How far off the track this has gotten. I've never used CR for anything. Nor any site with visible or hidden manufacturer support. It's places like this where I prefer. Or in the home audio heyday Stereo Review and such.
You remember. Stacks of test equipment that some of us drool over having. Who provided real world tests that countered the brand's claims.
A challenge, of sorts. Go down to your local recycling center and sweet talk them into looking at the stacks and rows of TV's. Magnavox, Westinghouse, you name it will be there. "Kit TV's". A screen from here, a board from there, injection molded cases from there. Like I said. Days of the butt crack TV repair dude coming over to deguass the CRT, spray down and clean the tuner, test tubes, converge. It's over. Done!
Hate them, love them. The big guys like Sony and Samsung have been there for years. For a reason.
Yeah I know. Bal bla bla. "But they don't make their own screen, but they don't do that". IDGAF!
But I said it before. Go to any TV broadcast studio if they would let you. Sony here, Sony there.
Hell. The Grand Alliance. The melting pot of ATSC HD television. In the 3rd floor basement of the NBC studios close to DC back in the day. I was there. The camera? The million dollar, one-up with pluggable cards for the many different ideas being fed into the "funnel". Sony. I don't know. They must be doing something right.
Do you want, need a new TV. It's your money. All of those rows of scrapped TV's at the recycling center "could" probably be fixed if service data were made available. Or if you worked on them every day and could identify the common issues. The "Scotch Tape"....fix...for LG seems like a cheat. But it does help narrow down where to go next. A shorted SMD capacitor, taking a chance with an eBay board and/or ribbon cables.
Watching and listening to the Hindinglish speaking guys with the booker-picker pinky finger nail speaking boog-boogedy dad-dooooooood we-vill now check boogedy cap-ac-ceeee-torr.. vun, too, tree, fooo.
My attention span fades fast.
5 Sony's here and a Samsung. One 9" Sony I got at the exchange in Athens in the 70's that has a USA/PAL/CCIR switch on top with multi voltage selector and can plug into a 12 volt power source. I'm sure it would power on and work. With careful waking up from a Variac.
They all work. No Lucky Goldstar's here my friends. I think I'm smart that way. Not lucky.
I haven't regretted my Square Trade warranties one bit. I didn't even have to send an APC UPS back when I did a claim. Shhh....I put new batteries in it. So now I got 2-1500 watt backups.
How's that for a rant?