HD Television Breakdown

Why don't electronics manufacturers make the things they make and sell more robust and reliable? We've had several electronic items breakdown, the most recent our Toshiba HD television. We bought it no more than four years ago, but it began to show signs of not working properly, first with the picture disappearing, but the sound remaining, this happening a couple of times, but eventually the picture would not come back on. It now stands on the desk on our bedroom, and downstairs we have replaced it with the small television we had upstairs and connected to a Sky Mini box, which meant we could watch all that Sky had to offer when we were in bed. This little set is fine for things like t news or the occasional programme we want to see in bed, but the quality isn't up to much, the picture isn't brilliant and the sound is awful. But I suppose that's what you get for your money. I think it was under £100 from Sainsbury's.  The Toshiba was around 35 inches, not the largest model, but it was a reasonable television set, meaning not only that we could connect it to our Sky Q box, but it had enough connectivity to allow us to also have an Amazon Fire stick connected, meaning a lot more variety of what we could watch, a great deal of it free (we have Amazon Prime, meaning we pay £79 a year and get free postage and packing when we buy from Amazon as well as a subscription to Amazon television programmes and films.)All these electronic items are connected via wifi through our Sky router. This unfortunately failed last week but it wasn't actually the router that went wrong, but the socket in the wall which has now been repaired by Openreach who actually own and run the internet network. The set had a built-in DVD player which was great because it meant we didn't have to have a separate player taking up further space as well as all the cables that would have entailed. This set are from Argos, who have a good selection of televisions to choose from

We had a microwave, a Cookworks model. Probably not the top-of-the-range model. It was also a grill, although we never used this facility. It hadn't lasted very well, rusting extremely quickly, the inside particularly. It has hardly been used, as we don't rely on microwaved food, usually cooking with our conventional oven. So recently I had to dispose of the microwave and took it to the tidy-tip in Bleak Hall. I believe in having stuff recycled where possible, so I expect it to be broken up and some if not all of it will be reused in some way or other. This also came from Argos.

The same thing happened to an electronic oven a couple of months ago. It was a Beko and we bought it via Amazon. But it failed because the oven gave up. It wouldn't heat up enough to cook a meal. The hob began to rust badly, so it was necessary for it to be replaced. We bought it via Very, which means we will pay it using our credit account. It was delivered and installed at a cost of I think about £35. They also took the old oven away after it was installed. The new one is a Hotpoint. It also has a ceramic hob. These seem far easier to keep clean and are reasonably reliable. But you still have to keep them wiped as soon as there is a spill or at least use the correct cleaner to keep them working properly.

Do manufacturers make the products they sell deliberately to break down? Do they have to be made of materials that wear out faster than in the past? If they don't (and I can't imagine they'd admit such a thing) it certainly seems that they do. It seems that things have a sort of built-in obsolescence which means that they don't last so that you are more or less impelled to go out and replace them. And as a result, have to spend out more money.  Some things, such as VHS cassette recorders, are now redundant and replaced by things like Sky's digital recorders which don't need tape or discs to record (or Freeview's various set-top boxes which have the facility to record programmes or Virgin's equivalent recorder.) In some ways these machines do mean you don't have all those clunky cassettes lying about the place and all the subsequent bother of having to fast-forward to find any particular scene on a tape as well as the wear-and-tear of these tapes, stretching and generally the annoyance of having tape in a plastic box. The same could be said of audio cassettes, which, in my opinion, were more trouble than they were worth. And don't forget 8-Track cassettes which were also dreadful and it's just as well they got junked.

One redundant system which hasn't survived and that's MiniDisc. I bought myself a micro sound system in around 2000 and it had a MiniDisc player in it. Very good quality machine made by Denon. It is a good system and takes up very little space near the television. But the MiniDisc system never seemed to catch on, presumably a replacement for cassettes. You can record on them, they're compact, (one will sit in the palm of your hand easily) is robust and the sound quality is about the same as a CD. But for some reason they never caught on, no doubt because they couldn't compete with MP3, downloadable from iTunes (and many other sites.) and uploaded onto iPods and other similar players, probably onto mobile phones. No moving parts and a machine will store thousands of tracks. A player is light and small, fits in your pocket and plays through neat little earphones. It's unfortunate that such a brilliant piece of kit as MiniDisc should become redundant, but that is the situation. I don't think the discs are sold anywhere, unless there are large stocks of them in a warehouse somewhere, but I don't suppose they are still manufactured.

These products come with guarantees and warranties (what is the difference between them?) When you buy these relatively expensive items you get the option to buy extended guarantees. I don't know whether they are worth having, because you can pay out a considerable amount of money each month for breakdown cover and it's probably more expensive in the long term (probably several years) and would be cheaper to just buy a new item, such as a television.

Electric Cooker Breaksdown

So, after an eventful couple of hours attempting to get Carol's prescription of antibiotics, we arrived home and began to prepare our evening meal. On attempting to cook some potatoes in the oven, Carol discovered that the oven wasn't heating properly. We came to the conclusion that the oven had broken-down, and was, frankly, past repair. It seems that a great many household items, such as washing machines, ovens and fridge/freezers, are never built to last. I have to say, the electric oven which is a Beko, hasn't worn well. It has rusted very badly, the surfaces are not sufficiently robust enough for family life. I would say that it gets a fair amount of use and used daily. It has a ceramic hob which is it's best feature and far easier to clean than a great many other styles of cooker-hob. The cooker which was in this house when we arrived around 6-7 years ago had been installed by the landlord. As you will be aware, if you've read these blog-posts over the years, you will have discovered that our beloved landlord doesn't like parting with cash. He replaced the cooker when it broke down only a few years after we moved in. That wasn't up to much. I believe it was a Bush. Cheap and cheerful, although I can never understand why 'cheap' and 'cheerful' are placed together. Definitely nothing cheerful about that old cooker. It eventually came to a sticky end, when, one morning, I came downstairs to make tea as I usually do, to discover the thing sparking dangerously. I cautiously turned the thing off at the wall and we realised that it would need replacing. No point in contacting our landlord as he would make a fuss and anyway, most likely say that he'd already replaced the thing (thinking back, perhaps we did contact him and that was his response.) He'd just buy the cheapest model which would end up being scrapped after about two or three years. So we were left with no alternative but to buy our own. We went on Amazon and found a decent model, also, bearing in mind that we would need to buy a model to fit the space once the old cooker was removed. Always a good point to not get one too wide as it wouldn't fit the space.

We have a Very account and have bought quite a lot of items through them. So we decided to buy our new electric cooker through them and chose a suitable Hotpoint model. It will be delivered on Tuesday and will be installed and the old cooker removed and disposed of. So that is one less problem to worry about. Just have to make sure we're in on Tuesday to receive the cooker and to oversee it's installation.