Are flatscreen TVs programed to turn off permanently?

[George Orwell]

Since the LCD and Plasma TV sets are essentially computers and have
internal clocks, I see no reason why their firmware could not be programmed
to turn off the master chip PERMANENTLY at some random time after the set
has been used for the number of hours set by the manufacturer as a
reasonable product life.

Nobody would suspect any foul play, particularly if well past the factory
warranty, say between five and eight years. Most people would be more than
satisfied and probably go for another round with the same manufacturer.
There is no need for the manufacturer to wait 20 years for the TV to run
its natural course before it needs replacement.

I believe there is merit to my intuition and a class action lawsuit is in
the making.

Il mittente di questo messaggio|The sender address of this
non corrisponde ad un utente |message is not related to a real
reale ma all'indirizzo fittizio|person but to a fake address of an
di un sistema anonimizzatore |anonymous system
Per maggiori informazioni |For more info
https://www.mixmaster.it

 

[Baydlor]

He's right, you know. Why do you think so many items break shortly after
the warranty expires? We need to institute a massive class action lawsuit
against every company that ever made anything at all. We've been lied to!
Deceived! Death to the evil capitalists!

It would just be a digital form of planned obsolescence.

Instead of making something with materials that wear out or deteriorate
cosmetically after a vague period of time or number of uses, you could just
have a subroutine that generates a random date and when that date is
reached, another subroutine would erase some vital part of the operating
system on an eeprom chip. Those check engine lights on cars that come on
after a number of miles to remind you to have service work done could just
as easily disable the computer module that runs the engine until it's reset.
Simple programming.

All it would take would be a decision to improve sales and a way to make it
untraceable. Of course the fact that your products do tend to fail that way
could cost you customers. I tend to buy another brand when something doesn't
last as long as I think it should.

Things do have an annoying tendency to fail not long after the warranty runs
out or payments end.