Confused on New TV’s

[Rolly]

From CR on warranties

Just say no to extended warranties

It's no surprise that appliance and electronics salespeople push extended warranties. Their stores make more percentagewise on the individual warranty sold than they make on the appliance. By one industry estimate, retailers make a 50 percent profit on any warranty they sell, versus less than a 10 percent profit on the appliance itself.

About one-fifth of major appliance shoppers in our recent survey succumbed to the extended-warranty sales pitch. As a result, they paid more than they anticipated on something they didn't need.

We have found that extended warranties aren't worth it for three main reasons:


Appliances usually don't break during their warranty period, typically three years. For example, our appliance-repair-history data have shown that the likelihood your gas range will need repair in the first three years is less than one in five.


When breakdowns occur within the extended-warranty period, the average cost of repairing the appliance is not much more than the average price paid for the warranty.


Extended warranties often contain loopholes, such as not covering problems caused by normal wear and tear.


Given this history, Consumer Reports recommends against purchasing extended warranties for all major appliances.

[LarryG]

It's no surprise that appliance and electronics salespeople push extended warranties. Their stores make more percentagewise on the individual warranty sold than they make on the appliance. By one industry estimate, retailers make a 50 percent profit on any warranty they sell, versus less than a 10 percent profit on the appliance itself.

When the sales person just won't let it go -- which they often won't -- hold your hand up to stop them in mid-sentence and raise your voice slightly as you ask: "Now wait a minute here. Why are you so insistent that I buy an extended warranty? Are you trying to tell me that I can expect to have problems with this unit?"

Shuts 'em right up, right now, every time.

[LCHIEN]

I agree with Larry - when the sales clerk makes "THE BIG PUSH" to sell you that extended warranty, I look him straight in the eye and say, is this item likely to break within this period? Because if it is, I don't want it.

Warranty extensions are pretty much proven to be pure profit for stores.

I look at it this way... warranty extensions are nothing more than an insurance policy. Insurance policies are designed to pool you money, and spread the average risk out over many people, with the insurer making some profit but assuring that the burden of loss is no more than one person can stand.

In the case where you have 4 or 5 major appliances averaging $500 (telephones, computers, TV, DVD etc) you surely don't expect them all to fail, MAYBE one so can you stand the repair costs for one item? Sure you can, you have already spread your risk and the risk is small potatoes.

[scorrpio]

I see - the problem is not a video card with DVI out, but a TV with enough HDMI inputs.

About the VGA: I might be totally wrong here, but this is my own understanding of the problem:
VGA, just like composite, S-Video, and component, is an analog signal. And while composite and S-Video quit pretty early, both VGA and component are fully of 1080p throughput. The problem is with copy protection concerning high-definition content. Digital signal can be HDCP-encrypted. Analog can't. This means that you will find very few sources offering 1080p in analog - a VGA connection from PC being one.

Now, flat panels are digital displays, meaning they need a converter to display analog signals. And for 1080p, this converter needs to be twice as powerful as for either 720p or 1080i. Any TV will have a converter for these in order to accept component, so including a VGA input for these modes represents no extra cost - but very few will go to extra expense of including a converter powerful enough to take 1080p via VGA. Westinghouse supposedly is one such manufacturer, supporting 1920x1080 via VGA. But this support is increasingly becoming unnecessary since number of HDMI inputs on TVs and A/V receivers has been increasing - and new PC videocards all have a DVI connector. And here's something else to think about: if your PC is your media center, even if you get a TV that supports 1080p over VGA and connect it this way, if you ever decide to put a BD or HD-DVD drive into your PC, you will not be able to use it. Not at 1080p anyway. For 1080p content to play, there has to be aan HDCP handshake between the drive, the video card, and the monitor - not possible if monitor is connected to videocard via VGA.

[LYU370]

Ditto on the extended warranties. When I first bought my "clunky crt" rear projection set, I was a little nervous about it. But after 4 years, it still has a gorgeous picture, and not a single thing has gone wrong with it. That's an extra $450 in my pocket that I was able to spend on something else.

Also, just because a set looks good in the store doesn't mean a thing. Most sets in the store are all in "torch mode" Brightness, contrast, color, all cranked up to 100 to try and make them look good in the store. The set I bought looked awful next to some of the others that the sales guy was pushing. Reason, someone messed with the color settings.

Also, in case the sales guy tries to sell you the monster-ously over hyped and over priced cables.... Don't!!! Go to monoprice.com and get them for maybe 1/10th the cost.

[ragswl4]

Ditto on the extended warranties. When I first bought my "clunky crt" rear projection set, I was a little nervous about it. But after 4 years, it still has a gorgeous picture, and not a single thing has gone wrong with it. That's an extra $450 in my pocket that I was able to spend on something else.

Also, just because a set looks good in the store doesn't mean a thing. Most sets in the store are all in "torch mode" Brightness, contrast, color, all cranked up to 100 to try and make them look good in the store. The set I bought looked awful next to some of the others that the sales guy was pushing. Reason, someone messed with the color settings.

Also, in case the sales guy tries to sell you the monster-ously over hyped and over priced cables.... Don't!!! Go to monoprice.com and get them for maybe 1/10th the cost.

Roger that on the cables. I had a rep at BestBuy tell me that the $150 Monster HDMI cable would improve my picture by maybe 3%. I asked him how I could tell and he said, "well, you can't". An honest guy, I about fell over.

[mpc]

scorrpio - we're converging... VGA is analog only and will never be (legally) capable of full-resolution HD-DVD/Blue-ray movies thanks to HDCP as you said, no argument there. I'm not a movie buff anyway so I doubt I'll need HDCP over the PC-to-TV connection. I rarely use my DVD player/recorder other than as a replacement for the VCR to time-shift stuff. Records Nahm mid-day Saturday while I actually make sawdust in the garage... Nahm can wait until it's too late to be running power tools waking up the neighbors.

My current PC has one of the ATI TV-tuner cards in it (actually the All-in-Wonder type of video card + TV tuner on one card) simply because I like to have a small TV window in the corner spewing out the Simpsons or news or whatever while I browse the web. For a future living room HDTV, I'd like to have the HDTV capable of split-screen with the NASCAR race or football game on one side and the web on the other. Since the PC side is now relegated to half the screen I'd want it to be as high-resolution as possible.

Most current HDTV units won't allow split-screen using VGA as one of the inputs anyway... so I doubt I'll ever get what I really want. Or I'll have to make the PC the main unit - let it do all the audio-visual stuff (internal HDTV tuner + web) and output a single video stream to the TV/monitor. Then a single DVI or HDMI connection is enough. There are several ways to set up a "home theater" setup... from basic "replace old TV with new HDTV" all the way to a true "home theater" with the a/v receiver/decoder and separate audio amps, etc. I lean toward the simple TV replacement side of things. Movie buffs and videophiles probably lean towards a HDTV monitor+a/v receiver/decoder unit like you described. I don't even need/want cable or satellite since Los Angeles has plenty of over-the-air broadcast stations.

mpc