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William R. Walsh William R. Walsh is offline
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Default Manufacturer questions I always wanted answered

Hi!

1)Is Sharp Malaysian or Japanese? as most otheir products always said
"made in Malaysia"


Sharp Electronics is a Japanese company. They probably build things wherever
they can do so, as long as it is the cheapest place to do so. Their
headquarters in Japan is probably more devoted to business related work, and
not actual manufacturing. Drivers for their printers still appear to be
developed in Japan.

2)Why did Sony,RCA and Zenith tv quality dropped dramatically since
around 1990-3?


The most likely answer is that the buying public wanted things cheaper.
Things can only get so cheap (at least usually) before something gives.
Zenith might have been teetering on the edge of failure at that point, and
the RCA/GE brands had become part of Thomson Consumer Electronics around
that time.

3)When the owner of Sony died around 1990-3 why did the accountant get
the corporation?


Dunno. Not sure how you'd find out.

4)Why did the law in USA for manufacturers (any kind not just
electronics) being responsible for backing their products by parts &
service change from 7 years to 5 then nothing now?,meaning now you can
buy a product with no warranty and when parts are needed "sorry NLA".


No warranty? Now that I highly doubt.

As far as parts go, the way I've heard it is that manufacturers are under no
obligation to provide parts to the public...only authorized repair centers.
Any more, it is said that product lines and the technology used to produce
them are passed up by something "newer" (not always better--maybe "cheaper")
that providing parts and service over the long term doesn't make sense.

Many people don't care to repair something when it breaks anyway. They just
toss it, give it away or whatever and then buy something new.

5)Why did LG Goldstar decide to place Zenith crt's in many Goldstar
tv's since they bought Zenith from bankruptsy in 1996 or so?


Couldn't tell you for sure...I don't know if LG was/is in the picture tube
business. And the TVs may have really been built by Zenith to start with. If
when they bought Zenith, control over the entire operation became theirs (as
it surely did) someone may have decided that the picture tube manufacturing
facilities were an asset.

6)I noticed many JVC products have Panasonic parts what is the
relationship?


Perhaps it's a business relationship between the two. Some of the things in
a VCR are high precision parts that not anyone can make. It may be cheaper
for JVC to buy the parts and assemblies from someone else than to make them
in-house. In any case, few electronic devices have components that were made
by the company who assembled them.

7)Who invented VHS? Panasonic or JVC? or is it that JVC invented the
tape and Panasonic the machine?


As far as I know, it was JVC that invented VHS. (The JVC company makes this
claim.) Perhaps there was a marketing agreement between the two companies.
Such things happen quite often when a new technology comes out...companies
may form alliances with one another.

8)Why don't manufacturers in USA & Canada provide a large full page
schematic of their tv's & vcr's included in the owner's manual like
many parts of the world?.


People in the US don't generally want to repair anything. Also, it's getting
harder to find repair shops. There was a good one here that just disappeared
one day. To this day I still don't know why. They managed to do quite a
business. At one time the practice of providing service literature with a
product was common, however. I have a Montgomery Ward branded 19 inch table
TV (still working well) from the mid-80s that has a plastic compartment
containing a complete packet of service literature. Printed all over this
literature in red ink are notices stating that the documentation is the
property of the customer and should be returned with the set when it is
repaired.

William