How many of the damn things do they think we need per household?

Cythraul: Rev. Skarekroe: Cythraul: Well I still have my tube TV. So I guess we haven't hit that peak just yet.

Me too.
And I'm in no hurry to upgrade. I don't have cable, so I don't watch high-def shows, and Blu-Ray doesn't impress me all that much.

Well I haven't got one because I'm a cheap bastard. I'll get around to getting one eventually, especially if I decide to buy a TV gaming console.

Actually, from a marketing perspective I see a few ideas and options:

1. Sony starts putting in consoles into their TV's bringing in gamers, blu ray folks and any HD person.
2. Microsoft adds in a console to a new TV they created. Much like Sony but with MS support built into it. Basically a giant laptop.

Either of those options will drastically increase the sales figures of those TV's, and you can charge a few hundred more.


/Yes I have more ideas. No, you can't have them.

I've been considering buying a new HD plasma or LCD for the last few months, mainly for gaming. My old CRT 36in still works fine, but text is hard to read on the screen and in many cases, the edges of HUDs and subtitles are cut off. Beyond that, I saw how Portal 2 and Skyrim looked on my friend's HD 3D TV and the difference is staggering.

The only thing holding be back is the longevity of newer TVs, which seem very short. I don't want to fork or 2K for a TV that's only going to last 18 months before it begins to have problems. My CRT is still going strong after 10 years, and it only cost $600.

Have any of you had good experiences with flatscreen TVs? Any brands I should beware of? If anyone responses, thank you in advance.

netringer: madgonad: netringer: When my 73" DLP got acne

Acne? Please explain.
/have a RPDLP - in fact looking at it as I type

The Mitsubishi's DLPs have bad DLP chips that get stuck mirrors. Now about 40% if the screen has a stuck black or white pixel...and that happened when it was about 18 months old.

Had the same thing happen to me with my Mitsu 65 DLP after only two years. Gave up on them after getting the run around from customer service. Picked up a very nice Panasonic Viera Plasma 60" for under $800. Not 3D, but once calibrated, it is the best damn image I have ever seen. Never going to buy another Mitsubishi product again.

fortean chicken: Have any of you had good experiences with flatscreen TVs? Any brands I should beware of? If anyone responses, thank you in advance.

I have a pair of Panasonic plasma sets that are pushing 5 years old. I keep the brightness at only 50% and saturation at 60%, so I am not burning the phosphors out. As long as you do that, plasma units will last quite some time.

I wanted to upgrade one of my units for something a little larger, but the latest LCD and plasma sets seem to have some weird issues. The worst problem is the fluctuating brightness issue caused by the brightness management software. When you have a scene change from light to dark, it takes a second for the power saving logic to kick into different gear. As a result, you see a "jump" in brightness. The Panis, Samsungs and LGs all suffer from it from one degree to another, although Panasonic at least admits there is a problem and has released a fix.

Another problem with the latest plasma monitors is that they're moving to phosphors with lower excite times (shorter afterglow). That's good for getting rid of trails when a bright object moves over a dark object, but it really exposes the 60Hz refresh rate they use. LCD monitors don't have a refresh rate like CRT or plasma monitors, and the florescent tubes they use for the backlight often run at 120 or 240Hz to eliminate eye strain.

Over? Not until I get my 100 inch 21:9 4K 22.2 OLED panel.

Meh, 104 inch projector screen works pretty well for me, awesome quality and you can't beat the price for the size you're getting.

I can understand maybe having a nice, big "family room" TV, but do people really need to throw out every TV in the house and replace them with flat screens? Kind of makes me sad to think about all the TV's that are being thrown out on a weekly basis. I always see at least 2 in my neighborhood. More junk for the landfills.

\Have a decent 46" Samsung LCD in the main living area with HD and all that jazz. And this was a replacement for a TV that actually did break (and got a smoking hot deal on it as well--still have yet to see a Samsung of this size for the $500 I paid two years ago)
\Kitchen TV is an ancient 13" Sony Trinitron hooked up to an antenna
\Bedroom TV is a 12-year old 27" Sharp that I only watch to fall asleep to. No point in upgrading it unless I was going to get another HD box for the room, and I'm not giving Comcast any more of my $$$.

