TV sales PLUMMET. But no one's prepared to say what we all know TV sales are falling everywhere. It’s kind of official, but people are still prepared to argue about it. The number of LCD screens are being forecast to recover but no one is giving a reason why, as the number of TVs that they ship in, are definitely not rising. There is lots of intelligence out there in TV land, but the two …
I picked up a fairly decent projector a little while back, at a very reasonable price, to take on a holiday that I went on with my friends. I knew there was no TV where we were going, and it gave us something to do (big screen movie based drinking games) when the weather wasn't so great. Having got back home, I decided that it was worth the trouble of re-arranging my living room to remove the unsightly black obelisk that just seems to draw the eyes towards it, (even when it's not in use).
So now, when I'm not using it, I have no 'tv' and when i am using it, i have a christ knows how big screen (really can't be bothered to measure it), at perfectly adequate quality for TV / movies / gaming. Likely hood that i will update / upgrade in the near future, pretty slim. Might need to buy a new bulb at some point, but that's about it.
It crosses my mind that, at least as far as TVs are concerned, despite the possibility that manufacturers do their best to ensure otherwise, modern TVs simply last longer and stay working pretty much perfectly their full life. Modern LCD sets consume a fraction of the power of even a plasma set (remember those?), let alone a CRT, and that means they run much cooler. The effect on equipment lifetime is surprisingly large. My finger-in-the-air guess is that a good quality LED LCD TV will last 3 x what a CRT TV would last - and some of those lasted 10+ years.
Even non-LED LCD screens failed mostly when the backlight(s) and/or their inverter went AFAIK and they're almost impossible to replace economically. But then, they ran hot, so no surprise there.
In other words, the TV makers have engineered themselves out of a job. Perhaps more accurately, they've been technology-ed out of a job.
Power supply capacitors are usually what goes in a modern LCD. I have dozens of screens from XGA to FullHD at work salvaged from eWaste piles and roadsides and fixed for a few dollars (I prefer the visual arts students be creative with kit the school hasn't actually paid lots of money for!). I will still buy a new monitor for my primary, but if you have hobbiest-level electronics capability or better, LCD monitors with a good few more years in them can often be fixed by swapping out any bloated capacitors. I presently have a 3:4 success rate on this. Plus one light box made from a backlight with a genuinely dead LCD removed from it.
Very true. I feel obliged to point out though that you MUST discharge the large capacitors in any switchmode power supply (with an appropriate resistor/other load) and not just disconnect from the line before you do anything else though. A broken power supply (or even a working one without working bleeder resistors) can often mean potentially lethal levels of charge persisting in them for long periods. This is especially true for CRTs but really for anything with a SMPS.
> OK the picture quality may fade but the TV itself would go on until the end of time.
It had to, once it's in place it's too damn heavy to move!
I could just about shift a 28-inch CRT widescreen myself, the 32-inch that replaced it was too much.
The 37-inch and 40-inch LCDs that have come after the 32-inch CRT I can easily move.
Oh, and neither widescreen CRT was as good as the 29-inch CRT Sony Trinitron 4:3 I had before, and the 32-inch was a flat-front CRT Sony. It had all sorts of picture-worsening digital processing that couldn't be disabled.
CRT TV
My 32" was a 50Hz Wega IDTV with no additional processing and a direct link to one of the best DVB-T tuners.
Alan's poor PQ - sounds like 100Hz TV, some of those were not great, only good one cost £3000, and one analogue tuner one was particularly poor.
My old IDTV PQ made Ondigital and Sky boxes look sad.
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Most people don't need a new TV. They went out and bought a Tesco special offer unit when their old CRT stopped working and are happy with it.
Also, most of the streaming TV services are supplying their own separate receiver units (AppleTV/NowTV etc) to work with your current set so there's no real driver to keep upgrading the actual set.
Personally I bought a second hand technika TV from work, but have teamed it up with a Sony BD Home cinema setup and a Humax Freesat HD unit. The TV itself is dumber than a post, but all it does is show a picture, the sound and smarts are taken care of by the sony unit.
is to decrease the lifespan of a telly, aka planned obsolescence to about 2 year span, not to interfere with some peskier EU regulations. This way - we will not bother with replacing the telly when it kicks the bucket, and the whole idea of tv as we know it will fall apart like, ehm... house of cards.
