Consumers plan, research, and finally purchase home theater equipment every day. It can be easy to think the gear you bought was perfect since you spent time and researched the product. In the highly competitive home theater market things can happen that can make equipment break, and price is not always an indicator of quality.

With how fast items are brought to market, you may occasionally run into issues that require warranty repair or worse yet… out of warranty repair.

Granted if something breaks during the return policy period you should always simply return the unit to the store opposed to getting it serviced. Sometimes a lemon is a lemon and getting a different unit or model altogether is the best thing to do.

Disposable Society
It can be easy to use broken equipment as an excuse to buy a new one, but repairs usually cost a lot less than replacing the unit, and in many cases a full replacement is not needed at all.

As an example, speaker costs mainly deal with shipping costs as it can cost only around $100 to replace a busted driver. It’s much cheaper to replace a driver than get new speakers.

The False Perception of Perfection
Consumers like to think things are perfect and get upset when they find out their equipment exhibits odd behavior when they spent so much effort to acquire, setup, and use. Sometimes it’s a manufacturing defect and, in all honesty, sometimes issues occur because of consumer over-usage that’s not related to the manufacturer.

Whether it’s inadequate power, a power surge, or simply turning the volume up at a level that your home theater cannot handle, there are many things that can contribute to equipment failure.

What Can You Do to Protect Yourself?
Saying “Nothing’s Perfect” doesn’t mean all home theater equipment is unreliable, and it most certainly doesn’t mean you should purchase overpriced warranties for everything. The trick is to know which items are best to get a warranty on.

Pretty much it’s a good idea to get any type of warranty for any type of TV. Whether it’s a one or two year warranty extension or light bulb replacement, a small warranty can help avoid major issues, especially with projectors or rear-projection TVs.

For solid-state items that undergo much less usage stress than TVs, (DVD players, receivers, amplifiers and so on) if there’s a major reliability issue with these they are likely to break within the manufacturers warranty.

Speakers can be iffy since they are such a high-stress item (especially when used loudly) that it can be easy for a manufacturer to claim that the item was exposed to “extreme usage” and not cover repairs. Many higher-end speakers already come with lengthy warranties so the need to purchase extra coverage simply isn’t there.

Power conditioners can protect your gear from power related issues, and knowing the capabilities of your own system will prevent you or family members from over-driving your home theater.

Getting Service
Service is simply part of any industry, and it can be very upsetting to have something break. Having a pleasant attitude with customer service will almost always get you much further, and the person on the other end may actually want to help you out. If you’re extremely irate that your equipment is broken don’t call angry. First, let the manufacture’s customer support try to help you.

Unfortunately, not all customer service experiences will be good ones, but giving them the chance to provide good service, or quite possibly want to help, may open more doors that yelling at them. 

Summary
Nothings perfect, but with a little forethought and pleasantry you can survive any home theater glitches that come you way and be back on the road to home theater bliss in short order!