OregonVet: Ackbar_GastricFluid: /The agony and the irony, they're killing me.

[rob.nu image 489x457]
/welcome to FARK

Actually that was a quote from a Harvey Danger song, because "I don't even own a tv" reminded me of it. That's why I slashied it out, cause it wasn't really that relevant, YOU CLOD!!!11!

MBZ321: I can understand maybe having a nice, big "family room" TV, but do people really need to throw out every TV in the house and replace them with flat screens? Kind of makes me sad to think about all the TV's that are being thrown out on a weekly basis. I always see at least 2 in my neighborhood. More junk for the landfills.

\Have a decent 46" Samsung LCD in the main living area with HD and all that jazz. And this was a replacement for a TV that actually did break (and got a smoking hot deal on it as well--still have yet to see a Samsung of this size for the $500 I paid two years ago)
\Kitchen TV is an ancient 13" Sony Trinitron hooked up to an antenna
\Bedroom TV is a 12-year old 27" Sharp that I only watch to fall asleep to. No point in upgrading it unless I was going to get another HD box for the room, and I'm not giving Comcast any more of my $$$.

I've gotten my last four sets for free just this way. Why should I have to pay out good money?

You can have my Samsung 52" DLP when you pry it from my cold dead hands.

It's over 7 years old and only 720p but I swear it still has a better picture than the 1080 LCDs and Plasmas.

Soon enough, AppleTV will be released, which will be like a super high def retina display with an iTunes hookup and Siri control. Then the world will throw out their samsungs and buy the new AppleTV every 18 months.

Samsung et al won't be able to compete because they are bound to the HDTV standard.

The Apple Monopoly will be inescapable.

fortean chicken: I've been considering buying a new HD plasma or LCD for the last few months, mainly for gaming. My old CRT 36in still works fine, but text is hard to read on the screen and in many cases, the edges of HUDs and subtitles are cut off. Beyond that, I saw how Portal 2 and Skyrim looked on my friend's HD 3D TV and the difference is staggering.

The only thing holding be back is the longevity of newer TVs, which seem very short. I don't want to fork or 2K for a TV that's only going to last 18 months before it begins to have problems. My CRT is still going strong after 10 years, and it only cost $600.

Have any of you had good experiences with flatscreen TVs? Any brands I should beware of? If anyone responses, thank you in advance.



CRT TV have the ''Trees attacks you'' and ''moving chairs'' settings.

Can an APPLE TV do that?

Lando Lincoln: How much cheaper would TV's be if they were just "monitors?" Why do we even need TV tuner components anymore? What's the market demand for people that want a 55" TV so they can hook it up to an antenna? Are there any cable / dish companies left out there that don't require one of their proprietary cable boxes?

I think HDTV has actually driven high-res monitor prices to a premium and screwed up an offshoot of Moore's law in that arena. It's cheap to pick up a 24-28" monitor that shows in 1920x1080, but go above that and you pay a few hundred bucks more. Resolution is no longer a selling point to anyone outside of those who have to read several things at once while typing at work. Buy up your 4k TVs, consumers, so I can save a few bucks once again!

Lando Lincoln: How much cheaper would TV's be if they were just "monitors?" Why do we even need TV tuner components anymore? What's the market demand for people that want a 55" TV so they can hook it up to an antenna? Are there any cable / dish companies left out there that don't require one of their proprietary cable boxes?

Actually, it seems a good amount of the cost of a TV is the tuner and the doohickey that handles scaling. (Ever try to drop an LCD below native resolution? Yeah, that.)
Right now, you can grab some nice 1080p 30" LCD monitors for $225 on the low end, compared to TVs for $300-450. If some enterprising folks would make a set-top box that handles scaling without just changing the monitor/TV's resolution, things wouldn't look nearly as bad on 'cheap' 1080p TV's and virtually every monitor. Hard mode: keep the entire unit below the actual price of current DirecTV/Comcast DVRs.

