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LCD Price Fixing?
bilsaysthis asks: "Bill Kearney poses a really interesting question, one which I've been puzzled by for a while too: 'What's with prices on LCD displays? On one hand a laptop can be had with UXGA resolution display for $1000. Try buying that display alone and you'll find it's also around $1000. Then there's how much they're gouging for the same resolution in an LCD television.'" Sadly enough, as much as I want one of these for my wall, the market is willing to bear these prices. How long will it be before this hardware becomes affordable?
When the OLED's come out!
;)
I want an LCD, but I won't get one until there's an affordable model that's appropriate for games.
My Journal - 1,337 fans and countin
I setup a mirror (posted as AC to avoid karma whoring, I have better things to do with my time). You can read the article
here, once it's slashdotted.
March 30, 2003
/. to see if any good answers come up. Who knows if it will get posted though, since none of my previous submissions have been.
:)
LCD price fixing?
What's with prices on LCD displays?
On one hand a laptop can be had with UXGA resolution display for $1000. Try buying that display alone and you'll find it's also around $1000. Then there's how much they're gouging for the same resolution in an LCD television.
There are, of course, manufacturing yield issues with LCDs. The bigger you make them, the harder it becomes to make one free from defects. But look at the price differentials between OEM panels in laptops vs that of standalone monitors. The disparity is quite wide. Balancing (subsidizing) one market on the backs of another is not a new thing. But it seems a reach to use that as justification for the LCD montior/TV prices.
So what's going on here? Are the monitor manufacturers pulling a fast one here? Are they gouging consumers? And why are they priced so similarly across the board?
# | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0) | 03:47 PM
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Hope it's okay but I submitted this to
Posted by: BillSaysThis on March 30, 2003 07:04 PM
It's been posted! I'm a slashdot subscriber and I see that this story has been posted, it will be up probably within 20 minutes
Posted by: Zach on March 31, 2003 08:35 PM
Brace yourself, here it comes. Its on slashdot, or will be in a few minutes. Hope you've paid you bandwidth bill!
Actually, as I am going to say on slashdot, a lot of it has to do with supply vs demand. There are a LOT of laptops sold, but comparitvily, not many standalone LCD screens. It does require some more work to make a LCD screen accept VGA or RCA input.
Posted by: Zaffle on March 31, 2003 08:39 PM
How long will it be before this hardware becomes affordable?
The real question is, how much longer until my eBay scam pays off and I can afford one no matter what the price.
Even if I do have to move suddenly to Vermont.
I always wondered why these were so expensive..
Ten minutes after you make a purchase.
The Political Programmer
We need an open laptop form factor...
Three requirements:
- Chassis spec
- DC power supply spec
- LCD spec
It sparked in my mind when I broke the LCD on my thinkpad... IBM wanted $900 to fix it but I was able to disassemble one of their desktop models and get the component that I required for less than $300...
Sheesh...
But can you imagine an open laptop? Neon and clear shit for days... Case modding to the extreme!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Perhaps the cheapest laptop LCD screens are being sold at a loss, and the desktop ones are sold at a high profit?
Just a random guess.
Buy a laptop and take off the base. ta-dah, problem solved!. You have a flat-panel monitor AND a small headless server.
:)
Of course, you do then need to make the interface to connect the flat panel to something useful, but thats where the fun comes into it
if (response time != GARBAGE)
{
purchase.LCD
}
Sure, there are some legitimate questions here, but if you and others take their business elsewhere, prices will eventually fall.
A lot of it has to do with the old story of supply and demand. There is a very large call for LCDs for laptops, and the laptop manufacturers get them at almost cost, then intergrate them into the laptops.
However, there isn't much (comparitivly) demand for LCD computer screens, or even worse, TV screens.
When I was in singapore a few years ago, RCA input LCD screens weren't that bad a price, but the problem is that price hasn't drop that much.
It does take some more work to make a LCD screen take VGA or RCA inputs, so there is the cost the LCD is brought at (a lot more than the laptop manufacturers buy them at), and then the intergration of circuits to accept VGA or RCA input.
I use to have a funny sig, but slash cut it off, and I forgot what the punchline was.
What's with prices on LCD displays? On one hand a laptop can be had with UXGA resolution display for $1000. Try buying that display alone and you'll find it's also around $1000.
Solution: Buy a laptop, nail it to the wall, and watch TV!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Consider how many LCD's that IBM buys for their ThinkPads, compared to mom and pop.
When you think about it like that, we should consider ourselves lucky that our LCD's dont cost more than they already do.
Supply and demand. Get used to it.
:)
But seriously, prices are dropping. I just got a Viewsonic VX900 19 inch LCD monitor for $723 (including taxes) at BestBuys. Of course, I took advantage of their 10% off deal + $100 rebate.
eTrade SUCKS
It's not really price-fixing proper, just basic economics.
Username taken, please choose another one.
I ran into this same question when I was made responsible for parts ordering for my company. I was told at the time by the manufacturer rep (Toshiba, I think) that some sort of tariff was responsible. LCD's connected to computers were not charged the tariff, LCD's separate were charged. This was the reason given to us why LCD's ordered for broken laptops costs as much as a new one.
This was 1995, and the answer comes from a sales guy, so YMMV.
-G "We love to buy books, because we are buying the belief we have time to read them" - Warren Zevon
Not that I know if it'd make much of a difference to the price, but I can't recall ever having seen a standalone 12" LCD monitor in the shops. And I'm one of those wierd people who'd actually prefer one over a 15".
* phrase coined to avoid unnecessary arguments about the definition of "resolution".
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
as long as people will buy CRT's and have the space for them, they will never become mainstream. So they will remain something for corporate offices and people with too much money. (the latter of which is declining rapidly)
The subject is probably the answer. If people are willing to pay the current prices for the convenience of a flat LCD monitor to recoup deskspace then the price may very well be fair. I'm considering the same to replace my son's 17" Trinitron on his desk because it's huge and takes up too much room to give him space to work. The flat screen LCD would work perfectly. I suppose you could say "Price fixing" with the the apparent disparity between the LCD monitor and the total cost of a laptop -- but it's really comparing apples to oranges. Each have separate markets.
-- Rick
Many of the laptop makers either own their own monitor factories (Like Sony) or get incredible volume discounts doing their own importing (say, Dell).
Items that don't sell well in "retail" channels get a much higher mark-up to make up for the small volume. The same item in lots of 1000 or more over and over again will sell dirt cheap. Ever noticed the price per 1000 of your favorite cpu when it comes out?
It's a bit of a catch-22. When customers buy more via retail channels, the prices will come down. When the prices come down, customers will buy more...
Eventually the retailers will get there trying to compete with each other, but with "most" (me and you not among them) customers are perfectly happy with what's out there now, there isn't enough demand for a big retailer to start stocking larger quantities and begin the price death spiral we've grown to know and love about computer parts.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
My guess is they will go up %20 over 5 years. Interestingly that is what wall street expects most companies to perform for an average rating.
http://saveie6.com/
Here's another question- why don't we see any of the laptop screens in desktop versions? Among other things, it would make the screens cheaper for both uses.
For example, I'd love a 15"(which is equal to my 17" CRT) which supported 1280x1024. My CRT does that easily- but to get 1280x1024 in an LCD monitor, I have to slap down some serious cash and get a much larger 17"(equal to a 19" CRT- and 19" cRTs can easily do 1600x1200.) I mean, hell, you can easily get laptops with 15" 1600x1200 screens. They've been around For at least a year.
Why is it that the ONLY thing you can get standalone is a 15" 1024x768, or a 17" 1280x1024?
Please help metamoderate.
