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Sharp To Americans: You Don't Want to Buy a Sharp-Brand TV (wsj.com)

Posted by msmash on from the feud-begins dept.

Sharp has sued China's Hisense Electric, which licensed the Sharp brand for televisions sold in the U.S., accusing Hisense of putting the Sharp name on poor-quality TVs and deceptively advertising them (alternative source). From a report: The court action is the latest effort by Osaka-based Sharp to retrieve the right to use its own name when selling TVs in one of the world's largest markets. Sharp is trying to recover its position as a global maker of consumer electronics. Hisense rejected the allegations and said it was selling high-quality televisions under the Sharp name. The dispute illustrates the risks when the owner of a well-known brand name gives up control over products sold under that name.

115 comments

  1. Hit to the brand by TWX · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe if they didn't want their brand to take a substantial hit, they shouldn't have licensed it out.

    --
    Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    1. Re:Hit to the brand by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This falls into the no-shit category, but let's wait for the PRC trolls to come and explain to us that we're mistaken about low quality products being made in China, and utilization of that particular business model being an epic mistake. I say this having been a designer of electronics, having seen what their factories do and just how difficult it is to keep them on task and pulling shady ass shit we explicitly asked them not to do. I cannot imagine how bad it is when you give up all control.

    2. Re:Hit to the brand by TWX · · Score: 1

      We've seen how bad it is when you give up control, look at that latest Fantastic Four movie. It makes the unreleased Roger Corman licensing-placeholder look watchable.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    3. Re:Hit to the brand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Maybe if they didn't want their brand to take a substantial hit, they shouldn't have licensed it out.

      Apparently this was done when Sharp was taking a nosedive and really needed the money, so presumably they felt that the alternative was going bust altogether.

    4. Re:Hit to the brand by TWX · · Score: 2

      Then they don't have a lot of room to complain about their deal-with-the-devil unless the contract specified the nature of the quality of the final products in ways that can be objectively measured and quantified.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    5. Re:Hit to the brand by leathered · · Score: 5, Insightful

      My favorite tale of Chinese manufacturing is that factories making genuine products for Western companies have been known to put on extra shifts to turn out knockoffs, using the same machines and tooling that the Western company has paid for. I recall a significant number of fake Cisco products were found to be made in the same factory as the genuine stuff.

      Handing your blueprints over to counterfeitors as well as paying for their machines is an almost comical way of slitting the throat of your business.

      --
      For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
    6. Re:Hit to the brand by AC-x · · Score: 1, Funny

      All of Apple's products are made in China... Thus proving that China churns out low quality products :)

    7. Re:Hit to the brand by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Maybe if they didn't want their brand to take a substantial hit, they shouldn't have licensed it out.

      That doesn't follow. Licensing in an of itself has no impact on the brand or the quality. It's all about *how* you license it. Though if it got as far as a lawsuit it would seem the licensing contracts didn't have oversight, but the flip side of the coin is the fact that they are being sued about quality is an indication that quality was a controlling factor of the license.

      You can't license away quality control, but you most definitely can license away a lot of the rest of the business without any issue.

    8. Re:Hit to the brand by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      No, their TVs are apparently pretty bad. Same with Toshiba sets in Europe, which are actually some re-badged Bulgarian brand IIRC.

      Everything was fine until smart TVs came along. Before that it was actually hard to make a bad TV. Buy a panel from Sharp or LG, buy an off-the-shelf video decoding and processing chip that handles each country's DTV format and some image enhancement, and you have a perfectly reasonable TV. There was just nothing left at the low and middle ends of the market except for cost reduction.

      That's why there was a push for things like smart features, 3D and 4k. Gotta have to some reason to buy a new set, some reason to pay more for a brand name high end model. Smart features in particular are hard - even the big, established companies put out some total crap for the first few years. Slow, difficult to use, buggy and crash prone. But now the likes of Panasonic, Sony, Samsung and even Sharp in Japan are actually quite good. Relatively speaking.

      But these rebadged models in the US and Europe are still total crap.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    9. Re:Hit to the brand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh no! The chinee are our Best Buddies - politicians tells us so!

    10. Re:Hit to the brand by TWX · · Score: 1

      Sure it follows.

      If you license-out the brand name itself then it's very likely that problems won't be discovered until after product has shipped and harmed the brand. After all, the company that has paid for the right to use the SHARP brand has that contact saying they're allowed to do so; the burden to demonstrate that there's an issue falls on the company that licensed-out that brand.

