Rich Fiscus
12 Oct 2007 9:17
At the DisplaySearch HDTV conference in Los Angeles Randy Waynick of Sony's home products told an audience that manufacturers have failed in their responsibility to educate consumers about new technology. He said "In the past year, if we were to grade ourselves, we were barely passing as an industry."
This certainly isn't a revelation to consumers who have attempted to navigate the maze of confusing and often conflicting information available from discount, or even specialty electronics retailers.
Waynick's call for education isn't necessarily as consumer oriented as it may seem. He also pointed to the emergence of upstart display manufacturer Vizio as a sign of consumer ignorance, saying "We play differently, and we take a lot of hits for it sometimes because we want to provide a better value."
The problem with this kind of thinking is that it assumes consumers are buying with advanced features in mind instead of a low price on a reasonably high quality, reasonably large HD display. Although low profit margins for discount displays have put retailers are clearly in Sony's corner on this one, consumers don't appear to be nearly as impressed. In fact, it begs the question whether it's consumers or manufacturers that are really in the dark.
Source: CNet News