Extended Service Plan Question

[Button Pusher]

I have a Sony BDPS350 Blu-ray player. I just received a letter to extend the manufacturer's warranty for $49.99 a year or $134.87 for three years protection. I haven't kept up with the Blu-ray technology. Is the extended warranty worth it on a Blu-ray player? Thanks in advance.

[Getteau]

I have a Sony BDPS350 Blu-ray player. I just received a letter to extend the manufacturer's warranty for $49.99 a year or $134.87 for three years protection. I haven't kept up with the Blu-ray technology. Is the extended warranty worth it on a Blu-ray player? Thanks in advance.

If you think your player is going to die in the next 2 years, you plan to pay yearly and you like the hassels that go along with the extended warranty companies, go for it. :-)

The Sony BDP-S360 is currently on sale at Best Buy for $149 and their new player, the 460, is on sale for $199. There are several other decent players on sale for even cheaper than that. So basically, you are going to pay $135 now to insure a player you could replace for less, or, you are going to pay $150 over 3 years in the hopes that your current player will die before you have paid more than it would cost to replace it today. If you have $135, you would be better off buying one of the players that's on sale today for $120 and putting it in the closet till your $350 dies. Then, if you want to experience the hassles of the extended warranty company, when the 350 fails, toss it in the trash, go a month or so without a player and then pull the one you bought today out of the closet.

All kidding aside. If this was $30 or $40 for 3 years, it may be worth it. At $150, you are paying more than it will cost to replace the player

[hdtvfan0001]

Those extended plans are generally a ripoff, in that electronics tend to fail in their first year - within the warranty period....IF they fail at all for a number of years.

If the cost of a plan is more than 10% of the unit's replacement cost, then likely you're paying too much.

Also, the higher the device (being warrantied) price...the higher the future repair cost, but also the LESS it is likely to fail.

Put simply - most of these plans are cash cow profit streams for the folks selling them - less than 2% of them ever are actually called upon to pay out for services (or at least that is what my inside contact at Best Buy has told me in the past).

[Rich]

Those extended plans are generally a ripoff, in that electronics tend to fail in their first year - within the warranty period....IF they fail at all for a number of years.

If the cost of a plan is more than 10% of the unit's replacement cost, then likely you're paying too much.

Also, the higher the device (being warrantied) price...the higher the future repair cost, but also the LESS it is likely to fail.

Put simply - most of these plans are cash cow profit streams for the folks selling them - less than 2% of them ever are actually called upon to pay out for services (or at least that is what my inside contact at Best Buy has told me in the past).

If you buy the electronics with Amex or MC, your manufacturer's warranty is automatically extended by a year, so, in effect, you end up with a two year warranty. I've never dealt with MC in this regard, but I have with Amex and they do back up their claim to extend the warranty.

One of the biggest ripoffs I've seen is buying, say, a TV with your Amex and getting talked into purchasing a three year extended warranty that runs concurrently with the Amex extension, so that you really get a one year warranty after the Amex extension runs out. Some stores will actually tack on the three year warranties at the end of the Amex warranty extension. But you've got to ask for it.

In any event, I just bought a Sony BD BX2 at Costco for $124. To buy an extended warranty for something like this would be foolish. The thing will probably outlive me. :)

Rich

[rudeney]

The way electronics continue to advance and drop in price, I'm not sure I'd buy an extended service contract unless it was under 10% of the overall purchase price. Like Rich said, with a one-year manufacturer's warranty, if you buy with the right credit or charge card, you get two years. So, two years from now, how much do you think a suitable replacement for your BD player will cost? My guess is well under $100.

[Mark Holtz]

In the past year, the Panasonic DMP-BD60 (which I own, BTW) went from about $250 at introduction (at Costco) to about $130 (at Amazon). By the time the player breaks, technology would have improved.

In my opinion, the extended warranty is simply a license for the retailers to print money along with Monster Cables. By the time you need it, you can't locate the paperwork.

[Stewart Vernon]

I'm generally against purchase of service plans too... They wouldn't offer them if they weren't generally profitable (i.e. the product works much more often than it fails in the extended time).

[hdtvfan0001]

One other point.

You have to read the fine print of the "extended warranty" contracts.

Often, the term of the coverage, say 2 years, begins as of the date of purchase....not the end date of the manufacturers warranty. In effect, the 3 year "entended" agreement is only really for 2 more years (beyond what you already get from the manufacturer)...not 3 years.

Buyer beware.

[Rich]

The way electronics continue to advance and drop in price, I'm not sure I'd buy an extended service contract unless it was under 10% of the overall purchase price. Like Rich said, with a one-year manufacturer's warranty, if you buy with the right credit or charge card, you get two years. So, two years from now, how much do you think a suitable replacement for your BD player will cost? My guess is well under $100.

Rodney, at the rate the prices are dropping on the BD players, we should reach that "well under $100" point a lot sooner. I've already seen them on sale for less than $100. They're becoming throw aways. Still, the retail stores press you for those warranties and try to make you feel guilty or stupid for not getting one. I've got five 720p Panny plasmas. I hope they all go south in the next year or so. I want to upgrade. My one 1080p Panny blows the 720ps away when it comes to PQ. Especially when using a BD player as a standard DVD upscaler or as a BluRay player.

Rich

[Rich]

In the past year, the Panasonic DMP-BD60 (which I own, BTW) went from about $250 at introduction (at Costco) to about $130 (at Amazon). By the time the player breaks, technology would have improved.