What did the last 5 odd years of TV development really get us? They didn't improve picture quality especially, bezel sizes shrunk nicely but at the cost of things like sound quality and the less said about 3D the better.
From the OLED TVs and 4K screens I've seen we're finally getting some solid picture quality improvements but I don't think the average punter is going to care and certainly not when those sets cost four figures.
"What did the last 5 odd years of TV development really get us?"
Stupid locations for some connections that we'd like to have in a more accessible place, all in the name of making the front of the TV look as untainted with, ugh, things as possible?
I'm thinking specifically of the headphone socket, because it's something I do use. On my current TV it is really awkward to get at, and seems to just as stupidly positioned on those I've looked at when considering replacements.
My preference? On the front, where I can see it, or failing that on the side so I don't have to reach around behind or under and behind (as I have to currently) to try to plug headphones into a socket that I can't bloody well see, and so struggle to find.
Yabbut, an audio extension cord would still need to be plugged into theheadphone socket, cutting off output to the TV speakers. Or are you saying he should always listen on phones and everyone else should learn ti lipread?
The point of a headphone socket is to give the owner the option of listening on headphones OR speakers, so putting a headphone socket somewhere inaccessible is what we in the engineering trade call 'bloody stupid', however sodding sleek the bezel looks.
You don't get hi fi buffs complaining that their Denon amps look 'so untidy' with a headphone socket on the front panel and asking for it to be moved round the back next to the speaker outlets.
And while I'm foaming at the mouth here, remember whensockets for portable kit (stuff which was only periodically run through the TV, like cameras) were on the front of the set where they could be easily plugged and removed?
Most of the 'smart' is in various so-called "set-top boxes" which should properly be called "carpet-top boxes" in many cases.
If a TV maker produced a TV with generic mains-powered vertical slots behind the top edge of the unit so that STBs could be slid in so they're concealed, provided with AC power and individual remote on/off contorl, short connection leads to per-STB ports, gigabit Ethernet switch, integrated IR transceivers to clip over the STB IR LEDs, we'd again have a single TV and single universal programmable learning remote. Add WiFi and HTTP server hosting an HTML5 remote-control web-app and any flavour of smart-phone or tablet could also control it.
That's what I call a 'smart' TV that'd I'd buy.
Only people running CRTs around here would use the FIFA Cup as an excuse to replace their tellies, and even so, most people replaced theirs in the LAST FIFA Cup. And some are still paying for them in 60 monthly installments.
"Nothing is too expensive if they fit in the monthly budget" is often heard around here.
With the switch to digital and HD almost everyone dumped the old CRT and bought a HD flat screen. Much like everyone buying stuff they had on tape or LP again on CD.
This was not "growth" that they could expect to keep going forever, it was a one time spike in sales.
Attempts to repeat it with 3D/Smart TV have failed (along with DVD audio).
If one of the manufacturers ever gets a clue, they will start producing a product that (a) none of the others have, and (b) people can't get and actually want to buy. Now there are probably lots of examples for lots of different niches, but just to mention one - I know dozens of people who, like me, would queue up to pay top dollar for a screen with some decent height in it - i.e., a screen more usefully shaped than the ubiquitous current wide and shallow things which are fine for passive consumption and rather painful for real work.
OK, OK, that's not a TV, it's a computer monitor, but in a tough market a sale is a sale, yes? Are you listening Samsung, LG, Phillips, and all the rest of you?
(silence)
Apparently not.
I have an older Toshiba 52inch DLP 1080i TV its about 9 years old. I may just now have to replace it after it is making an audible electric arcing sound. I managed to keep it alive an extra two years by just swapping in some 50 cent resistors when it fried. If I am lucky maybe I can resurrect it again with some more cheap parts and if I can it will stay as long as I can keep it running.
Echoing earlier comments: the first wave of folks replacing analog, tube TVs for digital LCD/LED screens has certainly run its course. The second wave of upgrades to bigger/shinier/smarter screens is pretty well through as well.
Given the longer life of these units and the utter failure of 3D or 4K to gain any serious foothold, there's no realistic "third wave" of purchases happening to drive production. There will be the incremental traffic for the last-adopters, the added-screen-for-the-kids-room, and the occasional replacement. This isn't going to justify the past production levels that went into replacing all those CRT units.
