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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?"
$389 for a 15" LCD screen can hardly be justified when 19" CRT's are half that price. Glad to see this coming.
PDAs though must be another story.
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.
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.
Hmmm, oversupply of lcd manuf due to lack of interest in lcd tv's? Sounds like it means that cell phones with 15" lcd's will be on the market soon. Now you can really see how crappy your cell phone camera is.
What I've always been told about LCD tech (someone correct me if I am wrong) is that there is a reason why high-res LCD is so expensive: dead pixels. There are only so many that can be tolerated before the panel is useless, and they have to start over. The screens for phones are tiny, the chance of getting an unacceptable number of dead pixels (and increasing cost) is small.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
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
I'm a bit of a videophile (audiophile too but lets not get into that).
Currently, the best available picture quality for direct view is still the venerable CRT. LCD and Plasma screens need video scalers to map the input signal to the display and these are rarely any good, certainly not in the consumer level equipment. Also, LCDs have very poor black level so the picture often looks rather grey. Plasma screens often have poor colour characteristics and also suffer from short lifespans. If you are considering one though, make sure you buy the Video Essentials DVD and learn how to use it so you can test any prospective purchase.
For projection systems the situation is somewhat different, a CRT projector while often capable of staggering picture quality is much harder to set up than an LCD or DLP projector and vastly more expensive. LCDs are generally less good than a DLP projector. DLP has better contrast ratio but may suffer from rainbow fringing if you get a single chip example. Correct calibration will fix this. LCDs have been much harder to calibrate well compared with a DLP in my experience and often suffer from uneven colour: several examples I tested looked slightly green on one side of the screen and blue on the other. Yuck.
There are other technologies coming along (OLED for instance) that look likely to change the landscape dramatically. I certainly wouldn't plunk down any money on an LCD TV. A plasma screen would also not be on my list as the picture just isn't big enough for movies IMHO. A good DLP based front projector supplemented by a standard CRT for normal TV will be far cheaper, and likely better quality than a plasma screen of half the size. The video scaler (Faroudja DDI) in my little DLP projector is much better quality than any of those I have seen in LCD or plasma screens and the projector cost a fraction of the price of the 40" examples.
I would certainly recommend buying a 16:9 set though (I got my first one back in '92 and people thought I was mad) but look at direct view CRT or rear/front projection DLP for the best bang for the buck I think.
"I have the attention span of a strobe lit goldfish, please get to the point quickly!"
What the heck are they expecting when they sell LCD TV's for two to three times the cost of the SAME SIZE LCD monitor?
I can walk into Best Buy, buy a cheap 17" monitor for $250 - $300 after rebate, and put a TV tuner box from Viewsonic on it for $150, that's $400 for a 17" TV. If I walk over to the TV sections, the CHEAPEST 15" TV is almost $500. The 17" LCD TV's are between $650 - $900... one is priced over $1000. So what's the deal? Why the hell would I EVER buy an LCD TV? There's absolutely no reason to pay as much as they want for an LCD TV. They are overcharging something fierce, when LCD monitors are cheaper, it's obviously not the LCD that's costing more for the TV... it's just plain corporate greed.
So no... I sure as hell won't be buying an LCD TV anytime soon.
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.
You have captured the essence of the problem.
Further, when you look closely at an LCD television, you notice that the image quality is no better than the image produced by a CRT television. So, why would anyone the premium price for the LCD television?
People do want the convenience of an LCD, which uses much less space than a CRT. Yet, they also want improved picture quality in order to justify the price.
The answer is just around the corner: optical interference displays (OIDs). They produce far sharper and brighter images than an LCD. The OID also consumes less power than an LCD.
Ok, ehough speculation. The law is specific as to what contitutes a defective screen. The standard is ISO 13406-2. Toms hardware has a good review on the law. The link is:3 0319/ index.html
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/display/200
I suggest you go annd read it but if not...
In summary: There are 4 grades of LCD.....if they do not meet this standard then you have not bought an "official LCD display" and then it is defective , the official sales policy of the shop is not relevant. Just go and exchage. the rest is toms hardware quotes:
"Class 1, the highest, allows no defects at all. Class 4, the lowest, allows up to 262!"
If they do not specify, the monitor is Class 1 by default and you can have it changed at the smallest pixel defect.
The standard distinguishes four types of defective pixel.
* Type 1: number of always-lit pixels.
* Type 2: number of always-unlit pixels.
* Type 3: other defects, particularly on sub-pixels and the RGB cells making up pixels (lit or unlit). This means red, green and blue pixels lit the whole time. Experience shows that this is undoubtedly the most common defect.
For 15" LCD Panels
Native resolution is 1024 x 768 pixels, a total of 786,432 pixels.
Class 1 panels: this is the easiest - no pixel defects are allowed.
Class 2 panels are more complicated.
* Type 1: Lit pixels allowed = 2 x 786,432 / 1,000,000 = 1.57.
* Type 2: Unlit pixels allowed = 2 x 786,432 / 1,000,000 = 1.57.
* Type 3: Red, green or blue pixels allowed = 5 x 786,432 / 1,000,000 = 3.93.
If you refer to the standard, 2 always-lit pixels is >1.57. So this is over the top and the warranty comes into play. 15" ISO 13406-2-compliant panels may not allow more than: Type 1 + Type 2 + Type 3 = 5 defective pixels altogether, with a maximum of one lit, one unlit and three red, green or blue pixels.
17" Panels:
This is calculated the same way as for the 15".
Resolution = 1280 x 1024 = 1,310,720 pixels.
Class 1 panels: no pixel defects are allowed.
Class 2 panels:
* Type 1: Unlit pixels allowed = 2 x 1,310,720 / 1,000,000 = 2.62.
* Type 2: Lit pixels = 2 x 1,310,720 / 1,000,000 = 2.62.
* Type 3: Red, green or blue pixels allowed = 5 x 1,310,720 / 1,000,000 = 6.55.
If you refer to the standard, two always-lit pixels is 3>2.62. So, this is over the limit and the warranty comes into play.
17" ISO 13406-2-compliant panels may not allow more than: Type 1 + Type 2 + Type 3 = 10 defective pixels altogether, with a maximum of two lit, two unlit and six red, green or blue pixels.