The prices of LCDs has been steadily getter lower over the past few years. Even if prices seem a little inflated, it's not comparable to something like music CD prices, which have actually gone UP over the years. LCDs are becoming more attainable for the masses at this point, I don't see too much to complain about in this market. Wait for OLEDs and other (competiing) flat-screen technologies to become widely available, and we'll see what happens to LCD prices. Regarding the UXGA available for $1000 remark, it would seem the desktop market is devoid of models that offer greater than 1280x1024 resolution, even on large 19" LCD models - this makes laptop displays more attractive, which is unusual when comparing the possibilities on desktops vs. laptops.
I might be willing to hand over the big bucks for one of the bigger flat-panel displays, but to do so I would have to accept a number of dead pixels in the bargain. For instance, there's the Samsung 240T which goes for about $3,000, regardless of whether the thing has dead pixels or not.
Why aren't the 240T's with, say, eight dead pixels sold at a different price? I understand the issues with the manufacturing of these displays, that if they were to reject all but those without dead pixels the cost would be prohibitively expensive, but why can't they just count the number of dead pixels and set a price accordingly.
Monitors are important; I end up looking at the thing most of the day for work and for play, I am willing to pay a premium for a very fine display. But to risk getting one with a bunch of dead pixels right in the middle of the screen, I mean, that would just suck really, really bad.
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
Like it says in the original article, everyone would like to have one of these sleek and "sexy" displays, which means there is a HUGE demand for them. Thus, the companies producing them want to see how long they can keep the prices up while emptying their inventories. After all, they need to cover all of their R&D costs, plus rake in the profits while they still can.
Which is why I am also convinced that there is some price fixing going on in the market right now
The leading manufactures of LCD's must have hired all of the old Nintendo exec's thatgot fired for price fixing
Just my $0.02
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
How long has it been since you examined prices on LCD displays?? A 15" Samsung SyncMaster 152B can be had for roughly $450US, and I doubt your $1000 notebook has a screen this good. (And I see various 17" models price at $600)
I may be wrong but I was always under the impression that the LCD screens used in laptops were entirely different from the LCD screens used for monitors or TVs. I know, for example that my laptop screen does not do too well when viewed from an angle - not something I would tolerate from a monitor.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Ever notice how they never seem to dip much below $2k?
I've been researching info regarding using laptop LCDs with a PC, because I want to build a portable PC. One thing I discovered is that the connector on your monitor is essentially analog, whereas the signal in the video card is digital. A laptop can drive the digitial display directly with a digital signal, using LVDS (Low Voltage Differential Signaling) or a similar proprietary standard. Stand-alone LCD monitors take an anlog signal from your PC and convert it to digital. Not only do you have the cost of D/A and A/D conversion, you also have power consumption associated with this.
The prices on the "controllers" that allow you to drive an LCD from a standard VGA connector are around $200 as separate items, mostly because they are low demand specialty items. Such controllers are integrated into stand-alone monitors, and economies of scale keep them from adding too much to the bottom line.
So, while there is some justification for the increased cost of stand-alone displays, I tend to agree that the controller, case, and associated parts don't explain the entire difference.
I'm less bothered by the prices, and more bothered by the fact that low-power technology is simply not available. For that matter, the entire laptop industry is full of artificial controls. However, it's encouraging to note that you can at least get laptop form-factor hard drives. Given time, I think some of the other tight controls will break down too, and we will start to see "screwdriver shops" building laptops from commodity parts. I eagerly anticipate the day that happens, as much as every incumbent laptop maker dreads it.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The comparison in price really isn't a fair comparison. A $1000 laptop only has a 12 inch screen. An LCD TV needs to be larger than that. I wouldn't want to hang a 12 inch LCD screen on my wall to watch TV.
... that the people that produce and distribute LCDs are the same people that sell CRTs
As soon as the majority of CRTs that are already produced are sold, the prices on LCDs will drop
Just a couple more cents of mine
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
Indeed. The prices make no sense. LCD TVs very expensive because their so big, Automobile LCD TVs very expensive because their so small. Stoopid.
It just means I won't buy one. No biggie. Well, I won't buy two...
1. Take part out of computer.
2. Sell at high price.
3. ???
4. Profit!!
Like be hip man.
Seriously, now that LCD displays are becomming the norm and CRT's seem to be on the out, why do these things have to be square?
I wonder if we'll soon see LCD or similar displays start to conform to the other shapes we see in our world. I know I saw one in a car that had nothing but nice curves, except for the sharp angles of the LCD and it looked so out of place.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
Further, it's not an apples and apples comparison. The laptop vendors buy wholesale, in comparatively huge volumes, lots of different sizes all at once, and likely committing to purchase volumes over time. IMHO those combine to drive the price way below what the average LCD monitor guy is selling.
Come to think of it, something similar is going on with memory, processor and disk prices. Take your average laptop, price those components separately, and I'll be you find something that seems to be price gouging for all of them.
They actually have a valid point, *gasp*, I mean when I can get a laptop with an LCD near/cheaper than a LCD on its own, something is wrong. There is a demand for these displays, so manufacturers can't claim that that's the reason prices are high, so maybe price fixing could be in place.
I thought the same thing for quite a while, but then I stumbled on this at my local Walmart. For $400, I got an 18-inch LCD.
It has an analog VGA connector (a good thing for me; most of my PCs lack digital output), a 160-degree viewing angle (I didn't think that was even possible -- 180 would be viewing completely from the side), 1280x1024 native resolution, and does a great job resampling other resolutions. I can't prove it yet, but I am pretty sure it uses subpixel rendering when resizing lower resolutions.
So all the things I didn't like about LCDs a couple years ago -- limited viewing angle, bad resampling, digital-only connector, small size, and of course price -- are solved with this Walmart cheapo.
I'm sure it won't last all that long, but for the price, it's really nice, easy on the eyes, and much sharper than my last monitor (an aging Trinitron).
So, at one month old, mine has convinced me to never go back to a CRT.
Oh, and in games or full-screen video it rocks. You still only get 60 actual refreshes a second, but that's more than enough (and unlike a CRT the light is constant anyway). Fast motion can be a tiny bit blurry, but nothing like my crappy Compaq laptop... and in games, the blur actually looks better in my opinion -- more realistic (or I'm just goofy)...
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
It seems like bigger screens are a lot more expensive. I have an hypothesis on why this is. I'll throw it out and see what people think.
When screens are produced, there is a certain risk that a pixel is bad and that the screen must be discarded. If each pixel has an equal probability of being bad, then the probability that at least one pixel on the screen is bad grows exponentially with the size of the screen.
If the price of the screens being sold must cover the costs of all those being discarded that would indicate an exponential size/price relationship.
Tor
I've been trying to put together a little (6-8") VGA LCD screen for plugging into headless machines for testing.
I have found that the actual LCD screen can be relatively inexpensive, while the controller is much more expensive.
Admittedly, I am looking at the low volume of the production spectrum, but I suspect that is part of the pricing issue. Your LCD controller is integrated into your laptop - you still need one for your VGA LCD screen, but it is implimented in the screen body.
/dev/psychic: No medium found
I think the industry has an accepted defect rate of 50%. As quality of screens go up, error rate remains flat, 50%. If you want the LUXERY of LCD, pay the piper my friend.
It does not mean anything of the sort. It just means none of the makers has decided they want to make the prices drop significantly. Nothing says they have to price it with a low profit margin. If I want to charge $1000 for a $100 item, and people are willing to pay it, great. People are obviously still willing to pay the higher prices.