I've seen them for $99 on several occasions already. And the LGs are frequently below the $100 mark on sale here. As are the older Sammys.

In my opinion, the extended warranty is simply a license for the retailers to print money along with Monster Cables. By the time you need it, you can't locate the paperwork.

There are instances where extended warranties are desirable. Buy a Lincoln or Cadillac and you just about have to get rid of them after 5 years if you don't have an extended warranty. They just cost too much to fix.

But electronics, I don't even think about it. And Monster Cables? What a joke.

Rich

[Rich]

I'm generally against purchase of service plans too... They wouldn't offer them if they weren't generally profitable (i.e. the product works much more often than it fails in the extended time).

In the last three years I've given away or bartered for services all my CRTs. Some were only a couple of years old and I paid quite a bit of money for them. Problem with them is that they last forever and weigh so much that it takes three big men to lift them and get them out of the house. Their time has passed. A couple of the TVs were almost twenty years old. And still worked well, but who wants to watch SD programming when they can have HD?

Even Consumer Reports constantly states that they are a waste of money. If you're gonna buy an HDTV, just have the retailer plug them in, if you see "snow" the TV will work. And if you're the kind of person who is picky about PQ and things like that, buy them at Costco. They have a 90 day return policy on HDTVs and if they haven't failed in 90 days, odds are you're gonna have them for a long time. And if you use Amex at Costco, Costco will take care of the extended warranty. You don't have to contact Amex, Costco does it all for you.

You're right, Steward, they are a terrible waste of money.

Rich

[rudeney]

Rodney, at the rate the prices are dropping on the BD players, we should reach that "well under $100" point a lot sooner.

Oh, I have no doubt - my point was that buying two years of coverage at $50/year was no bargain since you could replace a failed player for much less than that.


I've already seen them on sale for less than $100. They're becoming throw aways. Still, the retail stores press you for those warranties and try to make you feel guilty or stupid for not getting one. I've got five 720p Panny plasmas. I hope they all go south in the next year or so. I want to upgrade. My one 1080p Panny blows the 720ps away when it comes to PQ. Especially when using a BD player as a standard DVD upscaler or as a BluRay player.


Really? Granted that I haven't tested it with 1080p Blu-Ray, but I did a side-by side with my 42" 768p Panasonic and my 50" 1080p Panasonic and I just couldn't tell a difference being fed from my D* HR20.

[Rich]

Oh, I have no doubt - my point was that buying two years of coverage at $50/year was no bargain since you could replace a failed player for much less than that.

Yup, I got your point and agree. PC Richards has a sale going on today on an LG BD player, don't know the model, for $99. They're a big chain here in the NYC Metro area and seem to be desperate. I've never seen them advertise so much.

Really? Granted that I haven't tested it with 1080p Blu-Ray, but I did a side-by side with my 42" 768p Panasonic and my 50" 1080p Panasonic and I just couldn't tell a difference being fed from my D* HR20.

I've got two 42" 720p Panny plasmas and they do have great PQ. I also have a 50" 720p Panny plasma and a 58" 720p Panny plasma and I swear I see a better picture when the DVRs are putting out 1080i and (I guess) the TVs downscale the 1080i to 720p. The picture quality on NBC is better than the PQ on Fox or ABC, both of which broadcast in 720p.

Oh yeah, there's a big difference between the 1080i and the 1080/60p PQ. I don't know what my two Sony upscalers put out, all my Panny plasmas say is 1080p when I hit the "info" button on the remote, but it must be 1080/60p (unless there's a 1080p res out there that I don't know about) and I can see the difference on my Panny 1080p set between the upscaler and the 1080i DVR output. The BluRay is a bit better, actually quite a bit better, but I've never bought a BR disk and usually just get standard DVDs from NetFlix so my son can play them on his XBox. I thought the BRs were gonna be a huge leap in PQ and it is better, but not that much better than 1080/60p.

Rich

[rudeney]

I've got two 42" 720p Panny plasmas and they do have great PQ. I also have a 50" 720p Panny plasma and a 58" 720p Panny plasma and I swear I see a better picture when the DVRs are putting out 1080i and (I guess) the TVs downscale the 1080i to 720p. The picture quality on NBC is better than the PQ on Fox or ABC, both of which broadcast in 720p.

Remember, the native resolution of your "720p" sets is actually 1366x768, so when you have a 720p source, it's only getting 1280x720, so over 12% of the pixel field is having to be extrapolated. If you feed it a 1080i signal, it's able to interpolate a cleaner image (or at least that's my theory as to why it looks better :) ).

[Rich]

Remember, the native resolution of your "720p" sets is actually 1366x768, so when you have a 720p source, it's only getting 1280x720, so over 12% of the pixel field is having to be extrapolated. If you feed it a 1080i signal, it's able to interpolate a cleaner image (or at least that's my theory as to why it looks better :) ).

Yeah, I understand all that. I was just having a conversation with a friend of mine about an electrical problem and mentioned that after four years of school and eight thousand hours on the job to become an electrician, all I ever used to troubleshoot in an industrial environment was a Wiggy. And half the time when I got a process running I didn't know or care why or what had happened. Used to drive my bosses nuts when they asked me what the problem was and I just said "I really don't know, but it's running."

That's how I cope with the forum and the people who know so much about this stuff. I don't know what they are talking about most of the time and when you start "interpolating and extrapolating" you lose me. :lol:

I just know what I see. And that's enough for me. :lol:

Merry Xmas, Rodney, to you and yours.

Rich