KBR said:
There's a popular brand now called 'Black Diamond' which I don't believe is made by Mitsubishi. Correct me if this is wrong.
That's correct as far as I know. The
CRTs in some or all of these are made by
Thompson.
It looks like a distributor called Mitsubishi Ireland is getting sets made with this brand, yet everybody remembers a model of the old Mitsubishi called Black Diamond. Clever move by the importers.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with them - just that they are not the premium brand many believe them to be. They are just as good as SLX, ZX, or the Aldi/Lidl brands that are on the market (of which I have one & am happy with).
Yes - the old
Mitsubishi Black Diamond devices were top of the range devices up there with the lines of
Sony etc. in terms of price and quality. The new (non
Mitsubishi)
Black Diamond devices are more basic and cheaper but, especially since these things are largely commodity items built from a smaller and smaller set of standard parts these days, fine for general use. I presume that
Mitsubishi sold or licensed the
Black Diamond brand to somebody along the way and/or outsourced production of such branded devices at some stage.
I'd say 5 year life expectancy on any of these brands is acceptable.
I don't think that a 5 year lifetime on even a "cheap" make is acceptable myself assuming it's not left on 24/7 or something extreme like that. As I mentioned earlier our (non Mitsubishi)
Black Diamond 21"
TV has been going strong for about eight years now. I know somebody who had a
BEKO which had a surprising array of advanced features (e.g. picture in picture, individual default volume settings for different channels - ideal for
ntl: who seem to have wildly different volumes on different channels) and which they found really robust and reliable (albeit huge!).
I also believe the manufacturer now has to look after the disposal of these by law. Can't see how this is going to work though.
Is there any environmental levy charged to fund this? I noticed in
California recently that they charge such a levy on all
CRT/LCD screen based devices.