^^ That is so inaccurate. Good brands do not necessarily use better quality components. A TV from Sony or Samsung can have the same manufacturing cost as a lesser known brand with the same quality grade, but still have a huge difference in market price. The additional price is usually because of brand recognition that they have acquired in the past. In addition it may be attributed to some proprietary technologies (which may not necessarily deserve the price premium) and in some cases for better after sales experience. At least that is what you get buying a known brand outside India.
In India, after sales support for even brands like Sony is often just as shitty as any cheap Chinese brand. That is how electronics industry has become these days. Spending more does not guarantee a superior product and spending less does not guarantee a shitty product. You just need to identify what offer better value and buy it.
That's a very generic statement that can be applied to anything nowadays.
Problem is that due to the 'use and throw' culture people have almost forgotten what true quality used to be. They still feel that if the product would last 2-3yrs then that's a quality product. I have seen sony walkmans, tape recorders, vcr etc that still work even after more than a decade. Take old nokia mobiles for example which were made like tanks and surprisingly you might easily find them working even today. That's what quality is. Can any one of the chinese brands micromax etc claim that?
Beleive me, sony even now use very high quality components when it comes to its products. You would be hard pressed to even find one single instance where it have used sub standard hardware components like chips, caps etc.
I have had a full hd 42W700b smart led from sony. When I bought it more than a year back. It had the best picture quality( videos and picture both) at the time when compared to the likes of samsung, LG etc.
After I bought the led, I decided to connect it to a gaming HTPC. Unfortunately, when I started reading about that, I came to know that response time in 'ms' is utmost important in a gaming led. And that's why gaming led's are so costly. As they had superior panels that are able to cope up without delay. And to my surprise this model even had the lowest or among the lowest response time in the industry at that time.
Sony does use one of the best panels in this industry. It even have the best software or engines to go with the hardware like the bravia engine, x-reality pro etc which take the viewing experience to another level as most of the content that we see is still not full hd. So, they just upscale those things.
They are made using proper R&D. The updates are regular. There manufacturing and testing process are extremely organised and matured unlike the chinese brands.
I don't agree that cheaper brands are comparable to sony in any way. You get what you pay for.
And sony with all there experience and expertise deserve the premium they ask for.