent eye test to prove it and when I interlace or go 1080p watching Blu-ray – can’t spot the difference. Both seem poor resolution. 1080x1920 yeilds 2073600 to transfer that to another type of technology lets choose Digital Camera, you are up around the 2 mega pixel range (poor quality in 2009). So you’ve got your 8 mega pixel camera and your 2 mega pixel 1080p HDTV but the truth is painfully buried by all to see the ultimate quality comes from a roll of camera film and an Analogue TV. The ever changing world of Technology can not be allowed to stand still. The global economy depends on new technology as do all other industries need to progress to discover, test and sell products.

These views are my own and do not necessarily represent those expressed by others, factual or non factual, seek the advice of industry experts for their views on any subjects I blogged about in this article: Author: Al

LG | Samsung | Sony | LED | 1080p