Over the years I've had respect for Sony's equipment being well-designed and well-made. Even their cheaper models i considered to be robust and worth the slightly higher price. The Trinatron TV's were very good quality compared to other designs of the time. They also had their innovations, like the minidisk - it may not have been audiophile, but had the potential to develop into a serious product if Sony's music division hadn't prevented the hardware division from realizing it's potential.
In more recent years they have pumped out so much bottom-end electronics that I now see them as just another mass-production electronics company.
My opinion has also changed about Sony about a year ago. Mrs.Feline bought a pair of $70 Sony noise-cancelling headphones, and after 6-weeks of light use one day one headphone exploded - almost damaged her hearing with the noise, and plastic broke off it and hit the opposite wall. When claiming warranty, Sony Australia claimed that she left the battery in it too long. Now nothing was mentioned in the manual about the length of time to leave a standard 9V battery in it, and I've had 9V batteries in devices for years without them exploding. The battery used in the headphone was from a major brand, new, the use-by date was years away. Yet Sony blamed Mrs.Feline and wouldn't honour their obligations. After months of arguing, Sony finally offered to give a $35 discount if she bought a new pair. I got Mrs.Feline to tell Sony that she was going to as opinions (via me) on major Australian and International audiophile websites about their claims. It was very strange, within an hour Sony said their engineers had re-examined the returned headphones and determined that she was entitled to a free replacement (which she was entitled to by consumer law anyway).
After that appalling customer service (for a product that would have been a trivial cost for them to replace), Sony lost me as a loyal customer of many decades. Don't these companies understand that PR matters.