So how long have these devices been around? Laptops have been around for quite a while, remember GRID computers? Color displays almost 3/4 the of the same time. It should follow that LCD's would get bigger and cheaper over time, but no. What is keeping the prices artificially high? Price fixing is the ONLY reason. There are no others. Manufacturing problems? They are made by robots in clean rooms. What we should be seeing is 19 inch diagonal LCD screens at around $250.00 with high resolution. Perhaps you gamers expect too much, but most LCD's today play DVD's just fine with enough processing power behind them. There is no natural explanation for the high prices of any and all LCD technologies. None what so ever. All other technologies follow the trend. Start thinking about why. Mobile phones 20 years ago were hulking behemoths costing several thousands dollars and needing dedicated services to work. Twenty years later they are cheap and more powerful. Ditto for the PC and Laptop. Does anyone really believe the manufacturers of LCD planels when they say that they have to recoup imagined research and developmenet costs over such a long period of time? They are lying , and as they lie, newer technologies are making their products obsolete.
They're maximizing their profits. That's what companies in a market to. They'll charge an amount such that (sales * (price - cost)) is a maximum. They're greedy capitlists. It's what they do. They're not out for charity. If you don't like it, don't buy them. Wait for the market to be saturated.
What's that I hear? It's the redundant and troll mods. Oh, well, I've had good karma for too long.
Danish != nationality
Exactly what's the point here?
Laptop guts are cheap. LCD isn't. Ergo when you are buying a laptop you are buying the LCD screen first.
Not to mention most cheaper laptops have LCD screens so horrible no manufacturer would ever integrate them into a separate LCD monitor, lest they look like a laughing stock.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
In my experience looking for LCDs and CRTs, alwyas check out iiyama... hard as hell to find US retailers, but theyre always top quality and pretty cheap. Just bought a new 17" LCD, and it rocks, for games too... to avoid this being too much of a shameless plug, check out pricewatch to find an as4314. 500 bones. nuff said.
and no, i dont work for iiyama or anything like that... i just have 2 crts and a shiny new lcd from them that are awesome AND cheap.
According to Samsung, producer of some of the best LCDs currently available, the reason resolution on monitors has remained relatively constant and has not increased to what you see on laptops is due to demand. I believe it was in an interview at Anandtech where a rep stated that there is currently not a large enough demand for them to produced 15-19" LCDs at greater than 1280x1024.
I don't know if this effects the big-number LCD manufacturers, but it is a good reason. There is now more support for all-digital video cards, but it would be market suicide to become known as "that LCD manufacturer whose products aren't compatible with any of our old systems".
People seem to have higher standards for the viewing angle on a desktop compared to a laptop. That is, on my laptop, I experience major color distortion if I look at the screen from a just a few degrees too high or low, whereas the LCD monitors I've seen don't have this problem (at least to this severity).
Then again, my laptop is a few years old, and it's possible that disparity is much smaller now. Does anybody have a laptop and an LCD monitor roughly the same age that can confirm this?
I seem to remember there being different tariffs on LCDs depending on whether they were built into computers or not..
... when the people building and selling these devices realize that they can make more money overall by selling more at a lower margin than they can make by selling fewer at a higher margin.
If the monitor costs $300 to manufacture, and the maker sells 1000 at $500 each, he earns $200,000. If he sells 10000 at $359 each, he will earn at least $590,000. I say at least, because at some point he is going to encounter a situation where the next one he sells costs less than $300, perhaps because he had to discard one fewer unit per hundred units, or because the volume of plastic he bought to make the cases cost less at the new volume.
The question becomes is there sufficient demand for 10000 units rather than 1000 units.
Of course that's my opinion. Support or maintain your own as you see fit.
-Rusty
You never know...
I took an international business class at RIT and I distinctly remember my professor say that there is a tarrif on lcd screens for the US market. Apparantly US lcd manufactures were loosing sales to Japanese and other foreign markets because they could produce them much cheaper. Has anyone else heard of such a thing?
Okay, so a couple of things. If you buy a laptop, chances are the largest screen you will get will be 15", and the computer will cost ~$2000. That same 15" LCD screen can be bought for anywhere from $260-$400. If you are willing to spend $1000 on an LCD monitor then you can easily get a 19" display. If you buy a laptop for $1000 you will probably only get a 13" display, at best.
TV's are another issue. People aren't willing to spend that kind of money for a small TV. If you are willing to spend $700 you can get a 15" LCD TV. That probably has a lot to deal with supply and demand and the addition of better than laptop speakers combined with them.
Just to make sure we are on the same page, the big displays which cost multiple thousands of dollars are Plasma screens, which is a different technology. Currently LCD's have a limitation of ~22", after which there is a significant degradation to the display (usually).
Although there probably is some price fixing, it isn't as noticable as you seem to think it is.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Prices are being somewhat fixed as the LCD industry is "getting their commodity while they can" much as the memory industry did years ago. The memory industry has learned that volume is the better equation, thus, the low memory prices. OLEDs will change this because they are much cheaper to produce, much brighter and much thinner. Kodak already has OLEDs with Palm soon to follow in a new color Zire from ramblings on the net as well as Apple computer for a new device yet to be announced.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Notebook screens differ from desktop LCD's in that,
* Their viewing angle is usually a lot worse
* Their contrast ratio and brightness is usually worse
* They're smaller by at least an inch or two
* Their response times are generally a lot slower
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
In a capitalist system, the value of an item is equal to what someone is willing to pay for it. As long as there are people paying X thousand dollars for a plasma TV, the retailer and manufacturer have no incentive to reduce the price.
I'm casting my vote by not paying that high of a price. Just wait a little... It'll come down.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
I've been wondering about this for over a year, ever since I got a ThinkPad A22p, which has a GORGEOUS 15" LCD that runs native at 1600x1200.
I have a 19" CRT at home and a 21" at work, and this LCD beats both of them for quality, so i looked around to try and buy one. It literally did not exist -- you can but 19" LCDs with 1280x1024 (I suppose some people enjoy large pixels) but trying to buy one of these beautiful small LCDs was impossible. IBM doesn't sell them, nobody sells them.
I'm totally baffled by this. We would love to buy these LCDs for our desktops if we could get them for $1,000+ but as it is we keep these huge 21" 75 pound monitors on peoples desks, and most of those are run at 1280x1024 to stay readable.
I'm actually thinking about buying a cheap IBM and ripping it apart if I can get the screen cabling to go to the digital out on a GeForce card.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
with my 18" LCD for my parents at some 450 dollars. Not much more than an equivalent CRT a few years back.
the desktop market has tons of UXGA and WUXGA (1920x1200) screens. I can think of three or four off the top of my head.
I think the thing is that the demand isn't so high - because not everybody wants the huge space and people with bad eyes (read "anybody remotely aged") would rather sit at 1280x1024.
I think "getting a laptop with UXGA for under 1000 is a giant lie, though. find one and I will buy it. I don't think it's possible without refurb or otherwise.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I think the point is, that maybe we shouldn't be paying that kind of inflated price.
I have a perminant back injury because I can't afford to get an LCD. I had to use a huge tube based trinitron to get the clarity I needed for graphics dev.
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
It'd be maybe $1K for a used one & they're actually made for that purpose.
My $.02
Prices are set by demand. If a manufacturer/seller can sell LCDs for $1000, they will. And if they can sell them for more as TVs, they will. If they're forced to sell them for less when combined with a laptop, they will.
I'm always shocked when I hear complaints like this. Doesn't any school teach even basic economics anymore?! Why are such simple concepts so confusing for so many people?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
So, uh, don't pay it? And get someone else to move your monitor? If demand goes down, price will likely drop.
The prices of flat panel LCDS, and HDTV's are fscking ridiculous! When they get to $300 let me know......
There are a few things that you're not considering. They are the key differences between a laptop LCD screen and a desktop LCD.
Desktop LCDs are made to have a very high brightness and high contrast ratio. Laptop LCDs are made for low power consumption, and thus don't need as powerful lighting units.
