this.

What do you guys think? Are there really no DVD players made in the US? What about the quality? I'm quite satisfied with my Toshiba SD 1600, so I'm not looking to upgrade, but it's an interesting story, nonetheless.

i am not too familiar with the working conditions of the big name brands, but my best guess is that they make their workers do the same work for the same wages. But they charge more because the american consumer likes to buy brand names. just an estimated guess, but the markup probably has to do with advertising, brand name recognition costs, and satisfied CEO's who are able to justify higher prices with good sales margins.

question #2-its a sad state of things, but low end electronics are not made in the US, but asia. its been this way for a while. not really surprised about that. it is cheaper to make products in a foreign country and ship it here, then make it here(US).

I think a lot of high end units are made in Asia as well.

my wife picked up a few of the apex dvd players for my kids rooms and x-mas gifts-pic looks good on 19"tv-great deal for 30 bucks......also that article said dvd was introduced in march of 1997 when i actually had dvd a couple of weeks before x-mas 1996....ron

just because something isint made here doesnt mean its junk. They make a product to certain standards, and it gets made to that standard regardless.

i would not buy one of those uber cheap players, you really do get what you pay for.

Rotel has it's own factory in China. So even the "higher end" electronics companies use inexpensive labor. In Rotel's case, it's their own factory, so it's not an outsourced slave labor type facility, but it's still less expensive to produce the products there, and ship them worldwide.

Working conditions are important. If I knew which brands employeed slave labor tactics, I'd certainly avoid them - even if it cost me a few bucks more.

DVD did come out in March of 1997. I followed it religiously and was invited by Good Guys to their unvieling party in March. There still was no actual DVDs out at the time, so I waited a week to buy a player when Warner came out with their first batch of titles. Unless you somehow got a DVD player through some off market dealer in 1996, they were not available with any movies to play on them until March 1997. So do not discredit the article with false information.

ok, so who else read the very first line of the article and started cracking up?

It's an excellent intro to the article. Certainly intrigues the reader to read on.

Hand raised...

I hate unattributed quotations.

"Laws are like sausages. It's better not to see them being made." -- Otto von Bismarck (1815 - 1898)

"Those that respect the law and love sausage should watch neither being made." -- Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

Then there's this one:

"Litigation: A machine which you go into as a pig and come out of as a sausage." - Ambrose Bierce

Ahhh, proper citations from the source.
Lovely.

Not so sure the writer would had to have ever heard those previous quotes before to come up with what he did. Though I agree, if he was aware of those quotes, and did indeed take from them, a little credit was due.

Craig, I don't know. I mean, I understand that this professional journalist from Knight-Ridder was just trying to make a stylish point, but to say that he should not be responsible for knowing or citing the origin of the idea he used seems a little...thin.

I mean, what if somebody used a dead, horse head to illustrate a point in a movie nowadays? Would it be homage, campy, or plagarism? And would you believe that a professional film maker could have come up with that idea independently? In intellectual-property pursuits, the professionals involved are obligated to know and RESPECT their influences. After all, "a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself" (Robert Burton).

I guess the whole article just pushed my buttons - Wal-Mart, cheapo electronics, non-union workers, trade deficits, WTO, journalistic integrity, etc. Ick ick ick ick ick. What was that something-pants-itis you were talking about?

"crankypantsitis"

It's definately going around lately!