As predicted, Vizio being sued by known universe for non-payment of royalties

[WickyWoo]

Because outside techs and brick & mortal repair shops are inefficient - for both manufacturer and consumer - and going the way of the dodo. Fedex/UPS door to door, print your own labels, and let the courier return the product for repair/replacement rather than lugging a 4 foot, 75 pound hunk of electronic in your own gas-guzzler down to the local mini-mall in your spare time.

Definately not, especially for large items like TVs. They're going to spend at least $60-80 to package and send your TV back and forth, which is probably more alone than they'd end up actually paying the local tech in fees.

Let me put it this way

For Christmas, I got a defective Pioneer upconverter DVD player. My brother did not keep the receipt for the item, and couldn't remember when he bought it, so BB wouldn't take a return for an exchange.

So it just took them 2 months to send the part out, and pay the tech $30 to install it. If they'd just shipped me the stupid board I could have put it in for free in 10 minutes and saved them a lot of money.

It costs $20 to even ship a DVD player back and forth via FedEx. How is that more efficient, especially with shipping prices only likely to go up?

Ubiquitous equipment like HDTVs are quickly becoming is simply too large of a volume for them to handle. While the installed base is small, it is cheaper to use their own hub places rather than mass tech training, but 2-3 years from now? Not so much