Desktop LCDs are built to have a very wide viewing angle. This uses some fancy technology and manufacturing processes that are pretty expensive to accomplish this task. Laptop LCDs are made on purpose to have a narrow viewing angle so the guy next to you on the airplan can't see your screen. A narrow viewing angle makes the LCD's requirements much cheaper to achieve.
heh hold on, over here across the ocean things seem to be a lot cheaper. The cheapest 15" LCD's are going at around $180. Thats a standalone retail. heh its not great but it nor is a cheap crt either. If you want the Samsung 152 or the like the average retail is around $350. So yeah, i think the pricing might be off in the states and maybe elsewhere and the supply and demand thing enters the equation. But if its any trend, over here in Taiwan, LCD prices have been falling monthly for 2 years! TV's on the other hand are still insanely expensive So maybe you're just being overcharged, maybe the demand is still too low or maybe your just paying tomahawk production costs to rumsfeld and friends
Use DVI; it's the standard digital interface between an LCD and the computer. All Apple's LCDs come DVI-only, and I'm sure other LCDs do as well.
I think it is a question of perceived value. Look at portable MP3 players. The Nomad 40GBs are hundreds more than 10GBs. The only difference is the drive which is certainly less than $100 difference. How do the justify ~$300 price differences? They don't. Customers who don't know better think it's worth it. Me? , a new notebook drive, a little surgery and I saved myself hundreds of bucks. In general, they'll charge as much as the market will bear. I suspect competition will eventually drive it down to a more reasonable price soon enough.
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
All I can see is that LCD producers are afraid of the price war that we have seen sometime ago among the SDRAM producers. I remember to read about the fear of some producers get out of buissines due to the small profit ranges.
What could be better? A price war? Or avoiding producers going out of bussiness?
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
We all take for granted that every year prices on our favorite tech toys will drop. The real question is, how low can this stuff really go? Do you REALLY expect that LCD pricing should drop year after year? I think it's entirely possible that in a lot of technology product areas we have pretty much hit rock-bottom as far as pricing goes. I mean come on, they can't make the stuff for free regardless of how long they have been producing something.
"Sadly enough, as much as I want one of these for my wall, the market is willing to bear these prices. How long will it be before this hardware becomes affordable?"
It is such a frivilous expenditure and the price is coming down fast. I'm inclinded to think if you can covet it, you can afford it. However, it is a luxury in most applications, so what's the biggie?
I just bought a 15" viewsonic for well under $450 + taxes (Canadian dollars), and if I went for the 15" neovo, I would have paid just under $400 AFTER TAX. 17" are dropping too. if you can't get one for under a grand, you're not sleeping with the right people.
$1000 for a 15" lcd? where are you shopping? I'm not sure your numbers add up - most people can get a 15" lcd for around 300. Of course the price seems to go up exponentially with size.
I do not know if this law is still in play, but in 1997 there was a tax on this stuff.
If an LCD was included in a device, ie, a laptop, then the tax did not apply. However, if the LCD was on its own, ie: laptop spare part, or TV type display, then there was a large import tax on these things in the US.
The tax was put in place to protect the non existant US LCD panel industry. I don't know if it ever got repealed.
I have a difficult time believing there is fixing going on. My skepticism comes from the fact that, as profits rise, the urge to under-cut the competition increases. Higher profits also attract investment and new competition.
Both the urge to under-cut others and the threat of new competitors helps keep prices in check.
If prices seem high, maybe its because most of us aren't in the LCD business. Its easy to complain and critisize when you're on the outside.
Quite possibly the interface is not standard like DVI. I'm not sure if the situation has improved, but at least I have an ancient 486 laptop with a great little screen that's completely useless, because of the nonstandard inferface.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
For this 18" panel retail is $599, the university's price is $480, and cost is in the neighborhood of $375. About a 60% retail markup.
In comparison, a 19" CRT retails for $249, discounted is $211, and cost is around $205. About a 20% markup.
I don't expect the huge markup to end anytime soon, everyone is picking them up like hotcakes regardless.
A lot of people are talking about U.S. tariffs possibly being the reason desktop and TV LCDs are more expensive that notebook LCDs. I don't know if they actually are more expensive or not, as I'm writing this on a Cornea Systems MP704B 17" LCD I got from Amazon for about $350 that suits me just fine (450:1 contrast ratio). I'm no lawyer or anything, but it seems to me that information from the U.S. Harmonized Tariff Schedule might help in sorting this out.
d f
Heading 8528.12 (reception apparatus for television, whether or not incorporating radiobroadcast receivers or sound or video recording or reproducing apparatus) states that, from most countries, there is no tariff on screens smaller than 13.5in (34.29cm), and on larger screens only a 3.9% (recording) or 5% (non-recording) tariff. A lot of countries are also excluded from these tariffs, but I'm not sure where to dig up the codes.
Check it out for yourselves:
http://dataweb.usitc.gov/SCRIPTS/tariff/0301c85.p
.....when you buy an LCD monitor, the price is artificially low. When you by products that aren't in that league, you come closer to the actual costs involved.
We all know that an automobile, in parts, is worth more than what you pay for a complete car off the lot. Try pricing the entire car, part by part, over the part's dept. counter, and then go to 3rd party suppliers, and watch how prices fluctuate. It is easy to imagine fixing if you don't understand how the market works.
Nothing's fixed, beyond the normal markets forces (supply/demand) causing prices to level for certain products, etc.
This is the same thing I picked up about 2 weeks ago, and has since then been great. Bright, good viewing angle.
;)
... hmmm, I also don't expect it to last that long, there's something too good to be true here ;)
One problem, perhaps fixed in the new Red Hat, is that on this machine (Red Hat 8.0 on a shuttle all-in-one shoebox) I can't get the [OS + video card + monitor, not sure which of them are really at fault] system to run at the claimed native resolution of 1280x1024. However, I am surprised at how little I mind 1024x768 and some mouse-panning
$400 for this
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I believe the interface is almost always an LVDS thing, very similar to that used in one of the greatest desktop LCDs of all time, the SGI 1600W. The problem is that each different panel has a different set of parameters that you need to set/use with an LVDS controller and
1) the parameteres ain't easy to find publically documented
2) LVDS controllers for regular PCs (like an Nvidia card with an LVDS interface) are few, far between and not very cheap
I would desperately like to be proven wrong on this - I'd especially like to find a dvi2lvds box for a reasonable price that I could use with any of the thousand or so bare laptop LCD screens that are offered on ebay every day...
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
If I remember right, Sony and other manufacturers of CD based music just lost a lawsuit for falsely inflating the prices of CDs. Maybe there is something similar going on with the flatscreen business. As long as people keep buying at these high prices, they will continue to have high prices.
Another thing to think about, though, is the vast quantities that laptop manufacturers purchase in order to keep the prices down. It's kinda like Windows. A bundled version probably cost 2/3 what a shelf copy costs (or less, I'm not sure).
There is now more support for all-digital video cards, but it would be market suicide to become known as "that LCD manufacturer whose products aren't compatible with any of our old systems".
Perhaps that is true, but why can't they be sold separately? Make it a $150 add on feature. I would gladly get a digital out video card and skip the convertor, if that was an option. I bet many people would as well.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
(posted as AC to avoid karma whoring, I have better things to do with my time).
Although only by a minute amount, the time you spent posting this AC compared the time you would have spent posting this under your own name was greater.
What the fact that I took time to point this out says about me is an excersize left up to the reader.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
First, I would like to see the $1000 laptop. Does it have any hardware worth mentioning other than the display. From what I can see, a $1000 laptop has at best a 15" LCD, and a comparable LCD can be had for less than $400 retail. With markups, one would assume that the laptop LCD costs no more than $100. If one wants a 17" LCD, which one could purchase as a standalone unit for much less than $1000, the laptop with such as LCD would run at least $2000.
