Early Adopters Experiencing More Bugs?

As the pressure to push out new technology product continues, early adopters are continuing to experience trouble. A reader wrote to mention a USA Today article about some recent new product problems. From the article: "Philips Electronics revealed Friday that it is recalling 11,800 plasma television sets. The Ambilight TVs were sold in the USA from June 2005 to January 2006 for $3,000 to $5,000. Faulty capacitors inside the sets can spark. Nine incidents have been reported, but retardant material inside the TVs has prevented any fires, spokeswoman Katrina Blauvelt says. The problem is not expected to affect other brands, because it is a part related to Philips' unique Ambilight feature, which casts a colored glow on the wall behind the TV."

Comments

Ambilight!

[eldavojohn]

Faulty capacitors inside the sets can spark. Nine incidents have been reported, but retardant material inside the TVs has prevented any fires, spokeswoman Katrina Blauvelt says. The problem is not expected to affect other brands, because it is a part related to Philips' unique Ambilight feature, which casts a colored glow on the wall behind the TV.

I never thought I'd be paying for a multi-thousand dollar TV, but when I picked up the new Philips Ambilight TV and popped in my favorite DVD of Backdraft, I wasn't even aware of the sheer awesomeness that was about to transpire.

This Ambilight technology is off the hook! Look at that red glow and flame effect it has on my wall! Technology is amazing! Now movies look completely real and vivid. This is the full theatre experience--I'm glad I paid $3k-$5k for this. I don't know how Philips does it but only Ambilight TVs give you the authentic feel like you really are trapped inside a burning building. And look, the flame even gives me third degree burns like a real fire ...

Re:Ambilight!

[camt]

Despite the humor of your post, Ambilight is a very cool technology -- ambient back-lighting significantly reduces eye strain. I was very hopeful that other companies would come out with equivalent alternatives or start licensing it from Philips -- it deserves to be on every TV set sold, wall-mounted or not.

Product design incomplete

[a_nonamiss]

It seems that we just accept these things now as inevitable. When products were produced, even as little as 10-20 years ago, I think they went through a much more thorough testing cycle before they were released to the public. With the advent of the Internet, expecially with software products, this idea of "release broken, patch later" just became the normal way of doing things. Since everyone running a business uses computers, this idea started creeping into products that couldn't be patched over the Internet. Of course, when companies start getting hit with the massive bills for these kinds of failures, I think we'll see the pendulum swing the other way. It's not even about massive consumer backlash anymore. (Which used to be the only motovating factor) It's simply that if Phillips has to pay a technician $30 - $50 (or more) to go onsite and replace a cheap defective part for 12,000 TV sets, they will start paying more attention to testing.

Bad Caps Abound

[No Salvation]

Yeah, Philips is known for having products with bad caps. I've had a couple Philips DVD players stop working for this very reason. There are whole forums devoted to the issue, you think they would have found a new supplier of low ESR caps by now. In any case no more Philips for me.

Re:This just in....

[bunratty]

And yet in the previous story, users are seemingly rushing off to upgrade to Firefox 2.0 alpha. Sometimes you really do need to state the obvious.

At least wait for the .0 versions if you don't want problems, folks. You might want to wait for the .1 or .2 versions. This applies to appliances, cars, software, and even books (I try to wait for the first corrected printing for O'Reilly books).

Re:No Way

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

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Interesting perl script.