      If the owner of the brand wanted to protect the brand they should have retained direct involvement in how the brand is used. That could have been some joint-venture setup where they included their own QEs or SQEs in the manufacturing process to ensure that the sourced-components were up to specifications and that the finished TVs were good, and even their own PEs in the design stages to ensure that the designs were up to par. Instead they are limited to after-the-fact attempts at damage control, and if enough crappy SHARP TVs enter the market then perhaps it'll prove terminal to the whole SHARP brand, not simply the licensed-out TV division.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    11. Re:Hit to the brand by Ken_g6 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Maybe if they didn't want their brand to take a substantial hit, they shouldn't have licensed it out.

      At the time, I gather from another article, Sharp was hard-up for money. They've since been bought out...by Foxconn. Pot calling the kettle black, much?

      --
      (T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
    12. Re:Hit to the brand by interkin3tic · · Score: 1

      I assume the people who made these decisions have already taken it to the bank though. It's the sucker employees and later investors who are getting the shaft for decisions they didn't make. Worth remembering that corporations aren't individuals, you can't just shrug it off saying "they reap what they sow."

    13. Re:Hit to the brand by Beau1080p · · Score: 0

      Or any of the new James Bond movies. That screeching ape Adele bellows all the theme songs now. Sheena Easton, sure, Nancy Sinatra, sure, Gladys Knight, absolutely! But that dying beached whale Adele with a voice like sand in a blender going from HIGH to the CHOP setting. Sheeze, people, get some taste.

    14. Re: Hit to the brand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Reminds me of the Chinese proverb: A capitalist will sell you the rope you use to hang him.

    15. Re:Hit to the brand by TWX · · Score: 1

      Funny, I kind of liked the movies starring Daniel Craig. The nature of the villainy felt reasonably plausible, both from the perspective of the goals of conspiracy among the villains and in the personal failings that individual villains had that left them open to vulnerability and thus defeat. It also felt more realistic, seeing Bond having to operate both in high-society circles and in the nitty-gritty. The Daniel Craig Bond movie I probably cared for least was Skyfall, but mostly because the technological exploitation used to establish the conditions that demonstrated the villain's power and led to the need to retreat to the low-tech stand was too implausible to let me easily suspend disbelief. Still better than Moonkraker though.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    16. Re:Hit to the brand by John+Napkintosh · · Score: 1

      It stands to reason that this breaches the name licensing agreement they have; I can't imagine they would consent to their name being attached to inferior products being marketed deceptively.

      --

      Long signatures suck.
    17. Re:Hit to the brand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      dying beached whale Adele with a voice like sand in a blender going from HIGH to the CHOP setting

      You my friend should check your ears. No, seriously.

    18. Re:Hit to the brand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not just extra shifts, it's how stuff is made. If you need subassemblies A, B and C to make product D, you need enough to fill the order. So you order extra parts to make A, B and C. And because you're just doing one order before moving onto the next customer, you need to do them all at once. At the end of the day, you make say 120 units to fill an order for 100. Maybe 15 don't work. You ship 100 of the good ones to a customer and sell the other 20 on the side. Otherwise they would just go in a landfill. Or maybe you try to put them in a landfill but they get diverted by someone else.

      If the US company owned its own factory that wouldn't happen. They would just make widgets around the clock and everything would be accounted for. That's not how things work when you outsource manufacturing.

    19. Re:Hit to the brand by Z00L00K · · Score: 1

      My experience from Sharp has been that they were second tier compared to some other Japanese brands. Their stuff works but isn't very inspiring.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    20. Re:Hit to the brand by TWX · · Score: 1

      Eh, she was good in Rolling in the Deep but I did not like her weird high-pitch attempts in Someone Like You. The female larynx does not develop the same way as the male larynx does in puberty, so women generally cannot use the falsetto the same way men can. When she attempts to reach up out of her normal vocal range I do not find it terribly pleasant. Granted, the male falsetto voice isn't universally pleasant either, but for some reason her range-strain was grating to my ears.

      Given the subject of Someone Like You is a woman in emotional pain because she never moved-on from a relationship and the other person has, it perhaps is contextually appropriate for some of the notes in the song to feel tortured, but that doesn't mean that every beat of the song is universally enjoyable.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    21. Re:Hit to the brand by Lisandro · · Score: 2

      This happens with pretty much every Chinese-manufactured product nowadays. A quick trip to AliExpress will find you nameless versions of well-known products for literally half the price.

