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Slack LCD TV Market Means Cheaper Phones And Monitors
Shakrai writes "CNN and Business2 are running a story about the apparent failure of LCD TVs to make a major market impact and what it means for you. Specifically for us geeks it means cheaper cellular phones and laptops due to an oversupply of LCD manufacturing. Does this mean I can finally afford that 21" LCD monitor I've always wanted?"
Specifically for us geeks it means cheaper cellular phones and laptops due to an oversupply of LCD manufacturing.
I think LCDs are the kind of things that attract non-geeks too. I mean, we've been trying to use eye-candy to lure people into using linux for ages (and by ages I mean...a couple of years). So I think a lot of people are going to start buying LCDs if they become cheap. I mean, I know plenty of geeks who would love to have a 21" LCD too. Maybe I just hang around all geeks and so I have no true perception of what "normal" people are like. In any event it's good that the prices are being lowered.
I'm against picketing but I don't know how to show it.
I purchased my first 15" LCD monitor over 2 years ago, and I'm still shocked how the prices have not changed all that much from then. Any price drop to get me a new 19" LCD is more than welcome with me.
It seems to me this may be good for the short-term, but it's bad for the long term. Things become cheap (a stable cheap, not a short term cheap) because they're produced in massive quantities. If LCD TV's actually took off, you're see dramatically lower prices in LCD monitors over the long term. If LCD screens stay confined to the computer market, and don't become mainstream there, they'll remain relatively expensive over the long term. So this looks like bad news to me...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
I've been looking at 17" LCDs quite a bit lately, but all the inexpensive ones only have analog in - sort of defeats the purpose. I'd really like a 17" Apple LCD to match my G4, but those are still going for ~500 on ebay. Anybody know of any sub-$400, 17" LCDs with digital inputs?
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
It would be interesting to know what the power consumption costs are over the life of the CRT versus the LCD TV. As I understand it, LCD's use much less power.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
The margins on the larger LCD TV's are HUGE.
A friend of mine works at Sears, doing commission sales on home entertainment products. He'll make $300+ on the sale of 1 big LCD TV
That's still more than what a 19" CRT costs. And you STILL can't get an LCD that does 1600x1200 unless you buy a monitor that's 20" or larger or a laptop.
Speaking of which, if my laptop, which is at least three years old, can do 1400x1050 on a 15" LCD, why can't I buy a 17" LCD monitor that can do that resolution or higher? Why is the cheapest LCD capable of anything higher than 1280x1024 nearly $1000?
While a 42-inch Sony Wega LCD TV retails for $10,000, a 42-inch plasma set can be had for about $4,500. LCD TVs accounted for a measly 3 percent of all sets sold in the United States in 2003.
I am a well-documented TV hater. One thing I could never understand were all the ads for TVs that cost $2k, $5k, and even $10k for the last couple of years. I thought that if they are advertising them people must be buying them. I'm interested to read that this isn't the case. But still, $4.5k for a TV? OMGWTFBBQ. Is Joey that much funnier on a $4.5k or even a $10k set?
No? Now I get the real joke.
Speak truth to power.
The problem is that there is a 200+ dollar price difference between an LCD computer monitor and an LCD TV at the same size. This is ridiculous since the only real difference may be the addition of cheap speakers and a TV tuner.
You can get a 14" LCD monitor for less than $300 but the TV version is over $500. It's just not worth it. And of course price increases geometrically with size.
Economy of scale has not worked its magic the way it has with tube TVs (tube TVs are dirt-cheap these days).
"I don't know about you, but even one dead pixel is unacceptable."
I used to think this, too, until I got a tablet with _one_ dead pixel. It's only 10 inches and 800x600, too, so "one dead pixel" is 1/800(600) of the display, rather than 1/(1600)(1200) of the screen you'd have with a large LCD. Yes, the screen is smaller, but you get the point.
I would NEVER have noticed it unless my parents had pointed it out. Frankly, one dead pixel isn't really that big a deal - maybe you've had experiences otherwise with "one dead pixel", though. If you haven't, though, I'd caution you from going a little too crazy on the score.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
I'd like to add that when a small LCD is ruined by a group of bad pixels you have (assuming its a moderately large display, 128*64) just over 8000 good pixels wasted, not really all that many, but a 1280*1024 display, while still considered "damaged" with a few dead pixels you end up with over 1.3 million good pixels being "wasted"
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I've talked to my friends who have big screen TVs and huge houses and then find out they're a third of a million in debt and feel much happier with my 27" TV from six years ago and my townhouse.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Where are the UVXGA++ panels?
WTF gives? A TV that does the same resolution (and image quality) as a laptop from 1996 that costs as much as a entire laptop in 2004?
Please - someone explain.
While a 42-inch Sony (SNE) Wega LCD TV retails for $10,000, a 42-inch plasma set can be had for about $4,500.
Why don't they make plasma computer monitors?
Software Wars
I don't know if this is just myth/urban legend or not and I haven't been able to find anything to support it either way. My brother told me that it is now actually cheaper to manufacture LCD flat panel screens than it is to make CRTs. Not that it really matters because the costs are more tied to supply & demand than actual cost of production but still, I'm curious if it's true or not. Personally the skeptic in me is torn--on one hand, if it's true, than there must be collusion and price fixing going on by the big evil companies. But on the other, if it were true, if I ran a company that made LCDs, I'd slash the prices and sell so many of them that the huge gross profits would make the smaller margins irrelevant, and since no one is doing this it must not be true.
Vote Quimby.