DIYbanter - View Single Post

wrote:
Although large manufacturers are under great
pressure by people who want something but don't want to pay for it, they
still can throw more money and experience at the design, choice of
components and manufacturing.

But in general they don't. They may spend a bit more on life/etc testing
of new designs, but they are much more interested in getting the product
into production and sales ASAP. Before you claim again that I and others
don't understand electronics, I'd point out that I've spent decades in
high volume (2M/Annum) international electronics design, for some of
the world's majors. The pressure on manufacturers is to produce for
today, not tomorrow. No manufacturer can afford to produce total crap if
he wants the next order. However, the standards will be reduced to the
lowest which the market will bear! Big brands are normally little better
than cheap/no brands in terms of product quality/life for these bottom
end commodity products which are now old/obsolete technology. Spares are
a thing of the past with modern production efficiencies, cost precludes
repair. The production life of a custom TV/Video control microprocessor
is generally less than 12 months. Are you prepared to stock unique
spares for 10 years? If it doesn't work scrap it! In general, when you
buy a, say, Sony TV, you may buy a slightly better picture quality
because of the unique CRT design, but the rest of the semiconductor
electronics is more or less bog standard together with the rest of the
industry and may well be lacking in software originating teletext
features, compared with a cheapo Goodmans! You may also be amazed at the
number of spare components stuck on under the pcb to make it work,
because the design didn't when it hit production! All manufacturers
switch component sources to the cheapest available. The low cost Chinese
manufacturers are now very good in most cases at producing a reliable
product in the TV market. If you look at the number of failures on a
production % basis you will likely find that they are better than most
big brand names which actually have no sales volume! If you are
referring to CD players, then, yes, there is a difference between cheap
units and more expensive units for head life, but this is purely a
temporary phenomena, whilst the quality is improved in order to get the
next order. I don't buy major brand named electronics products in
general, because the selling price is determined by how many suckers can
be parted from their money for a pile of frequently expensively marketed
crap and I view TV styling as something for sheep. I regard Bose as
perhaps the most superb example of marketing over product performance!

I won't start on electrolytics/psus, as this would take all night,
except to say that good psu design is now so standard that a poor psu
is purely a QA failure.

Regards
Capitol