The Hidden Blade Assassin's Creed in Depth

Seriously?! Either Stabgirl is a seriously good haggler, or they are the best business on the planet! Why did they agree to cover the full cost? Congratulations!

How cute that you call her stabgal.

stabgal is a silent member of The Hidden Blade - user number 4. She selected her own user picture (it's funnier when she acts it out with the shrieking violins sound effect). stabgal is a shrewd negotiator:

Mitsubishi: The repair will cost $1,386.49
stabgal: Zero
Mitsubishi: $693.25
stabgal: Zero
Mitsubishi: $323.95
stabgal: Zero
Mitsubishi: $193.33
stabgal: Zero

I'm not sure why Mitsubishi was so cooperative but I'm grateful that they were. The cynical explanation would be that it's cheaper to handle dissatisfied customers individually than to issue blanket recalls or face class action lawsuits. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they're building brand loyalty with quality customer service.

Samsung - HL72A650 - 72" rear projection TV - 1080p (FullHD)

I win

I also have never in my entire life had a television fail, however my parents had their Pioneer Elite begin to show several black dots over the summer and had to get it repaired (they still had it under warranty, though). In terms of customer service Samsung is okay, I hope they're as willing to pay for everything as Mitsubishi is, especially since I don't have a wonder-negotiator like stabgal around to help.

Ack! My TV is down again. This time it appears that the lamp has blown. I shouldn't be surprised as these lamps are designed to last 4,000 to 6,000 hours (= 1 to 3 years depending on usage). Mine has lasted for 3.5 years with fairly heavy use.

The local dealer didn't have this part in stock but offered to order it for me at a cost of $270. No thank you! I ordered the authentic manufacturer brand online for $78 plus expedited shipping. This TV should be like new again after having replaced all the essential parts in the last 9 months.

Alas, no such luck for me. I've been fighting with them for weeks now on the basis that if they've done this for one customer, I should be no different. (Same TV essentially, WD65735, and exactly the same problem.) They've agreed to pay for parts and half labor, ultimately costing me $100. If it works out that way, and doesn't creep any higher, that'll be alright I guess.

Frankly, if I hadn't read your account, I'd have been thrilled by this outcome. But having gotten the lesser treatment without any attempt to justify their change in policy, I feel a little ambivalent re: Mitsubishi customer service. I love the TV, though, there's no getting around that.

Will post back when it's actually fixed... and I've actually seen the bill.

I hope you're not newelectronx or a spam bot, mbenigni. Sorry, just saying that because of a disturbance some time ago and because you made an account a few minutes before posting that.

Nope, I'm a real person. I actually made the account specifically to respond to this thread, which I'd run into after Googling for info on DLP Dead pixels. Hope that's alright.

Otherwise, I think that would have been a pretty sophisticated post for a spambot to generate!

Whew, thank goodness!

Thanks for explainining, mbenigni.

We've seen the spambots get more sophisticated, like contributing to other topics at the same time as they created the spam topic. I'm sure they will continue to evolve this way.

Anyway, good luck with your TV. I guess the best strategy is to not be afraid to be a pain in their asses.

If you want to hang around and talk about Assassin's Creed (or other video games for that matter), please feel free to do so!

Hey, mbenigni. I could tell you weren't a spambot. Yes, my WD-C657 is basically the Costco/Sam's Club version of the WD65735.

I think Mitsubishi is offering to subsidize repairs out of warranty because this is a design flaw with the Texas Instruments DLP chip. In 2008 TI proclaimed their DLP chips had "bullet-proof reliability" and extended the standard warranty to 5 years. This warranty applies only to TI's direct customer (Mitsubishi in this case) and it's up to each manufacturer whether to pass along the coverage to the consumer. Mitsubishi does not forward TI's warranty. Instead, they integrate the DLP chip into the optical engine and warrant the whole assembly for 1 year. I pointed out to them that they could take back their customers' broken parts, replace the DLP chips for free under TI's warranty, and sell them as "reconditioned" optical engines.

That's still a good deal. My local service technician told me they would lower the price but he wouldn't say how much. They negotiate each of these cases separately and he didn't want to commit to a figure.

I've fallen out of love with mine and may be replacing it soon. After replacing the optical engine and the lamp (i.e. practically every part in the TV) it started doing this thing where it would periodically act as if someone just selected the input device with the remote. For example, say we're watching satellite TV on S-Video input 1. All of a sudden the screen goes black for a second and then comes back, showing the pop-up "Satellite 1: 480p" for a moment. Maybe that S-Video jack is failing. What next...