    22. Re:Hit to the brand by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      KInd of makes sense. Onmce you make it smart it becomes a computer and you need an OS (even if it's a minimal one) plus all the user facing apps, a GUI ... none of that shit is trivial. Even "proper" software companies make a balls of it sometimes.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    23. Re:Hit to the brand by TWX · · Score: 1

      It's possible to tighten-up the supply-chain though, so that one doesn't over-order subassemblies to the point that it's profitable to make authentic-clones of products, and it's usually good practice to employ your own quality assurance staff even if you've outsourced production where that staff gets to be your representative on the ground to attempt to mitigate this kind of practice.

      Mind you I do think it's stupid to send-out the manufacturing to a place where the intellectual property is not respected, such that there may not be much recourse if local people choose to abuse the relationship, but I'm not the one making the business decisions either.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    24. Re:Hit to the brand by TWX · · Score: 1

      Perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn't.

      We haven't seen the contract. We do not know what the verbiage surrounding product quality, if any, is present in the document. We don't know anything about unit count, quality range, warranty, or anything else.

      It's possible that all of this is properly enumerated in the contract, but it's also possible that the licensor's terms were poorly spelled-out and that the licensee is free to do exactly what they're doing.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    25. Re:Hit to the brand by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      I saw thing on TV, there's a factory making knock-of Land Rovers just round the corner from the official factory. If they run out of parts they could call their inside man and get him to chuck some over the fence, it's that close. Cheeky little bastards.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    26. Re:Hit to the brand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Adele only did the theme for "Skyfall" and it was at least a bit better than the theme that Amy Winehouse did for "Quantum of Solace" but still the worst Bond theme was the one Madonna did for "Die Another Day".

      The best theme was the one Chris Cornell did for "Casino Royale", which was also one of the best opening credits in a Bond film as well. I was disappointed when by the next film they were back to the old-style opening credits.

    27. Re:Hit to the brand by Kkloe · · Score: 1

      they seem to have written atleast something so they can sue other about breaking it, well it is now up to the court to decide

    28. Re:Hit to the brand by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      That seemed to be the implication of the summary, that they did have such a stipulation there.

      Closer to home, I know Amtrak was forced to stop calling some of its trains by the names the private railroads had called them because the original operator didn't feel the Amtrak service was of similar quality. The odd thing there was that the original operator wasn't running passenger trains any more, and didn't have any need to keep the name.

      I'd be surprised if most licensing agreements don't come with some stipulations about quality and the types of products that can be sold under that name. There's no point in renting out use of the name if doing so reduces the value of the brand.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    29. Re:Hit to the brand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, they're claiming that the licensor is violating FCC and FTC regulations. Even if there's no clauses about quality in the contract, is it generally held that there's an implied contract that a licensee will obey the law?

    30. Re:Hit to the brand by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Companies do this at times, usually because it helps out the short term finances. Especially if the company is on the decline but the name still has value. Getting that short term cash can help the company stabilize. Sometimes after a lot of growth the company may not be able to manage it all and wants to push out a side line with its name to an outsourcer.

    31. Re:Hit to the brand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The really funny part is that it's not a new phenomenon, the USSR did the exact same thing. Their society, government, and law is based on disrespecting foreign property. If the USSR hadn't collapsed and set up the same style of Special Economic Zones, then Secretary General Putin would be the most powerful man in the world.

      Thank god for Pizza Hut.

    32. Re:Hit to the brand by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      discovered until after product has shipped

      So what you're saying is you omitted the requirement for independent quality control before shipping from your license agreement.

      Allow me to quote myself for prosperity:

      It's all about *how* you license it.

    33. Re: Hit to the brand by mschwanke97402 · · Score: 2

      Reminds me of the Chinese proverb: A capitalist will sell you the rope you use to hang him.

      That is so 19th century. These days, the capitalist will, at the behest of the Government, charge you a fee for use of the rope with which you, yourself, is hanged.

    34. Re:Hit to the brand by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Licensing in an of itself has no impact on the brand or the quality. It's all about *how* you license it.

      No, it's about what the licensee does with it. In this case, they're apparently smearing it with shit and hitting crippled orphans over the head with it.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    35. Re:Hit to the brand by BradleyUffner · · Score: 1

      We've seen how bad it is when you give up control, look at that latest Fantastic Four movie. It makes the unreleased Roger Corman licensing-placeholder look watchable.

      I heard the musical version was much better.

    36. Re:Hit to the brand by ctilsie242 · · Score: 1

      Try Taobao as well if you want to see decently made stuff (for the most part) at bargain basement prices. Even using a shopping agent like Taobaoring that adds an 8% commission, you can buy stuff dirt cheap, and have it shipped your way.

