As I've said time and time again, the consumer arm of Sony has entirely lost the plot. They are living off the brand name, as some people, such as your good self, won't consider other brands. Much like my eldest brother who will only consider BMW for cars, no matter how poorly built/reliable they are, or how badly they treat him.
I consider Sony when their stuff is good.
The early Wega CRTs were fantastic, their video cameras if you buy correctly are among the best.
But then I have a Pioneer DVD player, Pace PVR, BT Vision PVR, Relisys monitor and portable LCD TV. My HiFi speakers are Castle a old British brand
Sony lost the DVD player sale by not supporting DVD-Audio and to be honest the Pioneer 575 was the best player at its price point at the time.
I tend towards Sony due to good experiences but I am not blinkered, a turd with Sony on it is still a turd.
We got a PS3 due to good experiences with PS2.
My AV Amp got really good reviews, better than both predecessor and sucessor.
You need to buy carefully.
If I was going to buy a DSLR it would be one of three brands, al of which are good photo brands.
If I was going to buy another PVR - almost certainly would be one of the good Korean brands.
Currently my most used VCR is a Sanyo (M40), not that I have used it for a while.
But then while diving around inside, the Sanyo contains a lot of Sony labeled parts (such as specific chips) and I suspect the head disc is Sony supplied due to its limited installation, (nothing but Sanyo M40 PAL & SECAM), inside a Sony quite a few Toshiba chips.
I suspect the Sony chips in the Sanyo are all related to the Beta HiFi sound stage, and the reaason I suspect they are Sony heads is it would be the easiest way in but I am too scared to dismantle the M40 and HF100 to compare, and they are the only 4 head (2 video 2 audio) Beta decks in PAL land.
What I ahve notice with all the older premium brands is a drop of quality at the cheaper ranges, I would not touch anyones cheapo music centres.