The TV has been in storage since September but I'm getting it back at the end of this month. If it keeps acting up, it's history! stabgal has her eye on a 70" Samsung Sharp LED TV.

Thanks for the welcome, guys. I will likely stick around - as I can't get enough of talking about video games - but I have to confess I haven't played AC since the first one!

Thanks for the info about the repair, stabguy. If we'd corresponded before my last call, I might have leveraged some of this toward getting full labor covered, but as it is I've already agreed. Mitsubishi was pretty vague about everything, though, i.e. I have nothing in writing and I'm just concerned that the cost of the repair will go higher for some reason. Time will tell; at the moment the part in question is backorder until middle of February.

Is it just the S-video input that's failing on your TV? If so I'd agree it's probably a bad solder point that's causing the TV to lose sync and then redetect the input. The easiest solution would be to use another input, if for instance your Satellite TV box has HDMI out.

Anyway, thanks again, and I'll post w/ the outcome in case anyone's still curious. See you elsewhere on this forum, I hope...

Part is in and they'll be out this afternoon to install. $106. Fingers crossed for a smooth recovery!

Mine is back from storage and set up. I installed the new lamp and the picture looks good. You must have been right about the S-video jack. HDMI input is working just fine.

Meanwhile, the price on the 70" Sharp dropped for a Super Bowl promotion and we bought one. Anybody want a 65" Mitsubishi? It has all new parts.

How much?

How about you just destroy it? Make a video. I want to see some creativity here. Shoot it. Throw an axe at it. Call one of your recruits on it. Arrow storm it. Smash it with a mace. Air tackle it from the roof of your new house. And when that's all over and done I want to see a memory corridor scene with "requiescat in pace".

Is it possible to poison a TV? Perhaps it would emit sparks and the wires would flail about, destroying everything in the vicinity...?

seriously? a 65 inch screen?
me feels undeveloped with my 20 inch fat tv

Instead of injecting actual poison, you would inject it with salt water so that it short-circuits violently.

Instead of injecting actual poison, you would inject it with salt water so that it short-circuits violently.

I was going to also say poison, but it sounded too silly. Doesn't sound silly anymore.

Tech came out on Thursday night and I'm back in business! Thanks so much for your original post - if it weren't for this information, I wouldn't have fought so hard for out-of-warranty coverage. I might not have even thought to call Mitsubishi in the first place. Mitsubishi were a little difficult to work with, but the technician was great, and in the end the out of pocket expense is totally acceptable.

As for your now-redundant 65" - you should pick up another XBox (or PS3 as the case may be) for massive "local" online mulitplayer sessions! If that doesn't appeal to you, then wow, what a gift that thing would make. Or a local sale. Would hate to have to ship a DLP.

I just sold it locally for $450. The buyer is hosting a pay-per-view party tonight (boxing match) and yesterday his TV died. He's in the military and will only be living in Hawaii for another year. This TV is a good fit for him.

Now I have a story about our new Sharp TV. After owning it for about a week, it developed a column of dead pixels. The line must be only one pixel wide because it's barely visible. I called Sharp customer support and they walked me through the hard reset procedure. That didn't help so they escalated my issue. I was expecting them to schedule a technician to come out and repair it.

This is where it gets interesting. Sharp called and said they were replacing the whole TV. Not only that, they are giving me the next model up in their product line! This model has Quad Pixel Technology (RGBY pixels instead of the standard RGB). I wanted this feature all along but the prices were steep. It took a couple of weeks for Sharp to ship my new TV to Hawaii. They're supposed to deliver and install it later this week.

The moral of the story: Sharp also rocks!

I think it's more along the lines of: "Oh shit, this is that stabguy dude, right? Welp, we'd better give him a new tv or hel'll come get us!"
They're just afraid.

that's pretty awesome customer support

More like "We better give him what he wants before stabgal gets involved. She'll end up owning the whole company!"

The guy who bought my Mitsubishi brought his girlfriend with him. While he was checking out the TV she stood mesmerized at the window (my new house has a good view of the ocean). He said, "This TV has a good picture. What do you think, honey?" and she was like, "I think this would make a good picture over here." Then he wanted to use PayPal so he asked for my email address. I started: "stabguy at..." and she said, "We have to leave right now!"

is this a reference to something in your privatelife?
feel like sharing?