      If you want a couple gross of fidget spinners for door prizes, it might be the place to go.

    37. Re: Hit to the brand by Brockmire · · Score: 1

      I was going to argue with you until I realized that is how I feel about Sheryl Crap, I mean Sheryl Crow. It blows me away when people compliment her singing, it's fucking noise to my ears. If you want to talk about who can't hit high notes...

    38. Re: Hit to the brand by TWX · · Score: 1

      Heh. Only songs of hers that I could identify are All I Wanna Do as a very stereotypical '90s song that was good enough I guess, and a cover of Sweet Child of Mine that I didn't care for mostly on-principle at the time she released it.

      Her singing in All I Wanna Do was certainly adequate for a quick pop-alternative-rock tune. No idea how she'd fare in other stuff, haven't followed her career.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    39. Re:Hit to the brand by russotto · · Score: 1

      The Sharp Aquos series was top quality some years ago. Then Sharp split the brand so the low-end was the outsourced crap and the high-end was still good. I guess at some point they started outsourcing the high end; big mistake.

    40. Re: Hit to the brand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It mainly consists of eating niblets.

    41. Re:Hit to the brand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My father spent more than 40 years in the electronics repair industry. He often said things along the longs of "Sharp is Shit, they just misspelled it." I don't think Sharp licensing their name out to Hisense could have caused them any real reputational damage.

    42. Re:Hit to the brand by dwywit · · Score: 1

      See also: Madonna. Quite a nice-sounding voice in her natural range, but sounds like like a cat in pain when she tries to reach a higher register.

      --
      They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
    43. Re:Hit to the brand by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 1

      These are the people that just told everyone that Sharp stands for shit TVs with the lawsuit and wants the brand name back. Then they'll wonder why the sales have tanked along with the brand image in a couple quarters. It's not like there are a bunch of geniuses running the show over at Sharp.

    44. Re:Hit to the brand by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      It's all about *how* you license it.

      No, it's about what the licensee does with it.

      So what you're saying is it's about *how* you license it. Because you know, that is precisely what permits or denies a licensee from doing something.

    45. Re:Hit to the brand by Shirley+Marquez · · Score: 1

      There are many high quality products being made in China. The Hisense-made TVs are not among them; Hisense is a price-leader company, not a high quality one. Don't know if Sharp has any recourse at this point; they should looked more carefully before making that deal.

    46. Re:Hit to the brand by Shirley+Marquez · · Score: 1

      The problem with the cheap Hisense TVs isn't just the smart features. Lots of us don't use those anyway, we just hook the TV up to a Roku or Fire TV or Chromecast or a set-top box from the cable guys. Everybody who bought a smart TV will probably stop using its smart features within five years because they will be hopelessly out of date.

      The real problem is that they don't deliver good picture quality. You'll see various problems like color banding, bad implementation of variable backlighting that cause the image to "breathe", and so on. They're OK as value for money - you can get a big image at a small price - but they don't match what a higher quality TV can deliver.

      Not all TVs made in China are crap. Vizio (an American company until it was bought by LeEco, but the sets have always been made in China) has delivered some excellent TVs - not quite top tier like a $5000 Sony or LG but not priced like one either, and multiple steps up from a Hisense.

    47. Re: Hit to the brand by Dogtanian · · Score: 1
      As far as I'm aware, that quote ("The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them") was always attributed to Lenin, not the Chinese, although even that is apparently open to question:-

      One I've heard was Lenin's supposed quote: "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." A few problems.

      One, Lenin was not a pithy speaker. He didn't come up with great one-liners. The actual quote was "They [the capitalists] will furnish credits which will serve us for the support of the Communist Party in their countries and, by supplying us materials and technical equipment which we lack, will restore our military industry necessary for our future attacks against our suppliers. To put it in other words, they will work on the preparation of their own suicide."

      Two, Lenin never literally said it. He never delivered this line publicly during his lifetime. He wrote it in some notes. These notes were collected after Lenin's death in 1924 and were eventually published in 1961.

      Three, while I can't find the original text, I've heard the passage is taken out of context. Lenin's main point in the original manuscript was that some short-sighted communists thought they could work with capitalists and dupe them into serving communist goals. Lenin gave the passage as an example of what these people thought. But Lenin disagreed with trying to make deals with capitalists and was warning communists against trying what the quote suggested.

