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I have to give credit where credit is due

138.88.180.67

Sony bit the bullet and decided to extend the warranty of the optical block for their SXRD1 TVs, until october 2008, regardless of when you got the set.
Last july, my set looked alittle "off". Sure enough, I was getting the dreaded "Green Blob". It started the end of July, and by the end of August,it was really bad. I heard about the extended warranty, so I called Sony. They took my info, and gave me a list of repair places. I made an appointment and they just finished. He replaced the optical block, and gave it a good cleaning, free of charge.
This has to be costing Sony a fortune. It looks like all or most of these sets are going to have this problem. It took a year and a half for my set to develoupe problems, so I expect others to take time too.
After years of fighting with their customers about this issue, sony finally did the right thing. They alsofigured out the problem-for a while they were replacing the whole set.
Jack

Follow Ups:

How dare you say a good word about Sony? NT - Jazz Inmate 11:48:39 09/22/07 (0)
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"I have found that if you love life, life will love you back." -Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982)
They don't deserve much credit - racerguy 14:05:29 09/21/07 (6)
Sony is notorious for this kind of crap. The same thing happened with multiple models of CRT RPTVs a few years back. Sony used defective CRTs for two years, producing twelve models of televisions with problems, continuing to build TVs with the bad CRTs despite knowing about the problem after the first year. They spent the next two years denying the problem, and then finally admitted that it happened to "a very small percentage of sets." The "small percentage" was 100% of the 12 models.

They finally agreed to extend the warranty on the affected sets for three years after date of manufacture. Unlike your situation, they never did replace sets, they just stonewalled for several years, then offered to replace CRTs. Looks like they learned a little bit of a lesson.

Unfortunately for many owners of these sets, replacing and aligning CRTs in a HD RPTV takes a lot of skill, which most of the Sony-authorized service centers don't have. The whole thing was pretty much a disaster for people who bought those sets.
- Agree 100 percent... - JoeLip 21:49:57 09/21/07 (0)
  Hi,
  
  See my post below. SONY simply does not have its shit together anymore. Believe me, I hate writing that, but this seems to be the case. People are spending thousands on sets which won't last through their warranty periods? Screw that. I'm going Toshiba next time. Down a notch in performance but very reliable. Anyone at SONY paying attention??
  
  Cheers, Joe
- re: "a very small percentage of sets..as 100% of the 12 sets" - Duilawyer 17:54:42 09/21/07 (1)
  Based on your post there claim is not necessarily false. If 3 sets of each of the twelve models was defective, it would still be a "a very small percentage of sets." despite your claim it affected 100% (12) of their 12 models. Got more meaningful data?
  - Let me try to explain more clearly - racerguy 18:59:10 09/21/07 (0)
    There were twelve models affected by the CRT problem. The problem was manifested on every example of those twelve models. I don't know how many Sony made of each model, but there were many thousands for sure. The problem occurred on all of them; therefore the percentage was 100%. The Sony-authorized technician who replaced the CRTs in my set told me that he had personally repaired more than 100 sets.
    
    Since Sony made many other television models in addition to those 12 CRT RPTV models, and only the CRT RPTV models had the problem, they could plausibly claim that the problem was limited to "a very small percentage of sets." Classic weasel-wording.
- perhaps - Jack G 14:33:38 09/21/07 (2)
  This may have been more PR than customer care. They have a lot invested in and riding on LCOS TVs. There are several threads at AVS with something like 10,000+ posts about the subject. At first they denied it here too. Lots of fights. They only replaced some sets, because they didn't have the right optical blocks for the earliest models. This was turning into another disaster, so they decided to deal with it.
  Jack
  - Not just the early models. I think it was all of 'em... - JoeLip 21:43:12 09/21/07 (1)
    Hi,
    
    I was one of the unfortunate saps who owned a 50-in XBR1 SXRD set. The picture with a good signal was really amazing. Lasted 4-5 months. Then yellow streaks showed up. New optical block one week later. I was very impressed until a few days went by and the picture began freezing on every input, despite signal quality. Back come the repair guys and yep -- it needs another optical block. Fast forward two months and I hear the optical blocks are "backordered indefinitely." At this point my Dealer got involved and SONY finally offered me a refurbished XBR1 or a brand new 55-in A2000. I took the A2000. It is not as good as the XBR1 -- not nearly. No magic in this picture -- none. It works fairly good, though. It freezes on occasion, but I understand this is something we just have to live with. I gotta tell you, though -- I have a really bad taste in my mouth for SONY. They used to OWN both the CRT based set and magnetic recording markets. What the hell has happened to SONY??
    
    I think I might have read something on the AVS Forum (I HATE its format, BTW -- it is worthless) about SONY having Samsung manufacture these sets for them in Korea. I doubt it (my A2000 is badged as assembled in the USA), but then again, who really knows. Samsung (and LG) are the only brands that I find less desirable then SONY.
    
    I knew SONY was in trouble years back when I bought a 27-in XBR CRT set which had a horizontal hold problem that SONY just could not fix. Unfortunately for me, the picture quality of the 50-in XBR1 SXRD set was so much better than anything else; I just had to have it. BIG mistake.
    
    Sorry to have rambled on. Good luck with yours. Maybe they'll get it right this time.
    
    Cheers, Joe
    - I'll hazard a guess here - Jack G 04:34:13 09/22/07 (0)
      I think Sony secretly acknowledged the problem here, and decided to deal with it. They gave up on plasma sets (which were rather nice), and their other TVs aren't all that hot.
      You actually proved my point-these sets were a PR nightmare for them.
      I'm going to guess here, and say that it may have taken them a bit of time to actually figure out how fix the problem. The new OB, isn't just a replacement, but preliminary veiwing seems to show that its superior to the original, especially in the blacks. Its also still under the same extended warranty, until Oct. 2008.
      Did you know there were 2 different types of OB for the XBR1? It depended on when it was made-kind of a pre and post Dec. '05. They have to match up the serial number to an OB.
      I don't mean to defend Sony here, and I know they didn't do the extension for me personally, but still, I'm glad they fixed it.
      Jack

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