My next TV probably will be a flatscreen, but I'm not going to replace my 10-15 year old CRT as long as it's working just fine.

alwaysjaded: Now if only I knew what kind of sound system to hook it up too. Everyone tells me not to get Bose cause they're over priced, but I can't ever get a straight answer on what I SHOULD get.

I have a pair of 90s era big-ass Cerwin Vega DX-5 floor speakers hooked up to a 1978 Sansui receiver. They must have made watts bigger in the 70s because that receiver kicks ass at 8 watts per channel.

flaminio: OLE

Last I read LG and Samsung will be out with that at the end of the year. Around 15k if I remember right.

fortean chicken: I've been considering buying a new HD plasma or LCD for the last few months, mainly for gaming. My old CRT 36in still works fine, but text is hard to read on the screen and in many cases, the edges of HUDs and subtitles are cut off. Beyond that, I saw how Portal 2 and Skyrim looked on my friend's HD 3D TV and the difference is staggering.

The only thing holding be back is the longevity of newer TVs, which seem very short. I don't want to fork or 2K for a TV that's only going to last 18 months before it begins to have problems. My CRT is still going strong after 10 years, and it only cost $600.

Have any of you had good experiences with flatscreen TVs? Any brands I should beware of? If anyone responses, thank you in advance.

I love the shiat out of my 42" LG LED edge-lit TV. I've had it for a year and a half. It's not internets ready, but I can hook up an NTFS HDD to it, and play just about every damn video I throw at at (a few need to be remuxed, as it's a bit persnickety about some codecs and subs usually have to be renamed to match the file name of the film). It was initially 1100, but finally I got mine for 750 on a Boxing Day sale (after going back to Future Shop to price match it, as they have the whole 30 day price matching rule, I bought it two weeks before the one day sale when they had knocked it down to about 800) in December 2010, it's now dropped to around the 500-600 dollar range.

Avoid Toshiba. My brother is ready to have their heads on a pike. He bought a 400 dollar 40" TV from Future Shop in November, and didn't opt for the extended warranty, because it's a TV and he thought the whole idea was stupid. The damn thing had a power issue within 3 months. He's been without his TV since the end of January, and they keep telling him the part is on backorder, because it's a "common" problem with this model. He'd take the thing apart and fix it himself, but where it's still under Manufacturer's warranty, and he has placed the call into them, he won't touch it in the event they do get up off their asses and fix it.

Lando Lincoln: How much cheaper would TV's be if they were just "monitors?" Why do we even need TV tuner components anymore? What's the market demand for people that want a 55" TV so they can hook it up to an antenna? Are there any cable / dish companies left out there that don't require one of their proprietary cable boxes?

Depends on your market and needs. around here (fairly small market central VA) I can pull in about a dozen OTA channels (ABC, FOX, CBS, NBC, PBS, CW, etc). Granted, I still have Directv since i NEED SUNDAY TICKET TO SURVIVE DAMMIT, but some folks just want the basics, and heck...it's free and great quality.

Personally, I think even when the OLED sets come out, we've basically reached the 'end all be all' of TVs as we know them for quite a while. 4K won't have mass market appeal because, quite frankly, you can't see the difference on TVs smaller than 65" and unless you sit incredibly close. I've seen it demoed first hand, and while it looked great, it was on a large screen (80" I believe) and we were literally sitting 10ft away, much closer than recommended and on a screen size that few people have access to). That, and the material is going to be rather scarce for quite a bit.

schief2: You can have my super-fine pitch HD tube TV when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. Greatest. Tube TV. Ever.

[img404.imageshack.us image 640x480]

/downside: "Unit Weight - 194 lbs 8 oz"

Man, looking at that gear is like a flashback to 2002. is that AVR a Sony STR-DA1000ES?

schief2: /downside: "Unit Weight - 194 lbs 8 oz"

That's not a downside; that's an anti-theft feature.