      --
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    48. Re:Hit to the brand by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

      I find the phrase "But if this ever changin' world In which we live in..." from "Live and Let Die" too flagrant an abuse of the English language to tolerate.

      --
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  2. OOOH MY! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sulu, you misled me.

  3. Sharp is for LUDDITES. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Modern app appers only use App® brand apps, NOT LUDDITE Sharp!

    Apps!

  4. HiSense = Low Quality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    The highest quality HiSense product is lower in quality than the lowest quality Sharp product ever was.

    1. Re:HiSense = Low Quality by Lisandro · · Score: 2

      That's debatable. I have a 40" HiSense TV at home which i paid US$220 for and i have zero complaints about its quality. The panel itself looks the same, if not better than any Sharp 40" offering at about twice the price.

      Anyway, didn't Sharp licence its brand name to HiSense?

    2. Re:HiSense = Low Quality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's what I'm getting at.
      SHARP is accusing HiSense of releasing crap under the SHARP name, I'm just stating that HiSense's best TVs are lower in Quality than actual SHARP lowest quality TVs were. I used to deal in Television sales, seen companies come and go, trade names around until people were clueless as to who made what.

      SHARP, prior to licensing the name to HiSense made some pretty good products, often times better than Sony's "express" line of TVs sold to big-box stores.
      Sony had their premier line of equipment that they sold from specialty stores or mom and pop shops that dealt in quality, not quantity.
      They were sold next to SHARP, Toshiba, LG and Samsung.

    3. Re:HiSense = Low Quality by RubberDogBone · · Score: 1

      And my TV is an even lower brand called Changhong. It's was the cheapest set I could get with three HDMI and 40" of screen, and it's been fine. Knock on wood.
      $200 at Walmart -an experience that forever killed me on using WalmartDOTcom for anything again, but that has nothing to do with the TV.

      It seems Changhong is mostly sold by Newegg now, also a Chinese-owned company.

      Interestingly, the TV I got shares the same IR remote control codes as my older Toshiba TV, which was made before Toshiba sold the rights. Just curious.

      --
      Sig for hire.
    4. Re:HiSense = Low Quality by scdeimos · · Score: 1

      Sony had their premier line of equipment that they sold from specialty stores or mom and pop shops that dealt in quality, not quantity. They were sold next to SHARP, Toshiba, LG and Samsung.

      Samsung associated with quality? Guffaw. Sure, they make shiny black boxes, but the quality of their implementations are very low.

      Samsung PVRs, for example, throw "Invalid format" errors all over the place when trying to play streams over DLNA but then you put those same streams onto a USB hard disk or key and it'll play them quite happily. Even when it does play streams over DLNA it doesn't pay attention to aspect ratio and always shows them at 16:9. Play the same streams from a USB hard disk or key and it will magically display them in the correct aspect ratio. Kind of defeats the purpose of supporting DLNA when its not even good enough to be called half-assed.

  5. Sharp never had quality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

    I've purchased a few Sharp electronics in my life, and each time, was quite disappointed.
    I'd be surprised if HiSense could make them any worse.

    1. Re:Sharp never had quality by jandrese · · Score: 1

      Back in the day they put out the best LCD panels period, but sometime in the early 2000s they lost their way and faded from the top end entirely.

      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
    2. Re:Sharp never had quality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Clearly you've never used a HiSense product.

    3. Re:Sharp never had quality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Horse puckey. Sharp had a number of quite nice products over the years which were ahead of their time. If you ever had one of those TRS-80 pocket computers, you were running a Sharp device and didn't even know it due to the cross branding.

    4. Re:Sharp never had quality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not to mention this:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X68000

    5. Re:Sharp never had quality by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      I had a Sharp calculator in high school, avoiding the whole HP vs TI gang wars. I liked it very much. Kept me going in high school, college, work, and was even in use in grad school after that. Doesn't work now, but it's the early generation LCD display that is busted.

    6. Re:Sharp never had quality by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

      I've used Sharp products in the past and they were decent not great products. I had a TV that lasted 10+ years and only got rid of it because I switched to a wide screen flat panel. I have noticed that the products within the last decade have seemed to be poorly made.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    7. Re:Sharp never had quality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Clearly you've never used a HiSense product.

      Have you? I've had a HiSense 50" TV for about 4 years now. 120hz, LED backlit. Works great.
      It cost half what a comparable Vizio or Samsung would have cost at the time.

      The only issue I've ever had was when the remote died. HiSense sent me a new one.

      No complaints with their product at all.