Second, retail markups are large and buying something as a unit will usually be cheaper than retail piecemeal of equivalent quality. Look at the iPod. As another example, many years ago I got a very good closeout deal on a bicycle frame. I found excellent Italian parts at equally good prices, and built a functional bicycle. Even with the good deals, it still cost my much more to build the bicycle than it would have to buy a prebuilt bicycle.
Third, and I have mentioned this before, the cost of a product is not an exact number, and the appropriate sale price less so. If it were, we would not have so many failed businesses. The are many costs that must be distributed among product lines, and it seldom makes sense to distribute these costs evenly. The LCD, especially the larger sizes, is new product and therefore is more likely to disproportionately support certain costs. This probably accounts for the 30-50% price difference between CRT and LCD monitors.
Let me just add that LCDs do not seem very expensive to me. True, the cost of a LCD television is about three times the cost of an tube television, but LCD televisions are kind of useless outside of the cool factor.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Well, sure there is markup with monitors but you have to realize there are probably way more displays made for laptop sizes (12-15in) then there are for desktops (15-21+). If they make less of the larger displays and they cost more per display because investment in manufacturing. So of course they are going to cost more because there aren't as many made. Finally, on the tv displays, the flat panel displays are plasma which is a phosphorous based display. These aren't the same as the tfts in pc monitors so it is comparing apples and oranges.
I've been looking for LCD controllers as well. Can you post some links to companies to procure them from?
I just put my crt in the corner and setup some mirrors. Instant flat screen :)
Perhaps they are more expensive because they have some buzzwordy acronym associated with their resolution?
[For those that don't live in the Intel universe, a Google search seems to indicate that UXGA is 1600x1200.]
You are all missing the point. This is not about finding a LCD that is the same size as your laptop screen, it's about finding one that has the same size and resolution. The dell inspirion i am writing this on is a 15 inch (viewable) lcd running with a native res. of 1600x1200. A quick scan of compusa.com revealed no lcd screens with those specs.
The closest i found was a 19 inch CTX lcd that runs at 1600x1200 but costs 1059.
The new inspirion 8500 comes with a 15.4 (widescreen) lcd that runs with a native res. of 1920x1200.
At compusa i would have to spend 2000 dollars to get a lcd with the same res.
BUNNY OF DEATH!
Disclaimer: Information is provided as is and provider is not reponcible if the reader falls below the necessary level of intelligence to acomplish this task without causing some sort of tragedy. If you are suseptable to doing things that make others seriously doubt the presence of your intellect, please refrain from attempting any of the instructions listed below.
This is if you are willing to go ghetto with this idea.
1. Buy a decent lcd panel (those things for overhead projectors). They go used for anywhere from $20 to $200 depending on the quality and how much of the equipment comes with it. Make sure you get one with at least 640x480 resolution and can show at lease 65535 different shades and colors. Go ahead and get one that has both rca/composite and HD15 SVGA inputs (and maybe svideo). Be careful! Don't end up getting one of the old monochrome EGA dinosaurs.
2. Get a used overhead projector. Make sure it is bright(you want at least 2500 lumens, 3000+ preferably) and that the bulbs won't break the bank(the last one I set up for some friends ended up costing them about $12 for a bulb that lasted about 60 hours or about 2 weeks). This will give you about the equivilant of a 500-800 lumen video projector.
3. If you have a room with white walls that doesn't get alot of sunlight, you can use it without a screen. Keep in mind the white walls make it so the light from the projector bounces off all the walls and will interfere with your image quality. Preferably, you want a room with dark walls, no direct sunlight, and a pull down projection screen. A 60 watt soft white lightbulb should light the room up enough to see without drowning out the image.
Note:
*Caution: Trying to modify or build your own projector or blocking its means of cooling can result in a fire hazard. Do at your own risk.*
you can try and rig the assembly into something more "presentable." But, keep in mind that the bulbs are running about 350+ watts and will melt or burn just about anything non-reflective near them. These things need good airflow, so forced air cooling is a necessity. For a 350watt halogen bulb based projector, 2 standard 12v 90mm bb case fans work ok as long as they direct airflow directly over the bulb and out of the case.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
But if it's selling, Wal-Mart will get more.
I think that lcd's would get cheaper if they could improve the technology enough to get good resolutions at high refresh rates. 800*600 at 60hz is worthless to me. I can't work on something that makes my eyes feel like they are bleeding. From a gaming standpoint, they will definitely have to improve things if they want lcds to take off. We have lcd's on some of the computers in our call center and we avoid them in favor of the larger, easier on the eyes crts.
Hi,
I have to remain anonymous or my boss will kill me.
I regularly order 50K+ units of TFT montiors, LCD TV, etc.
The market price fluctuates for a number of reasons:
1. Demand - ordering patterns of standalone monitors change season by season. For example, a glut of orders after Chinese New Year caused a worldwide shortage in March, with higher resultant prices
2. Raw material availability - motherglass is only produced by 2 manufacturers worldwide. If they squeeze production or undersupply, then LCD prices rise.
3. Shipping and insurance costs increase with war, pestilence and famine. March has been particularly bad this year.
4. The manufacturers (mainly in China and S. Korea) are opportunists who will use the above points to increase their margins. Despite factory audits, price pushing still goes on and some comapnies are known to collude on prices.
To be fair, when you take into account points 1 to 3, the manufacturers do have to offset fluctuations against average prices.
The difference between laptop prices and monitors is simply a matter of the size of production run and the power of the bulk laptop buyers.
Expect prices to rise as Bush proves just what a criminal he really is in the Middle East and beyond.
If Perle etc. move against North Korea, a lot of the world's production capacity is going to be severely affected.
As if that is the only problem with dropping bombs on innocent people!
They are selling a sampo/daiwoo plasma 42inch monitor for $2900! I was at the store today, and copared it to the sony/pioneer models that they had, and I couldn't tell any difference in quality. Although I am not sure what quality feed they had coming in, IE one might see a difference between them w/ a dvd etc.
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms,
If you think the prices on LCDs are that outragous, try buying a standard Serial to USB converter... I can't find one under $30... some places even sell them at $60. Then there's music CDs...
SIG: HUP
The makers of LCD displays are invoking price fixing tactics to screw over the consumer. We should declare a class action lawsuit. As a matter of fact, the government of the United States of America and all other governments of the world should immediately cease whatever they are doing and shift 100% of their attention to solving the LCD display price fixing problem, which is a worse threat to our children and grandchildren than the prospect of total destruction of the entire world by nucular bombs or space aliens or something.
Considering the hardware used in notebook LCDs is limited to 18-bit color (are their ANY true 24/32-bit LCDs in notebooks??) For that matter, are desktop LCDs also limited by their hardware in terms of "true" color depth?
Methinks this may be one reason for the price differential. I would imagine glass size is another factor, and performance cannot be ruled out. Any notebooks out there sporting sub-20ms response times??
I'm reviewing NEC's 30" LCD3000. With a 22ms response time and a native resolution of 1280x768, this thing is a pretty slick display. $4200 is a pretty nice lump of change...but I recall plasma's with that native rez selling for much more.
Where the hell was I going with this??
Como? Cuando? Que?
The title of the article is "LCD Price Fixing". Yet the question is implying nothing of the sort. (maybe the link did, but it's slashdotted now...)
The answer to why LCD monitors have high prices can be answered from a quote in the Cliff's comments: "the market is willing to bear these prices."
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
The best thing about LCD's is that the display is perfect with a DVI input. Perfect pixel alignment, and no analog artifacts. LCD + VGA is almost worse than CRT + VGA, since analog errors look a LOT worse on a digital display.
