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Widescreen TVs in the US?

Posted by Cliff on from the what-is-going-on? dept.

Steeldrivin asks: "What's up with widescreen TV, in the US? If you go to the widescreen TV website for Philips, you'll see that they have a bunch of cool widescreen TVs...but only in Europe. The US catalog is devoid of widescreen products unless you want to spend $10,000 for a flat-screen plasma model. The catalog for Great Britain, on the other hand, has CRT-based 28" and 32" models, that are probably much more affordable. As far as other manufacturers are concerned, the only widescreen models seem to be the more expensive plasma units, or huge projection TVs. What's up with this? When will the US get affordable widescreen TVs?" Philips' US catalog can be found here.

1 of 270 comments (clear)

  1. UK "TV Tax" helps market leading... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5


    [Actually, I'm sillywiz@excession.demon.co.uk, but everytime I've ever tried to create an account it's failed...]


    The licence fee that most Americans seem to regard as something archaic is partly what drives this stuff. The BBC for example just started doing both widescreen and digital broadcasts. Few people could receive them, but because they're not a commercial organisation they don't have to justify things the same way. Having the broadcasts means that the TV sets will sell and the tech gets bootstrapped that way. The US is more hamdstrung because no-one's going to start broadcasting until there are sets to watch it on and no one's going to buy a set without broadcasts. Unless they're rich, in which case they'll buy a TV for what most people spend on a car.

    The BBC is a relatively massive organisation, it has large budgets, a worldwide audience and a remit to make the best television it can. It can afford to bear the "losses" of being a field leader, where commerical television simply couldn't.

    Actually the decent widescreen TVs still aren't *THAT* cheap in the UK. The cheapest ones are maybe 4x the cost of similar spec normal TV, but the prices are dropping astonishingly fast - especially as digital takeup is picking up. I think I'm almost the last of my circle of friends to get digital... (I'm trying to watch less TV. I can't help but think that suddenly having 30 channels instead of 5 won't help.)

    Britain also has the advantage of being smaller: there are less transmitters and equipment needed, we can be covered by one satalite's footprint. This just helps our TV market be more nimble.