    8. Re:Sharp never had quality by Dogtanian · · Score: 1

      If you ever had one of those TRS-80 pocket computers, you were running a Sharp device and didn't even know it due to the cross branding.

      Depends- some were apparently made by Sharp, others by Casio.

      --
      "Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
  6. Hisense USA is actually not horrible... by jhaygood86 · · Score: 2

    I have 2 Hisense TVs (Hisense branded, not Sharp branded). My Smart TV that I purchased failed (the LED backlight stopped working), and they replaced it with a brand new much better model with no issue under warranty when it was almost 2 years old. The replacement was made in Mexico, not China, even. Hisense USA is based in Atlanta (Suwanee GA), not China, though their parent company is Chinese.

    1. Re:Hisense USA is actually not horrible... by sl3xd · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Hisense USA is based in Atlanta (Suwanee GA), not China, though their parent company is Chinese.

      All that means is that there's a shell company that imports drek from China, handles local customer disservice and warranty non-fulfillment.

      Nearly every multinational company does the same thing -- Apple's Ireland shell company has made a lot of news lately as a tax haven, IIRC. That doesn't make Apple an Irish company.

      --
      -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
  7. Sharp gear was always crap anyway.... by Ellis+D.+Tripp · · Score: 3, Informative

    It sure did pay the bills back in the '80s when I worked in TV/VCR repair. The TV sets regularly caught fire when the flyback transformers carbonized (prompting a class action lawsuit and a huge settlement), and their VCRs were a constant source of mechanical issues, far worse than most of the competition.

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    1. Re:Sharp gear was always crap anyway.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I have a Sharp television, manufactured in the 70s, in the USA, even. Still works perfectly, and is still our only set. Has never been repaired or serviced.

    2. Re:Sharp gear was always crap anyway.... by TheRealMindChild · · Score: 1

      Sharp Zaurus.

      --

      "When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
    3. Re: Sharp gear was always crap anyway.... by Brockmire · · Score: 1

      It's fuck faces like you who doesn't know what "works perfectly" means. You'd have to compare it against a new TV to see how bad the colours are now than when it was new in the 70's. I've had the big Wood TV's. They seem like quality, but it's just cause the source has been low quality and you've adjusted to the flaws over the years.

    4. Re: Sharp gear was always crap anyway.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's fuck faces like you who doesn't know what "works perfectly" means.

      Does it work as designed? If so, it "works perfectly".

      It may not be as good as a modern device, but that doesn't mean it doesn't work they way it should.

  8. Article is paywalled by L.+J.+Beauregard · · Score: 2, Informative

    and I'm not giving my money to Rupert Murdoch.

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    1. Re:Article is paywalled by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      That's OK.

      I paid for the article twice to even things out.

    2. Re:Article is paywalled by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      Snowflakebucks aren't worth anything in the real world anyway.

  9. Tough. Suck it up Sharp. by Viol8 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You sold the rights to your name to make a quick buck, now stop whining when someone uses it in a way you don't like. If you wanted your name only to be associated with good (ok, reasonable) quality gear you should have kept it in house.

    1. Re:Tough. Suck it up Sharp. by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      You sold the rights to your name to make a quick buck

      Don't knock it, it worked for the USA President (depending on how you define "worked")
       

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    2. Re:Tough. Suck it up Sharp. by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      If you wanted your name only to be associated with good (ok, reasonable) quality gear you should have kept it in house.

      That is 100% dependent on the terms of the license. You understand that word right? License? Not sale. They don't own the brand, they just have a license to it.

    3. Re:Tough. Suck it up Sharp. by EvilSS · · Score: 1

      You sold the rights to your name to make a quick buck, now stop whining when someone uses it in a way you don't like. If you wanted your name only to be associated with good (ok, reasonable) quality gear you should have kept it in house.

      They are not whining, they are conniving. They sold off the name rights in the US market when they were tanking as a company. Now that they recovered a bit, they want the name back and are using this as a means to get out of the existing agreement.

      --
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    4. Re: Tough. Suck it up Sharp. by KGIII · · Score: 1

      Umm... This is Slashdot. We aren't exactly known for understanding the concept of the word, 'license.' How many times have you heard/read someone say they bought the program, music, movie, or OS? How many times have you read someone say that they own things they don't actually own?

      With enough money, you can probably get Microsoft to sell you software, or an operating system. However, it is probably gonna cost a whole lot more dollars than expected.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  10. Had a sharp vcr by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    1980-something. I know it made panels. Maybe still does. Japan is toast. Has been. Takata anyone. Supposed to make good caps. Time to take the sword and harry carry.