Surely TV sales just tick along nicely and every generation of tech go mad for a few years - colour, flatter squarer tube, widescreen, LCD, etc.
So we have been through the last "let's all upgrade phase" and are now all just sitting back and watching TV. This can have come as no surprise to the industry.
I have bought 3 TVs in 20 years and still have all 3 - a 22" CRT, a 32"LCD and a 40"LED. Unless one breaks I can't see me buying another one for many many years.
The CRT is kept for lightgun games for those interested!
Gee has it ever occurred the these dolts that Televisions are long term appliances the only reason I even have an LCD TV to start with. Was due to my old CRT conking out again. From the same fault that it had with-in the first week I had it Four Years prior. And that was like 2006?! The TV I have now is no great shakes it only hits up to 720p and 1080i. I do have a PS3 so I guess I have access to BlueRay 1080p stuff. Sans stuff that was ripped to 1080p. Though in these instances I actually prefer the lighter weight of the 720p Rips. Which even on a full 1080p Screen I never felt that I was losing anything by going 720p. Now Games that actually ran in, and at 1080p were great. But that particular Television, from Samsung also had its problems and has since gone. My original no-name TV is still kicking as strong as ever. And until the day it doesn't. I feel no need to be running off to buy another....
Gee I wonder how Refrigerator, Dishwasher, and Laundry Machine Makers never seem to complain about never selling as many of those Appliances Year-on-Year?!
Lets get to the root of why perhaps the sales have plummeted.
1. Everybody has a 50" they barely watch because they are either on the internet or tapping on phone to social networks.
2. We got stung, 720 became 1080, became Smart and now 4K with 8K sitting in the wings. seeing as we are mostly doing point 1 above who wants the added expense.
3. Smart and 3D we got just enough to make a buck and nothing more. Post purchase upgrades to the smart or come to that the 3D firmware so confusing or non existant that people cant be bothered with it, most just want to utter the words make it go. And dont get me started on the slow EPGs.
4. Standard is not standard, connect the hdmi from one source to a destination and you might get lucky if its the same brand otherwise suffer in some minor technicality.
5. Interactive TV, multiview and other stuff the promise of blueray. But here we are years later and still not there, just like each mediocre release of games machine with a long list of features that never materialises.
6. And lastly Granny, Grannies got the dosh? but oh my gosh just look at all those buttons, regular calls to the son in law on how to change channels. Let alone when you switch it on and the audio auto configures with the last volume setting blowing poor old gran out of her slippers screaming take it back take it back.
Basically the people have got tired of shelling out for promises in a marketplace where they are not sure the job they have will be compatible with them. So why make the big spend. For a few who will always shell out for bleeding edge tech this may not be a problem but for the gaffaw gaffaw, edge of the crust look at what I got non technical, Next shopping, VW/Audi driving (who nearly always buy panasonic too) otherwise known as the lower think their upper middle class, which accounts for most people that close to the wherewithall to consider the purchase. Well they already have 3 generations of wide screen in their homes and have probably run out of space on the walls unless you can really really convince them its worth it.
Otherwise we would all like that 8ft screen that gives the feeling of immersion, somewhere in the home. But you know what, for a quarter of the cost you can experience the real thing. So for now, 1080p with 5.1 surround, Blueray and 3D is enough. I remember the price point being £400 now its a whopping £800 - 1200 and for that to see the same things I saw for £400 does not make me or probably anyone else feel its VFM.
Like everything in our over indulgent consumer society we con ourselves in thinking we get value for money. We don't all we get is an industry that is run by PR and marketing spivs whose only interest is to part the idiot consumer form his/her hard earned cash. The only "value" in the transaction is the profit for every one in the supply chain.
...Ultrabooks. So I for one am happy that TV sales are crashing as it may force manufacturers to do a little soul searching and focus back on what they do best.... Which is shipping monster sized TV's. As there is nothing else to compete with that. I for one, am so sick of the hype of smart phones and tablets. I'm old-school, I want the largest damn screen I can get for gaming. That wish is only further confirmed by learning that Oculus has been bought by the 'bitch'... So much for VR, instead gimme a 100 inch screen for a grand!
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