Alas, i do a lot of video testing, so I need a display that is analog resizable - a CRT. But that analog noise in VGA always worries me, since it's hard to prove what image errors are due to compression, and which are due to the cable. So, what I want is a DVI CRT! Something like a LaCie ElectronBlue 22".
Anyone making anything like that. I don't mind if it's significantly more expensive than a normal monitor.
My video compression blog
Who cares about LCD monitors! I want an invisible coat!
They're greedy capitlists.
The notion of "greed" is subjective.
So is "to exploit," for that matter.
It's why I don't accept Leftist dogma: it's based in those two subjective concepts.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
they intensity is analog on a certain level. but the overall screen must be digital; you can address each individual element; something you cannot do on a crt.
You can't scan one line at a time;
LCDS do not just update changes. That'd be cool, but it's not how the ywork.
More like permanent brain injury if that's your excuse.
If you have an LCD which doens't Auto Tune properly (Leaving weird zones of fuziness), Put up a dot on / dot off checkerboard pattern on the screen. (In linux, just run xinit. For Win95/98, click start shutdown. Unfortunately, your on your own for WinXP). You should now clearly see the out of focus areas. If the fuziness isn't even, (there are vertical bars of fuziness), navigate the LCD menus to find an option that lets you shrink the horizontal size. You probably only have to reduce it by 1 or 2. At this point, the fuziness should either be gone, or be uniform across the screen. Once you have the fuziness uniform across the screen, find the fine tune option that will let you adjust the focus, or the sync, or whatever they call it, until the dot on / dot off pattern is clear and sharp.
Voila.
Zenith is an 80 year old American company in which a majority stake was purchased by Korean LG Electronics in 1995.
Ok, I worked at a computer store, so I've really been around a few hundred LCD's. I've seen dead pixels, stuck pixels, etc. of pretty much every variety. Probably about a dozen instances in the past year. I know half a dozen ppl with LCDs with pixel anomalies (my sister being one).
It happens. mfr's don't cover it, and a healthy LCD can develop bad pixels over time, even the fancy $3000 ones.
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
Samsung makes some great displays in varying sizes that combine video and PC inputs (some even have a TV tuner built in with a remote control). I have used a 170MP for a year now and it has worked flawlessly (17" LCD with built-in TV tuner and remote control). These units are FAR less money than the equivalent LCD TV: just doing a quick search at pricewatch.com brought up the the 170MP for $450 shipped (CompuHQ.com), and you can use it as a PC monitor!.
Every instance of a good being sold above its cost (or, more precisely, its marginal cost) is *not* an example of price fixing. In general, such mark-ups occur when supply is inadequate to cover existing demand. In the textbook models, it is always assumed that there are competitors with no real capacity constraints who are willing to undercut the imcumbent firms when prices are higher than cost.
... this is not price-fixing; it's just the firms earning a short-run rent until more capacity is added.
But in real life, especially in electronics markets, firms can face binding capacity constraints. A mark-up in the LCD market is an example of price-fixing only if the existing firms are creating an artificial shortage: i.e. they are explicitly or tacitly colluding to keep supply artificially low. The classic example of such efforts is OPEC and oil. However, if all firms are providing their capacity *and* the price at which quantity demanded equals quantity supplied is greater than cost
"Finally, televisions are a different beast. You need hardware to handle scan-conversions, TV reception, composite/S-video conversions, etc."
Yes, that's additional hardware, but not hundreds of dollars worth. You can buy a PCI TV tuner card for under $60. For $100 Viewsonic makes a standalone TV tuner with remote that'll turn any VGA monitor, LCD or CRT, into a very usable TV set. It's a good way to get around the high prices of LCD TV's ($800 for a 15 inch at Circuit City).
For most companies, testing and finding out on a per monitor basis would fracture the pricing scheme too much. Many companies already have very complicated replacement policies, such as, 5 stuck red pixels, or 3 green pixels, since green is more stimulating to human vision. You have to keep in mind that pixels can be completely dead (black), or fail to show a particular RGB color, or fail to turn off a particular color. Companies make all sorts of distinctions because a particular color stuck on or off will not interfere with displaying certain colors. Also, some companies will replace a screen with less pixels bad if they are in the middle of the display, and some have policies regarding the closeness of the pixels to each other, as in two bad pixels in the area of a quarter will get you a replacement. Any company would rather make a complicated return policy than a complicated pricing scheme.
But one company is sorta doing what you suggest: Formac has their Oxygen line of displays, which are very attractively priced LCD's. A 17.1" for $500, and a 20.1" for $999. These things have amazing contrast ratio's super bright elements, fast refresh, and outstanding viewing angles. Their priced about 40% lower than their Platinum counterparts even though they perform identically. Their difference is their dead pixel policy is more lenient. Oxygen's have a 1 yr warranty, and a 7 dead pixel policy. Platinum's have a 3 year warranty and 2 dead pixel policy.
So its kinda cool if you don't mind a few bad dots here and there.
This is where I get my recommended daily allowance of "Foot in Mouth."
the market will bare the price, not bear the price!!!
...is $299 for a 17" model (with 1280x1024 pixels!) from a Dell refurbed reseller called ElectricDeal.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Pricegrabber.com search for "uxga lcd" comes up with a Planar 19" UXGA panel for... $779. $795 with shipping. (Admittedly, I'm not happy with a prominent stuck-green pixel in my current Planar 19", but other than that...)
Alternately, from March 29th, Techbargains.com reported "Expires Sunday Midnight. Monitors Direct has the Hitachi CML175 ultra slim 17-inch LCD for a low price of only $499 with free shipping using promo code: 175for499 and code: Sunrise".
Now, I ask you, WTF are you going to find a notebook with a 19" screen? A notebook with a max 25ms response screen? A notebook with a screen that has an independent power supply and chassis? Heck, I'd settle for a UXGA notebook for $1000! Pricegrabber.com clocks the lowest price for a "uxga notebook" at $1500.
So besides the obvious facts of capitalism (buy in bulk, it's cheaper -- if you order 2000 flat panels, they'll probably cut you a better deal), this guy has his facts laughably wrong.
Ask Slashdot -- because "there are no stupid questions, just stupid people." (Mr. Garrison, South Park)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...you'll notice that a vast majority of that $1000.00 price tag on the laptop IS the LCD.
screw you, I'm just one of the aparent few who dislike paying 1000 bucks for a 100 dollar monitor. This is the reason america is so f'ed up financially. get your head out of your ass and stop backing them up.
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
what does the d in lcd stand for? yeah, I thought so.
Give that they are owned by a Korean company and the fact that they do most of their production is done in south east Asia i don't consider them to be an American company. Hell, the likes of Motorola are bitching about Korean conglomerates being subsided by the Korean government and that includes Zenith's parent company.
-----
One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
I was just shopping this week for a third LCD screen. I already have a 17" Apple and a 15" NEC.
I found a Mag 14" for $150 after rebate at Best Buy!
Also at Best Buy: A off-name 17" LCD for $350. I paid close to $900 for my 17" LCD only a year ago. You can now pick up a 17" Samsung for $400!
Prices are definitely falling.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
I believe it was in an interview at Anandtech where a rep stated that there is currently not a large enough demand for them to produced 15-19" LCDs at greater than 1280x1024.
Haha. And there is a demand for 14 inch 1600x1200 laptop displays? The manufacturers are discorving that LCDs are a big cash cow: They can make cheap low rez screens and charge big bucks for them. This will go on for a while until OLEDs come out, or some other market factor that will drive down prices.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
My laptop took a fall and the screen cracked. It did not completely break as I can see most of it (there are some black splots). Compaq will not fix the screen for less than $999.95. Seems strange cuz the screen was lower end, and you can buy 17 inch LCDs for $250 after shipping charges on the Internet.
