Extra insurance for TV Screen
In today’s entry, we will focus on insurance that can protect our TV or other LCD screen from damage – both mechanical, e.g. by accidental impact, and factory defects, e.g. burned, bad pixels on the screen.
Manufacturer policy with LCD TV Screens
In LCD manufacture, it is common for a display to be manufactured that has a number of sub-pixel defects (each pixel is composed of three primary-colored sub-pixels). The number of faulty pixels tolerated, before a screen is rejected, is dependent on the class that the manufacturer has given the display.
There is a official rule described by the ISO 13406-2 standard but not all manufacturers interpret this standard the same way, or follow it at all.
Some manufacturers have a zero-tolerance policy with regard to LCD screens, rejecting all units found to have any number of (sub-)pixel defects. Displays meeting this standard are deemed Class I. Other manufacturers reject displays according to the number of total defects, the number of defects in a given group (e.g. one dead pixel or three stuck sub-pixels in a five-by-five pixel area), or other criteria.
If you need additional protection against bad pixel or dead pixel in your TV Screen after the manufacturer protection expires – you can buy additional policy that covers such damages.
Extended warranty – is is worth to buy additional insurance for a TV?
All so called extended warranty is nothing more like the additional insurance policy – because the responsible entity for repair cost is the insurer not the manufacturer or seller.
Some insurance companies give you extra protection which is great because people usually uses TV set for 4-5 years at least. The manufacturer guarantee is usually for 2 years or 1 year.
These will cover the actual damaged part, but you have to pay their premium. They are expensive and a bit complex process. In my experience (which is from many years ago) the majority of companies have a low insurance coverage to begin with, and then when they get big, they add more. is the term used by insurance companies to refer the original part. It’s the part that gets damaged first and that is covered up to 20% in the first case, and then 100% for any rest of the case.
You will often see the term ? In general terms of insurance you can find te maximum participation in the damage which basically means in this case, the damage covered up to 20% or even 100%.
It’s usually good practice to buy the policy from the insurance company with the highest insurance coverage, but if you want to do it yourself, you can always ask your insurance carrier for a low-risk premium to cover the whole damage, which is usually higher than the original part coverage. In my experience, it’s not uncommon for insurance companies to give you coverage above 20% for most cases. In some cases their policy will have to cover a small component, which would be your dead pixel or pixel that is dead, and they will cover it up to 20%.
There are several ways to get coverage in some cases. The simplest is to get insurance with a company which has the same name as your TV (which could be an independent or large corporation). If you want the coverage to start from zero, you have to pay for the coverage, usually with a lower premium for the first case, and an increase for the remaining cases.
When the TV screen or monitor is suitable for replacement insurance conditions?
As usual, the devil is in the details, and therefore not every damage, for example, burning a single pixel on a TV screen, qualifies the TV set for replacement or repair at the insurer’s expense.
it should be noted that the standard on the basis of which the insurer qualifies the damage to the TV set.
When comparing insurers’ offers, we should pay special attention to which standard defines the acceptable pixel burnout.
Maybe it is the mentioned ISO 13406-2 classification or some other – les restrictive class.
Of course, the cheaper the policy, the greater the class of acceptable, and therefore non-replaceable, pixels.
In extreme cases, it may be that if the TV set works, for example, displaying only half of the picture – the insurer will recognize it as working.
That is why it is so important to ensure that in the conditions presented by the insurer regarding LCD screens, there is a standard according to which the equipment is considered damaged, unable to operate in 100% of its factory condition.
What pixel damages are allowed in particular classes of flat screens?
| Class | Type 1 | Type 2 | Type 3 | Cluster with more than one type 1 or type 2 faults | Cluster of type 3 faults |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| I | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| II | 2 | 2 | 5 | 0 | 2 |
| III | 5 | 15 | 50 | 0 | 5 |
| IV | 50 | 150 | 500 | 5 | 50 |
In the table above we have presented the Definition of Pixel Fault Classes – Maximum number of faults per million pixels on LCD screen.
As you can clearly see, only class I of LCD screens does not allow any pixel defects on the matrix. All other classes allow more defects of different types. Obviously, the lower the class, the more defects are accepted.
LCD or OLED matrices are built in such a way that burned-out pixels may appear over time.
Unfortunately, the phenomenon progresses with time. In addition to burned out pixels, entire lines can be damaged when the steering beam is burnt.
It appears to be a vertical line on the screen in bright scenes. For example, when the background should be white, we see a red line.
Therefore, it is worth considering buying additional insurance if we have a large-size TV that costs a lot of money because matrix repair is very expensive and often similar to the cost of a new TV set.
In turn, when buying a TV set, it is necessary to find out what class the LCD matrix is, which will allow us to avoid disappointment when our warranty claim is rejected due to the lower class of the screen.
