[neworbit]

Man, I feel old, I remember when Sony was The Brand Name in consumer electronics. Between rootkits and intrusive behavior and this sort of thing... I can't think of the last time I bought something with the Sony brand on it. (To be fair, it was probably either a DVD... or a DVD burner.)

[Groxx]

I've returned a couple of their batteries for dying while under warranty. Beyond that, I avoid Sony like the plague. Hardware, software, videos, music, everything.

Bring back the company that made the Walkman, a cheap, DRM-free, durable music player, and maybe I'll change my mind.

[hga]

My family traces it to the '80s? when Sony moved a lot of their assembly to Mexico and the $$$ Trinitron TVs they then purchased were plagued with cold solder joints (which they could take care of but of course most consumers couldn't, at least not directly). For quite some time before they went all in evil as you note their quality went fitfully but steadily downhill.

Compare to e.g. my mid-late '70s Sony turntable, which due to it being direct drive is still fine (the auto positioning and end of record removal mechanism failed long ago but that's hardly essential). Built on a solid cast aluminum base ... they just don't make 'em like that any more.

[yardie]

They changed right after they started buying up movie production, music production, and game production. Then all the good engineering, good standards, and open nature were thrown out in favor of user lock-in, DRM, and piracy prevention.

If anything will be the downfall of Sony I have to say that Sony/Columbia Music started it. With their ridiculous copybit protection on DAT. How a million dollar division (media) dictates a billion dollar division (electronics) to come up with these schemes is beyond my comprehension.

[desigooner]

problem with sony is that they fail so much with pricing things .. they cannot charge as much or more than apple products because frankly the design and the build quality doesn't match up. I still remember them trying to sell a netbook for around 1K$ .. They just released a honeycomb tablet that might be priced at 600 when ASUS Transformer (similar specs) got sold out for pre-order at Amazon for 400$..