Marketing sells you. Every bit of technology glitters with promises that may or may not be true. Whether a beguiling turn of phrase or a deal that’s too good to be true, marketers know how to confuse or seduce you. The current battle between Korean…
Marketing sells you. Every bit of technology glitters with promises that may or may not be true. Whether a beguiling turn of phrase or a deal that’s too good to be true, marketers know how to confuse or seduce you.
The current battle between Korean giants LG and Samsung offers a textbook example.
LG owns the rights to a revolutionary technology called organic liquid crystal displays, OLED. While the U. S.-developed technology goes back many years, LG was the first to successfully commercialize it into large-screen displays.
Nearly all critics agree that OLED TVs deliver the best picture available. That competitor left Samsung in the dust. It uses OLED on its premium smartphones but did not successfully scale it up to large-screen sizes.
Instead, it developed a variation of the existing LCD/LED technology that uses LEDs to illuminate liquid crystal displays. Samsung calls its improved version QLED for quantum dot LED, although some physicists might quibble with the term quantum dots in this application.
Notice how at a casual glance the “O” in OLED looks like the “Q” in QLED?
QLED far surpasses conventional LCD/LED displays because it allows for a brighter, much greater range of colors. It’s brighter than an OLED display while exhibiting the same extended range of colors. QLED cannot match OLED in contrast. Other than plasma, only OLED can reproduce pure black. One other aspect of QLED is that although Samsung markets its QLED sets for almost the same price as LG’s OLED sets, QLED is less expensive to manufacture.
Teasing you with a low price is another common marketing ploy. The first few months of satellite radio or satellite TV service look like they’re giving it away. Always read the fine print. After the promo period, the rates escalate significantly, and the number of channels may decrease. Wily consumers wait until the last day of the promo period to call in offering to renew if the provider extends the promo rate. Usually you can keep up this charade for a year or two.
You may think you’re beating the cable company buy purchasing programming via the internet. Most of the same program providers who sell to the cable companies now sell on-line packages directly to you.
However, when you start doing the arithmetic, you may not be saving much. DirecTV, which is part of AT&T, currently advertises a great internet package (separate from its satellite service) . Yet, once the promo period ends, it may cost you more than what you currently pay for your cable subscription.
ESPN raises the costs of cable (and now internet) packages. It charges about $7 per month toward the overall cost of your package. If you’re not interested in sports, this is an outrage. However, the cable and satellite companies can’t easily drop ESPN from their packages. Disney owns ESPN, as it does the ABC television network, the Disney channel and a multitude of cable channels. Disney threatens providers that if they drop ESPN, then they lose all of the Disney-owned programming.
Many wonderful internet sites and services only seem to be free. Either the site harvests data about you to sell to advertisers or they imitate public broadcasting in repeatedly requesting donations.
Podcasts are an example. These are radio programs normally heard over the air, like NPR’s “Fresh Air” offered online or unique programs available only as podcasts.
Many podcasts are embarrassingly amateurish, but some match quality radio shows in approach, information and production. Recently, more and more are using the same approach as public broadcasting (including ones from NPR) in requesting “sustaining” monthly donations that they’ll just quietly charge to your credit card.
While most are worthy of financial support (although they also include advertising) , the “just $5 or $7 a month” adds up to $60 to $84 a year. Supporting a few of your favorite podcasts and your public broadcasting station (s) ultimately becomes an expensive proposition.
Rich Warren, who lives in the Champaign area, is a longtime reviewer of consumer electronics. He can be emailed at hifiguy@mchsi.com.