Well, yeah. The technophile market is all tapped out, and there's no compelling reason for anyone else to upgrade.

madgonad: Don't really want to move it again...or worse, have it fall on someone.

This is the only reason I'm entertaining the thought of upgrading my flat-screen CRT. It works fine, but it's heavy as all getout, and my daughter is almost a toddler. The stand is pretty solid and I don't *think* she'll be able to pull it down on herself, but I hear kids have a way of doing that sort of thing.

/CSB

As I am reading this from my 130 inch hd lcd projector screen, I am getting a kick out of.... about how much you would pay for a similar sized tv.

I don't have cable. Cancelled Netflix. I don't watch TV anymore.

Well they better start designing them to blow up every 3 years, like everyone else trying to create their own market through intended design flaws.

dletter: I mean, go look at prices for 24" TVs vs. monitors... is there much of a difference for the same specs, other than one can pull in digital TV signals and the monitor can't?

In my experience, the TVs are often cheaper; though quality will quite likely be worse.
Walmart: 24" 'viore' 1080p TV TV $150, $170 for a 24" Viewsonic Monitor(1080P).
Newegg: 1080P AOC Monitor: $170, $240 for a Coby 32" 720p

Lando Lincoln: I'd like a 32" flat screen for the bedroom, but I'll wait until the prices get to around $125 - $150.

$200 32" - Only 25% to go

GAT_00: In other words, people are only upgrading, not replacing CRTs, and people are probably waiting a little longer instead of getting rid of the perfectly good 35" to buy a 50" LCD.

I'd say that the CRTs are almost entirely gone, however we've reached a few milestones;
1. The bump from people replacing their CRTs and even LCDs without the digital tuner has finished
2. People buying BIGGER tvs has leveled off
3. There's already a TV in every part of the house that people want one in.

Phil Moskowitz: Well they better start designing them to blow up every 3 years, like everyone else trying to create their own market through intended design flaws.

It'll never happen, but I wonder what would happen if the US&Europe started requiring a 10 year warranty for 'consumer appliances' like TVs, refridgerators, and washer/dryers. Heck, even blenders and toasters. As part of that, require a manufacture date be stamped on the unit to be used if the receipt is not available.

MBZ321: I can understand maybe having a nice, big "family room" TV, but do people really need to throw out every TV in the house and replace them with flat screens?

Considering how long CRTs have been out of sale, I figure that any being replaced at this point are non-functional, or the people are moving and the TV isn't worth taking with them due to the costs of shipping.

I'm finally looking to buy a nice tv. Samsung has "smart" flat screens that have wifi, does this mean I can access and play files saved on my hard drives?

Any other advice? We have PS3 & Netflix as entertainment, refuse to get cable, can't wait for better Internet sports access.

Mahalo!!

schief2: ihatedumbpeople: schief2: You can have my super-fine pitch HD tube TV when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. Greatest. Tube TV. Ever.

[img404.imageshack.us image 640x480]

/downside: "Unit Weight - 194 lbs 8 oz"

Man, looking at that gear is like a flashback to 2002. is that AVR a Sony STR-DA1000ES?

It's just a random photo I grabbed off the net since I don't have a pic of my own, but on googling around I think you're right. I genuflect before your impressive Sony product-recognition abilities.

ha! yeah, I owned one of those at one time and work in tech support for that stuff...i always notice goofy crap like that. ;-)

A jetski in every driveway
A home underwater
$0 in retirement
$20,000 in credit card debt
A flatscreen TV in every living room


The American dream died when that became the benchmark.

Firethorn: It'll never happen, but I wonder what would happen if the US&Europe started requiring a 10 year warranty for 'consumer appliances' like TVs, refridgerators, and washer/dryers. Heck, even blenders and toasters. As part of that, require a manufacture date be stamped on the unit to be used if the receipt is not available

Think of all the empty landfill! You're a monster.