It's a reference to the top comment wherein stabgal got Mitsubishi to do a $1,400 repair for free.

Stabguy x Stabgal foreeeveeeerr. Sorry. Got carried away

aw, i was hoping for something a bit juicier than that.
like she did a hostile takeover or something

I have an actual GOOD story about Best Buy customer service, so I thought I'd share.

The Beginning
On November 1, 2011, I purchases an Xbox360 w/Kinect for $299.99. With this came a $100 gift card. Also on sale at the same time was a cheap Westinghouse 32" LED 1080p HDTV for $199.99. So I used the gift card and paid another $100 for it. Because I was using the gift card, I did something I NEVER do with electronics (especially this cheap)... I bought the extended warranty from Best Buy for $20. All-in-all, I was happy with this deal. $420 and change for a next gen console and a 32" LED TV, no matter how cheap the quality.

The Middle
A couple weeks ago, I started having some display problems with my new TV. The 4.5 month old TV display was cutting out. Horizontal lines at first, then the screen would go black (but the sound still worked). Amazingly, this is the only time I have purchased an extended warranty, AND this is the only time something has broken within warranty (manufacturers or otherwise). So I took it to Best Buy. They decided to send it to a shop for repair. No big deal, as I have another TV in a spare room that we could use. We get a call back, and they can't fix it. They authorized it for exchange.

The End
Tonight, we went in to Best Buy for the exchange. The most comparable TV was an INSIGNIA 32" LED 720p HDTV. This had a sale price at the time for $329.99. Anything less than 37" or 40" the difference between 1080p and 720p are negligible at best. The display on the floor model actually looked better than the original Westinghouse. We went over to pick it up, and I noticed a 32" Samsung LED 720p HDTV for just $349.99. So I said I'd rather have that one and pay the $20 difference. I went to the front of the store and something was lost in translation... which was a GOOD thing in this case. I got the Samsung as exchange. In addition, because the Westinghouse was under manufacturer warranty, the extended warranty carries over to the new TV. All I ended up paying was $4.22 (to reset the extended warranty ... prorated for the time used already).

The Recap
I got a 32" Samsung LED HDTV for $100 and change, and I couldn't be happier.

Samsung is the top brand in LED TV's up to 65". That's a good deal you got there. We went with Sharp because we wanted something a little bigger.

Look what I just found: before and after pictures of my Mitsubishi repair. Here's how it looked with all the stuck and dead pixels (white and black dots, respectively):

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)

And here it is with the new optical engine, replaced at no charge:

Iron Man 2 (2010)

I recently spoke with the guy who bought this Mitsubishi from me. He said, "Great picture and a great deal." So everyone's happy with their new TV's!

Aww yeah

Joey please, we both know no matter how good Iron Man 2 was, it will never come close to being as good as Pan's Labyrinth

Quite literally. On Rotten Tomatoes:

Iron Man 2 - 74% (all critics), 80% (audience)
Pan's Labyrinth - 95% (all critics), 90% (audience)

On IMDb:

Iron Man 2 - 7.0/10, Metascore 57/100
Pan's Labyrinth - 8.3/10, Metascore 98/100

Academy Awards:

Iron Man 2 - Nominated for Best Visual Effects
Pan's Labyrinth - Won Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, and Best Makeup.
Nominated for Best Original Screenplay, Best Foreign Language Film, and Best Original Score.

It's no contest! How about a high five for Pan's Labyrinth?

Hell yeah!
Spanish Civil War for the win!.. Wait...

I saw Pan's Labyrinth about 4 years ago and I still get goosebumps whenever I think of it.

On the other hand, I just now saw the latest post in the "The Avengers" topic and I had to stop and think before I remembered that I saw it just 3 days ago. (This from a BIG Joss Whedon fan BTW.)

This topic has so many other topics bleeding into it.

it's on my to-do list
along with the first Alien movie, and Iron Sky if i ever find it

still not sure if i'm gonna watch Avengers, since i've never cared about the characters before

Wow! I might check that myself. I heard some good reviews about their products.

Looks tempting to replace my samsung. I am pretty sure they have some warranties for this, I'm thinking it's a new brand in my ears but the features are pretty good.

That's great news! I'm glad Mitsubishi was willing to work with you and help cover the cost of the repair. It's really nice to see a company going the extra mile to take care of their customers. It's definitely something to keep in mind when considering which brand to buy for a new TV.

Thanks