Unfortunately, Compaq will not even sell the part for me to fix. So I'm pretty much screwed. I figure I will buy a $250 LCD (standalone not mount-on-laptop), and just connect my *new desktop* to it. I can take the laptop around if I need to but the screen looks like shit.
What I'd say the solution would be would involve:
(1) program USB driver for Linux, and small conversion card
(2) design 2 new cases: one for a laptop motherboard backplane, one for LCD display
(3) Buy laptops, split them into LCD / display, and rackmount the laptops into networked servers, kindof like blade servers. Sell LCD displays at a profit.
The only problem is, by the time you get the R&D done, will the situation still be around? For a company that builds cheap hardware, possibly. For a company like Gateway, definitely.
Now, one might think that a company like Gateway won't shoot someone else's cows -- but that does happen if a takeover attempt occurs. I remember a wonderful story about 2 train companies from Texas into Chicago. The big one was trying to undercut the little one even at a loss to put them out of business, but the little one always set their prices slightly cheaper. Turns out that the little one was at the same time buying up cattle, and shipping them north on their big friend's railway system.
So just wait around, and see what happens. It could be amusing. Or go get an axe, and start splitting up laptops immediately!
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
It is not just the manufacturers and wholesalers who are keeping the price up. Retailers might be partially to blame. I suspect that retailers have different margins requirements at different points in the life cycle of a product. They have a high margin when the product is new. They are willing to dump at or near cost when the product is out of vogue, and will jack up margins again when the product is rare. Considering weight and shipping costs involved with large CRTs, however, I would think the industry would be pushing the transition from CRT to LCD faster. The smaller lighter flat screens save all sorts of costs. I would especially expect to see the online retailers pushing flatscreen to save shipping cost.
LCDs are incredibly finicky. You can get a laptop for sub-$1000, but it probably has a 15" or less screen. You can get a 15" screen for less than $250, because they're easy to make. Keep in mind that screen area increases exponentially with respect to the inch number. Not to mention that LCDs don't have the greatest fault tolerance. I recall reading somewhere that half of the LCDs they make have to be recycled because of dead pixels etc. The more screen space you have the more dead pixels, thus the more broken screens must be thrown away, so it's gonna cost you more.
Don't go on slashdot screaming "PRICE FIXING" because that's really not the case. LCD prices have dropped SIGNIFICANTLY in recent years, to the point where a 19" screen is now somewhat affordable (around $700.) I know on a limited budget LCDs may seem expensive, but they're a lot cheaper now than they were 3 years ago (probably about half the price) and prices are still falling. OLEDs will come soon and that will cause even further price drops, because the OLED manufacturing process is less sensitive than the LCD process. In short, this article never should have made it to the front page, because it really doesn't line up with the truth.
Get your head out of your ass, and realize that they can sell it for whatever they want. It's theirs. I can sell my little broken pen here, half full of ink, for a million dollars if someone will pay that. There's no given right to low prices.
Oligopoly.
What voltage can this handle? Is it 240/120 or just 120? Thanks
do you have any idea how much bandwidth goes through the DVI cable for this thing? it pains me to think it.
and oh, anybody else who read thinks LCDs have crappy resolution, EAT. YOUR. WORDS.
well, too bad it's 7000 dollars, but damn that's a tricked out screen.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
"Ahhh, what an awful dream! Ones and zeroes everywhere... and I thought I saw a two!" -- Bender (Futurama)
"Relax, Bender. There's no such thing as two." -- Fry
;-)
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
I used to work for Escient Labs writing software for settop boxes (we used BeOS or linux depending on the box). I figured this information would apply since most HD TVs are flat LCDs.
While I worked there, I learned that HD televisions had to support 22 different HD specifications. In other words, when you bought an HD TV you were really buying 22 of them as the manufactor could not predict which formats you would need at the time of manufactoring.
This was the result of an FCC decision in the early 90s. The FCC then demanded that all broadcasts be sent in HD by 2004 (in major markets and 2006 for the remainder--I think). But the FCC decided not to make a decision on which HD format would be required and decided the industry could duke it out. It is this decision that has caused so many delays in seeing HD reach the market.
Naturally, this made the cost much higher than nessecary.
Recently the FCC and the industry have agreed on a HD format. In theory, the HD TVs should now start to drop in price as the TV only has to support one format. How long that takes to reach the market is hard to say.
I tried to research the net for some links regarding this. Unfortuately I'm running out of time. I would appreciate some replies w/ such links if you have 'em.
Err, my cheap Via EPIA-M motherboard has an LVDS connector right on the motherboard... This for 115 Euro, with CPU, etc included.
Cheers
David
How about reasonably cautious. High voltage makes a lot of sparks, but there's not all that much current in a monitor even when they're plugged in. I play with them plugged in all the time. Show us some statistics on people killed by monitor shocks -vs- auto accidents. I get hit by household current in the 15amp range all the time. It leaves you with a little buzz. Won't even burn the flesh. High voltage can leave burns, but low voltage can actually be much more hazardous to the heart and the nervous system.
Now that Pepsi and Coke bought up the smaller brands, they all taste like carbonated corn syrup. Even "New Coke" -- try mixing a Cuba Libre with New Coke and one with kosher Coke for a real contrast.
If LCD screens were dirt cheap, but only provided by two or three companies, that might be ok, but only as long as the quality doesn't deteriorate as happened in the soft drink business.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Little bobby wants to know: "What is the difference between price gouging and price fixing?"
Price fixing: all the stores in town get togather and have a meeting and decide that everyone will sell 15" LCD monitors fo $299. The consumer is screwed.
Price gouging: You break the screen in your laptop and the repair center says (after taking it appart), "what's on the hard drive." You say, "my only copy of last year's books." The repair clerk says, "That will be $1759, plus labor." The consumer is hog tied and gang raped.
The important thing: to remember - either way consumers get screwed.
-- $G
I work designing LCD controllers. This one is really easy to answer.
1. Size matters. The costs of an LCD 'glass' like a chip die rise rapidly with physical size. Not only do you get less from a given blank but your yield falls too.
2. UXGA stand-alone displays are expensive to control. The market demands a big display act like a CRT even if it isn't. This means you need to be able to do frame-rate conversion, which because UXGA panels are highly timing sensitive requires a fancy low-volume high-cost controller IC with an SDRAM frame buffer. High-speed AVI and DVI interfaces cost too.
3. Laptop displays ain't as good colourwise or luminance wise!
4. The base cost means low volume means even more cost...
In short, forget price gouging. A UXGA laptop display is simply much much cheaper to manufacture than a standalone UXGA panel.
I don't know about price gouging, I was at Best Buy (a large american electronics / crap retailer) the a few weeks ago. The standard for a 15" screen is near $350 with 17" for about $500.
I actually purchased a 17" Kogi (1280x1024) for about $390, but I'm waiting for the $75 rebate in the mail. They were even nice enough to let me test the monitor for obvious dead pixels before I took it out of the store.
Now I'd be really suprised if refreshes fast enough to play first person shooters, but it is fast enough for most non game tasks, including supporting my origional all-in-wonder using beta drivers on xp. (ha 350Mhz amd / 384MB)
You stupid shit, you aren't entitled to a goddamn THING. If you want a fucking LCD get off your ass and work for one. The reason America is so fucked up financially is because of stupid whiney bitches like you who think they deserve to have shiny toys without actually earning them. Assclown.
My iBook (Nov 2002 edition) has almost a 180 degree viewing angle. If it was much bigger I could watch the screen from behind the monitor. If I had X-ray vision.
iBooks qualify as cheap, the lowest end one is $999.
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I support spreading santorum
I'd love to see a laptop (preferrably a UXGA display..) with a VGA IN that would let you use the laptop display as a display. Bonus points for use of the pointing device and keyboard as well. More bonus points if the computer part can be run at the same time.