  11. Why would you buy from them by avandesande · · Score: 0

    TVs are so cheap from the top tier brands such as Sony, LG, Samsung I don't understand why you would buy anything else

    --
    love is just extroverted narcissism
    1. Re:Why would you buy from them by Presence+Eternal · · Score: 1

      There have been times recently when it is rather difficult to find a good tv from a mainstream manufacturer that didn't spy on you and make you pay for the privilege.

    2. Re:Why would you buy from them by sl3xd · · Score: 4, Informative

      Sharp was a top tier brand -- Sony and Sharp co-funded an LCD panel factory, and Sony TV's used Sharp's LCD panels. (The whole reason Sony was involved in the factory is because they wanted Sharp's LCD panels).

      The problem is that Sharp happened to buy the factory just before the housing crisis -- and the market for new TV's vanished overnight. If you took any time to look outside the world of the PlayStation, you'd see that Sony had some serious problems selling their TV & home theatre products during the same period.

      With nobody buying, Sharp was unable to sell their own TV's, or LCD panels to Sony. State-sponsored/funded Chinese companies swooped in as the market was picking up again, and Sharp wasn't able to recover.

      So yeah... Sharp was unlucky in its timing of building a factory, and the PRC's government decided it was in their interest to spend government money to bankrupt a foreign company. Nothing new about either of those things.

      --
      -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
    3. Re:Why would you buy from them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Dumbass - Sharp WAS a top-tier brand. They were the only made in Japan TV you could buy for a very long time.

  12. My 10 year old Sharp Aquos will not die by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'd like it to, so I can justify a larger screen though.

  13. Naked License by Going_Digital · · Score: 1

    In the US market a licensor must have a measure of control over the products produced under license. If Sharp failed to include that then it is deemed a naked license and Hisense should be able to apply for revocation of the Shap trademark for TVs.

    1. Re:Naked License by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      apply.... revocation

      Almost. In its response to the lawsuit, Hisense will argue, as an affirmative defense, that the SHARP trademark has been abandoned due to the naked licensing. There's no "application" to anyone and the court need not and won't "revoke" the trademark registration- it may instead order the Commissioner to cancel it.

  14. It's "harikari", shithead. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Or seppuku. Go back to school, TrumpBoy.

    1. Re:It's "harikari", shithead. by L.+J.+Beauregard · · Score: 1

      Actually, it's "hara-kiri."

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    2. Re:It's "harikari", shithead. by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      I tried making a witty Japanese response, but slashdot kills my unicode. What could possibly be the matter? Surely Slashdot supports unicode?

      Slashdot to unicode wa ketsugo shimasen

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    3. Re:It's "harikari", shithead. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually it's Harry Caray

    4. Re:It's "harikari", shithead. by ncc74656 · · Score: 1

      Surely Slashdot supports unicode?

      Score: 5, Funny.

      (Was going to say "you must be new here," but a low-6-digit uid isn't all that new anymore.)

      --
      20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
  15. The Department of No Duh by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    Outsourcing gives you unpredictable quality? Gee, who wouldda thought!

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
    1. Re: The Department of No Duh by KGIII · · Score: 1

      They licensed the brand name. The company makes its own products, with their own specs and choices, and puts the licensed name on it. The Sharps company makes money from licensing their name, sort of like a Harley Davidson branded pencil.

      My question is, is this really outsourcing?

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  16. Honestly by Lucas123 · · Score: 2

    I didn't know Sharp still made televisions.

    1. Re:Honestly by Rekso · · Score: 1

      sharp has good reputation in my country

  17. Best Buy Sold/Sells? the Fake Sharp Product by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It was a few years ago, but I walked into a BestBuy looking for a Sharp TV. Sharp's logo was on the box, so I bought it. Turn it on and none of the Sharp image control features are available and the remote definitely did not resemble a Sharp remote.

    The fine print on the back of a document no one will read explains it is not a Sharp TV.

    Back to Best Buy it went and I never bought from that retailer again. A retailer selling licensed product in this manner cannot be trusted.

    1. Re:Best Buy Sold/Sells? the Fake Sharp Product by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      But is that a problem with the retailer, or with the manufacturer? Your TV was likely bought from Sharp directly.

    2. Re:Best Buy Sold/Sells? the Fake Sharp Product by Dogtanian · · Score: 1

      Your TV was likely bought from Sharp directly.

      On the contrary, I suspect it's unlikely that Sharp would require the licensee to conduct all business (including distribution) through themselves; I doubt either party would find that workable.

