Breadfan
10-07-2006, 09:10 PM
Well, early in the week I had the boob tube on while I was doing some things around my place after work. All of a sudden, I noticed it had cut off. I went to investigate, and looks like a transformer fried...TV tries to turn on but the tube won't fire up. Bummer...was a pretty decent 27" Sony Trinitron...sure not the greatest but did it's job.
So TV is dead, off to buy another. I spent time searching online, and Friday and Saturday nights I stopped by a few stores, mainly Best Buy.
All that made me, was annoyed.
A few years back the TV market was quite different. But like everything the manufacturers and retail outlets are getting rid of the decent cheap stuff and really putting an imbalance in television availability.
2 years ago I nearly bought a 36" square flat-tube HDTV. Was a tad pricey at the time, so figured, OK, I'll let the prices drop. They didn't - instead those types of TVs vanished.
When a lightning strike fried my folks TV a few months ago, they bought a 32" JVC standard flat tube TV (not HD) and honestly it's very nice. Not HD yeah, but gets digital signals and has a very nice 480i picture. Guess they got lucky.
All of those are gone. There are 3 32" SDTV's with flat tubes on BestBuy's site - non are readily available in the store. And if they are, they're way over priced. These TV's are priced at $450+. My parents paid 380 just 3 months ago for their nice JVC unit. So 3 months even though the technology aged rather than get cheaper they went up 70 bucks.
Ok, well, I'll take a deep breath, let's see what they have in HD tube TV's, those should be cheap by now, right?
Nope. Oh and apparnetly they forgot how to make them bigger than 27".
LCD TV's, I hear lots of good things about those...OK, nice picture, but damn that's awfully small for $800. Best Buy salesman "Well, it's 32 inches!" Me: "Hey moron, stop trying to trick me, that's measured diagonally across a 16:9 widescreen, that's no where near as big as a 32" square tube in terms of height. My feeling is, if it's below 42" widescreen, it's not going to be big enough. Sure it'll look great for 16:9 format shows or movies, but when you watch a 4:3 show at that aspect ratio your nice 32" widescreen shirnks to a 24" 4:3......
Argh.
So bascially here's the deal, you can buy a junky 27" TV for about 250-300 bucks for a flat tube, 150-200 for a 1980's wanna be round tube.
Next you have larger SDTV screens, 300+ for roundies, 400-700 for flats.
Then you get to HD, and everything is 800+, and the 800 dollar ones are LCD TV's that I'd more expect to see behind the headrest on a Hummer than in my TV room.
Best buy is the worst for this, they actually HIDE the older TV's 2 aisle away from their main TV display. And although online they show 2 CRT Projection HDTV's for reasonable prices (about 900 bucks) they are no where to be found in the store. In the main display (not even in the high end "Magnolia" room) all they have are $1500+ plasma's and DLP projection units. They had about 30 plasma screens on the wall for sale, all different models. But, they did not have ONE 32" flat tube SDTV in stock...oh wait, yeah they did, it was a very poor looking Sony "WEGA" (Not HD) that had a $700 price tag.
So I feel this is a huge rip off in the market. There is no mid range. It's either a junky TV, or a very expensive HDTV - HDTV's that should have dropped in price over a year ago.
What slim pickings there are for middle-teir are already either being discontinued or are heavily overpriced for what they should be.
Technology should drop in price as time goes on, but some of these older-style TV's are doing the exact opposite. As HDTV moves more into the market, this is to be expected as folks migrate away from SDTV to HDTV. But - it's too early because HDTV's still cost too much and lower cost HDTV tubes around 32" - 36" vanished 2 years ago.
I hate to say this folks, but just another area in which we as consumers are taking it on the chin...
I still haven't selected my new TV yet. I'll be borrowing a little 13" mono TV so I can watch Seinfeld reruns incase I can't decide by the end of the weekend.
I know, I know, I could easily by a similar TV like I had for cheap, but I figured this was the perfect excuse for a bit of an upgrade...good excuse, bad market timing...
So TV is dead, off to buy another. I spent time searching online, and Friday and Saturday nights I stopped by a few stores, mainly Best Buy.
All that made me, was annoyed.
A few years back the TV market was quite different. But like everything the manufacturers and retail outlets are getting rid of the decent cheap stuff and really putting an imbalance in television availability.
2 years ago I nearly bought a 36" square flat-tube HDTV. Was a tad pricey at the time, so figured, OK, I'll let the prices drop. They didn't - instead those types of TVs vanished.
When a lightning strike fried my folks TV a few months ago, they bought a 32" JVC standard flat tube TV (not HD) and honestly it's very nice. Not HD yeah, but gets digital signals and has a very nice 480i picture. Guess they got lucky.
All of those are gone. There are 3 32" SDTV's with flat tubes on BestBuy's site - non are readily available in the store. And if they are, they're way over priced. These TV's are priced at $450+. My parents paid 380 just 3 months ago for their nice JVC unit. So 3 months even though the technology aged rather than get cheaper they went up 70 bucks.
Ok, well, I'll take a deep breath, let's see what they have in HD tube TV's, those should be cheap by now, right?
Nope. Oh and apparnetly they forgot how to make them bigger than 27".
LCD TV's, I hear lots of good things about those...OK, nice picture, but damn that's awfully small for $800. Best Buy salesman "Well, it's 32 inches!" Me: "Hey moron, stop trying to trick me, that's measured diagonally across a 16:9 widescreen, that's no where near as big as a 32" square tube in terms of height. My feeling is, if it's below 42" widescreen, it's not going to be big enough. Sure it'll look great for 16:9 format shows or movies, but when you watch a 4:3 show at that aspect ratio your nice 32" widescreen shirnks to a 24" 4:3......
Argh.
So bascially here's the deal, you can buy a junky 27" TV for about 250-300 bucks for a flat tube, 150-200 for a 1980's wanna be round tube.
Next you have larger SDTV screens, 300+ for roundies, 400-700 for flats.
Then you get to HD, and everything is 800+, and the 800 dollar ones are LCD TV's that I'd more expect to see behind the headrest on a Hummer than in my TV room.
Best buy is the worst for this, they actually HIDE the older TV's 2 aisle away from their main TV display. And although online they show 2 CRT Projection HDTV's for reasonable prices (about 900 bucks) they are no where to be found in the store. In the main display (not even in the high end "Magnolia" room) all they have are $1500+ plasma's and DLP projection units. They had about 30 plasma screens on the wall for sale, all different models. But, they did not have ONE 32" flat tube SDTV in stock...oh wait, yeah they did, it was a very poor looking Sony "WEGA" (Not HD) that had a $700 price tag.
So I feel this is a huge rip off in the market. There is no mid range. It's either a junky TV, or a very expensive HDTV - HDTV's that should have dropped in price over a year ago.
What slim pickings there are for middle-teir are already either being discontinued or are heavily overpriced for what they should be.
Technology should drop in price as time goes on, but some of these older-style TV's are doing the exact opposite. As HDTV moves more into the market, this is to be expected as folks migrate away from SDTV to HDTV. But - it's too early because HDTV's still cost too much and lower cost HDTV tubes around 32" - 36" vanished 2 years ago.
I hate to say this folks, but just another area in which we as consumers are taking it on the chin...
I still haven't selected my new TV yet. I'll be borrowing a little 13" mono TV so I can watch Seinfeld reruns incase I can't decide by the end of the weekend.
I know, I know, I could easily by a similar TV like I had for cheap, but I figured this was the perfect excuse for a bit of an upgrade...good excuse, bad market timing...