I'm reminded of those rackmount LCD/keybaords they want $1500 for -- usually only 800x600 resolution, too.
1. Almost all LCD manufacturers also manufacture CRTs. Dropping prices on LCDs would be cannibalizing their CRT market, which no one wants to do yet.
2. Until LCDs started hitting the shelves, CRTs would cost a fortune. Contrary to the rest of the computer industry, CRT prices were very inelastic. Then LCDs hit the scene and CRT prices started dropping. You can buy a 21" CRT now for far less than they cost 3 years ago, yet 5 years before that I don't remember their prices moving much at all.
3. LCDs cost now what CRTs of similar screen dimensions did about 3-4 years ago.
See any interesting relationships? Until either a newer sexier technology comes out, or until people become truly sick of CRTs, expect LCD prices to stay pretty much the same. ;)
Right, but what does it take to configure it to work with arbitrary panels?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
People here seem stuck on the fallacy of price having to do with cost.
;-).
There was a very enlightening article being commented on some site, which one was it... Oh, yeah this one
Here's a snippet:
"Monroe tells a pricing story that shows how even the simplest situation can confound accepted wisdom about prices. "A company is making two versions of the same product," says Monroe. "One has a little more gold and foil on it, but they're essentially the same. One is $14.95; the other is $18.95." Not surprisingly, the $14.95 item is selling better. It's also the lower-profit product.
"Then a competitor comes in with a third product. Again, it's essentially the same thing, but a fancier version. And it's much higher priced: $34.95."
For our original company, asks Monroe, "what becomes the best-seller? Why, the $18.95 version, of course."""
The gist is, price has nothing to do with cost (other, of course, that you don't want to lose money in the long run). Pricing is whatever will maximize your profit, either by selling more at a lower price, less at a higher price, charging different prices for different customers, selling at a loss now to acquire customers who will pay more later (DVDs for a penny each anyone?), or whatever you can get away with.
IMHO, LCD prices are high because people are buying. I still stick with my 19" CRT. Although I'd like to reclaim the desk space, energy savings, etc., I'm not gonna shell out big bucks for overpriced, lower refresh rate, lower resolution LCDs. Moreover, while other people do, the prices won't come down that much.
/* TAANSTAFL */
Are you referring to the Austin or Rover Metro?
:)
:)
:p
I have seen many British Leyland A-Series blocks in my time but have yet to see one that ran with a decent fuel economy!
BTW, the Range-Rover 3.5 (carb) alternator *will* fit!
It would still be worth building your ultra-modded, 'neon-in-every-crevice' laptop.
Imagine the 5 minutes of fame till the 'pack went dead
Just think; in those 5 minutes you could even boot M$ Windows!!
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
A large number of manufacturers
A low barrier to market entry
Vendors who won't undercut new entrants to the market.
In this case, I don't think you have any of these. There aren't that many manufacturers of flat screens (I mean actual manufacturers, not resellers like Dell that slap their name on someone else's stuff), so coordinating a price-fix ain't that hard. Also, this is a fairly expensive industry - we're not talking graphics cards where no board-maker can charge a large margin, since making a reference GeForce board is easy. So, just anyone isn't going to enter the market. Also, any companies that MIGHT enter the market aren't likely to create waves - if, say, Phillips starts making LCD's and undercutting Sony, Sony is likely to get revenge in another market they both share. That's the problem with the electronics industry, it's so damned incestuous. And if anyone without a big name tried undercutting, the bog boys would just undercut *them* until they went under, at which point prices go back up.
Your argument, if it worked, would prevent price fixing from EVER happening. However, markets don't work like it's taught in Econ 101. Markets aren't perfect machines, and corporations don't want them to be.
I'm not saying there's evidence of fixing here, but there could be. And if you contend that there's not, then you need an argument that is unique to the situation, rather than proving that price fixing in general does not exist, as it certainly does. Show why it doesn't exist in THIS case.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
If coke started selling 12packs for $2.00 what would pepsi do?
Funny, I just bought two twelve packs of Coke yesterday for $4.99. Nobody looked all that freaked to me.
Capitalism is not some vast, all powerful rectifier of all things. The "invisible hand" is only one of many forces setting prices. After all, look at dear old M$.
Personally, I have been wondering this same thing for years and I've done no small bit of checking around, including talking with senior engineers at, in order, Radius (anybody else remember them?), Samsung, Panasonic, Apple, HP, and a few others (being in charge of purchasing for corporate departments has its perks) and none of them could ever give me a credible explanation for why this discrepancy should exist.
After all, how many of us have dealt with the absurd phenomenon of a $1,500 laptop with a dead screen being told that a replacement screen would cost $1,100?
Something fishy is going on and if we still had a real FTC, I would wonder why they weren't investigating it.
Rustin
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.
meow!
Only terrorists ride bikes!
Hum, good point. But this is not really a problem with the motherboard but with the panel itself. LVDS is just a low-voltage signalling connected (I believe for my board) to the northbridge. The complications come in knowing how to use this with a particular panels desired inputs.
:-)
So, the answer to your quest ion "inside knowledge for the panel"
D.
How hard would it be to add a few chips so that a laptop actually becomes an "X display" ?
I mean, connect the VGA "in" and have a separate keyboard/mouse connectors going "to" a machine instead of "from a peripheral". That way, the "Cpu" side would be de-activated, becoming a dumb graphic terminal.
I've seen many rackmounted 1U units with flat screens and keyboards that you can pull out but I've never seen anything that you can carry around.
I'd buy one today to manage all my servers if I could find something like that.
Anyone else in the same boat? Found alternatives?? Please share your findings. I'm tired to move this "monitor on a cart" around..!
-- Leeeter than leet
make that 1080i.
:-P
Still a crappy res.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
To be fair prices don't seem that far out. 14 and 15" TFTs are now pretty cheap - £180 or so - cheap enough that you can immagine that the same part in a £700 laptop isn't costing you that much less. 17" TFTs have nowhere near the same volume - being as there aren't many 17" laptops - yet the prices are pretty low (£300/$500) a part for top notch Samsung panels (in a GNR case, like my new ones). 19" and above are still well overpriced (£700+), partly because it's a low volume market (for the moment) - but a lot of that is also to do with the difficulty of finding a 19" sized chunk of TFT with no dead pixels!
Beep beep.
heh you invented a new word... 'assclown'
There is 1 main reason LCD monitors are so expensive:
During the quality control testing of LCD monitors approximately 2/3 of monitors fail. Manufacturers need to cover their costs so thus when you buy an LCD monitor you are in fact paying for 3 monitors, not just 1!
Open Office- try it http://www.openofice.org
Considering that Pepsi in fact used that technique 50 years ago ... a not too detailed summary of each's advertising techniques can be found here:
The Coke and Pepsi Cola Wars [Google Cache]
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
For displays of laptop sizes and larger, a very good manufacturer can produce a display with drivers at a manufacturing cost of $2.50 to $3.00 per square inch, assuming the volume is high. Gradual cost reductions come into play, but those are countered by higher resolution and larger dimensions. So, for a 19" display in 16:9, you have $400 or so tied up in the display itself. $1000 street price sounds like a deal.
United States
To the parent of the parent, let's keep it simple: before 1995, when Zenith was still a US company and one of the biggest TV producers in the world, they didn't have the guts to start an LCD factory.
.....
I'm not going so far as to say that because of that they lost their customers and are now Korean. But
Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...
But why doesn't Motorola then make LCD's ???
Browsers shouldn't have a back button!! It's all about going forward...
Well 6 formats anyway, they still need to supprt the up to 4 SD and MD sub-channels that ATSC is capable of transmitting. they can use upconversion if they want but they still have to be supported.