      I suppose it's possible in some cases that a licensee might have a legal subsidiary with (e.g.) "Sharp" in its name, but I'm pretty sure the stores know who they're buying from anyway, and that doesn't appear to be the case here:-

      The fine print on the back of a document no one will read explains it is not a Sharp TV.

      Guessing it says something like "'Sharp' trademark used under license by Cheap Generic OEM Telly Distributors of Butt***k, Illinois."

      Of course, some might argue that's irrelevant anyway; Sharp, by licensing their name, have given their blessing to what's being done with it, whether the customers like that or not.

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  18. pffff by fubarrr · · Score: 1, Troll

    TV and movies is entertainment for dump, primitive people

    1. Re:pffff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1

      I hope your post was intentionally ironic.

    2. Re:pffff by YuppieScum · · Score: 0

      "are" not "is", and you probably meant "dumb" not "dump"...

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      This sig left unintentionally blank.
    3. Re:pffff by neo-mkrey · · Score: 1, Informative

      TROLL ALERT!!

  19. Bought a 43" Sharp 4k on sale from Best Buy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Crapped out in 1 yr 4 months. Had horrendous input lag, but the image quality was pretty solid.

    Never had a TV die so quickly. I still have a Pioneer and Panasonic plasma trucking along that're both around 10 years old. Hell, I have old CRTs that're still going.

    The Sharp was out of warranty, of course; luckily my credit card (Discover) covered the loss.

    Sharp sucks.

  20. Fraud, pure and simple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The whole point of selling a name to another company is to deceive the consumer into thinking that the product is made by Company A when it's actually made by Company B. It's fraud, and should be made illegal.

  21. Sharp have no reputation by Jerry+Atrick · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Can't remember when Sharp had a reputation worth defending but it wasn't this century! Here in the UK HiSense is now a more respected brand than most Japanese brands that went down the licencing cheap foreign factory built crap route long, long ago.

    1. Re: Sharp have no reputation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Anyone remember the Sharp Zaurus? Awesome palm sized linux computer. Class act indeed.

  22. Licensing trademarks by McGregorMortis · · Score: 1

    I think licensing or selling of trademarks should be illegal altogether.

    The whole point of trademark law was not to create some kind of "intellectual property" that the holder could license or sell, or be sold off as an asset in a bankruptcy sale.

    The point of it was to protect consumers. So that when you bought a bottle of "Bass Pale Ale" (one of the oldest trademarks in the world), you could be reasonably sure it was made by the right people, and not some cheap knock-off. Consumer protection.

    When trademarks can be bought, sold and licensed, consumer protection goes out the window. Who makes that "Honeywell" humidifier? Not Honeywell, that's for sure.

    When a company goes out of business, it's trademarks should die with it. Anything else is a deceit, intended to scam the consumer.

  23. or Toshiba by speedlaw · · Score: 1

    Best Buy has a house brand "Toshiba". built cheap, forget anything you may have associated with Toshiba, like that laptop that lasted six years.....Tossed it out, replaced with a Samsung which at least had accurate skin tones.

  24. Stop linking paywall crap. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Or at least provide us a way to filter out content linking to paywall crap.

  25. Now I Want One by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Shows you, trying to tell me what to do.

  26. Why not discuss boobs on Japanese terrestrial TV? by Dogtanian · · Score: 1

    I tried making a witty Japanese response, but slashdot kills my unicode.

    I'd have said you should try Slashdot Japan instead, but it's no longer known by that name. (#)

    Never mind, they've got a fantastic story on "How did the boob disappear from the terrestrial TV in Japan" which informs us that

    According to the article, the boobs gradually began to be purged from the golden time since 2000, and the last "tits" in the terrestrial wave of Tokyo was seen on TV Asahi of January 7, 2012

    Good to know, I'd been wondering that myself.

    (#) Apparently it's still owned by OSDN, which sold the main Slashdot site several years ago- maybe they no longer have the rights to the name?

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    "Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
  27. Re:Why not discuss boobs on Japanese terrestrial T by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

    Alas my Japanese is not that good. I'm still learning basic grammar, trying to get to grips with Kanji and my vocabulary is limited.

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    I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
  28. Re:Why not discuss boobs on Japanese terrestrial T by Dogtanian · · Score: 1

    Er... you're better than me then. I've forgotten even the negligible amount of Japanese I ever learned, and I use Google Translate. :-/

    (Given how mangled two-way translations to and from Japanese are, though, I wouldn't risk it for anything important!)

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