7 ms·
How did TVs get so cheap?
- Finnucane 10mo agoI suppose it would take a seperate article to dig into the financial aspects—advertising and data collection as revenue for the manufacturers.
- kotaKat 10mo agoRoku’s average revenue per user is $40+ a year per their financials, so there’s definitely a lot more subsidization of the hardware than most consumers think.
- everdrive 10mo agoThat's fairly interesting, and honestly lower than I would have thought. I really have no idea how long the average consumer holds onto a TV, but if we guess 3-5 years then we're at $120 - $200 subsidy per customer. And this is before you think about the maintenance of their advertising / tracking servers. (although maybe that is factored in?) Yes, most consumers would buy a $250 TV rather than a seemingly-equivalent $450 TV, but another $200 just to not be tracked and advertised to is really a small lift. Kind of surprising that there aren't options for this in market if the numbers are really that tight. Compare a cheap Windows laptop to a macbook -- yes, they're not really equivalent from a technical standpoint but to a lot of consumers they may effectively be equivalent as the "device my kid needs for school." But the price differences there will be much greater. Perhaps as much as $500 or more.
- wccrawford 10mo agoTo do that, they'd have to admit what they're doing out loud, and then they'd have public sentiment against them. It'd ruin what they have. Instead, they'll wait for the revolt, and then sell the upgrade. Then they look like heroes for doing what people are asking for, instead of villains that cause the situation in the first place. They'll spin it as offering affordable TVs to those can't afford them without the advertisements, and no-ad TVs for those who are willing to pay the extra. And most people will eat it up.
- idiotsecant 10mo agoThere are such options. They are wildly expensive because very few people want them.
- lotsofpulp 10mo ago>I really have no idea how long the average consumer holds onto a TV, but if we guess 3-5 years 3-5 years is smartphone life. New TVs should easily last 10 years. My $600 1080p TV from 2016 is still in the living room. A subsequent $600 4K TV bought in 2020 is also fine. I don’t see what could prompt me to replace them until they break. The quality difference is negligible, especially with the garbage bitrate most streaming services provide.
- Ancapistani 10mo agoYeah - we barely watch TV in our house (relative to my experience growing up, at least), and we have two: a 50" in our bedroom and a 60" in the living room. They're 12 and 8 years old, respectively. I'm just now starting to feel like I should consider a new one for the living room, but it's far from the top of my list.
- everdrive 10mo agoAgreed, and my TV is much older as well. I was just guessing about average consumers, but maybe you're correct. Maybe people don't cycle out TVs so quickly. I suppose the length of ownership has a strong bearing on cost. Part of the concern here as well is that Roku would be incentivized to err on the side of caution. ie, if not enough people keep their TVs for 10 years, they might need to practically plan for customers to keep their TVs for only 5 years.
- Finnucane 10mo agoOur TV is c. 2010, and still works fine. And given the current offerings, I have no plans to replace it any time soon.
- well_actulily 10mo agoI never connect my TVs to WiFi, and I loathe the day they start slipping cell antennas into these things.
- qsera 10mo agoYes, I always see TV as an ad/propoganda delivery device, with "sponsered programs" as a bait to get humans in front of it. The "Idiot Box" box qualification is not without reason.
- ronsor 10mo agoI think most people don't particularly like TV ads and try to avoid them.
- monitortimes2 10mo agoMaybe the unsubsidized cost could be determined by looking at the price difference between a similarly spec'd TV and computer monitor.
- IlikeKitties 10mo ago[dead]
- websiteapi 10mo agochinese (slave) labor. in fact, look at anything primarily imported from china - very cheap compared to 1990s. look at things that cannot easily be exported from china like housing or education. expensive. the world has never been cheap, we're just better at arbitrage now. https://www.nber.org/papers/w21906 https://www.nber.org/papers/w21906
- whateverboat 10mo agoI would say it the opposite ways, everything has become cheap, but in housing and education, there is now a huge profit lobby.
- formerly_proven 10mo agotfw the price of a thing which is basically illegal to create (housing) goes up what did the ancient capitalists mean by this?
- jacobthesnakob 10mo agoThis is a very Reddit comment. You can move to Oklahoma and get a brand new construction house for under $300k. But you won’t, because you want to live within an hour or so of the same dozen major US cities everyone else wants to live in close proximity to. The houses as a structure aren’t going up in value (any more than the price of construction materials and labor has). It’s the land that’s appreciating faster than inflation in most cases you’re complaining about.
- cpursley 10mo agoAren't their salaries and standard of living up a lot - higher than even places like Mexico? Or are all the videos of modern China on YouTube CGI/AI state propaganda? Also, South Korean TVs are cheap, too. Also slave labor?
- websiteapi 10mo ago> South Korean TVs are cheap, too more expensive than chinese as for salaries - yes indeed they are up. not every chinese laborer is a slave obviously, but many are - not usually for electronics directly though, more often for the inputs of such (energy and what not). i'm surprised there's contention about this - it's all over the news.
- snide 10mo agoOne place where "TVs" still remain fairly expensive is in large format touch screens. Outside of using IR frames, getting a large (40 inch) touch capacitive display still requires quite a lot of legwork. I've been trying to find them for my DnD map system Table Slayer [0] and I had to contact factories in China directly. It's still many hundreds of dollars per device even for raw hardware. [0]: https://tableslayer.com https://tableslayer.com
- bhouston 10mo agoI suspect the main issue is economies of scale. There is little demand thus there are no multibillion dollar plants optimized for delivering them at scale. (The same reason why 8K TVs are not yet cheap.)
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- snide 10mo agoThere are so many kiosks out there though. It's more that I think because it's a commercial audience, the pricing hasn't reached down too much. All that said, it's still odd there's not at least one boutique option for hobbyists.
- _DeadFred_ 10mo agoThere used to be tons. Heck there were even options we used to use where you could overlay over your CRT. That market has leveled out to what the market wants at this point.
- ge96 10mo agoWhat about those beam breaker strips you could put on x/y axis, maybe multi-touch/item placement would be problematic.
- snide 10mo agoYep. That's what IR frames do, and that's exactly the problem. What I've built actually works really well, it's just hard to justify that pricing.
- flerchin 10mo agoMoore's law. TVs went from vacuum tubes to transistors.
- hunta2097 10mo agoCRTs were so incredibly hard to manufacture it kind of blows my mind! Also they were heavy, fragile and difficult to import. The components were usually shipped to the target countries and assembled there. We must be around 10-15 generations in to LCD TVs at this point.
- agumonkey 10mo agoa modern lcd is also a wonder but it's infinitely more suited to automation
- Growtika 10mo agoI guess the fact that Netflix, Disney and others paying smart TV companies to be there have big part of reducing the price. When I think about it, most of the remote controls I saw in recent years have Youtube/Netflix/ buttons on it also
- cogman10 10mo agoMaybe in some cases, but monitors have also fallen off a cliff when it comes to pricing.
- gausswho 10mo agoWe may do well to ask the same of what we call phones. Our use of them may be more valuable to others than to ourselves.
- Telemakhos 10mo agoSomeone actually called me on the voice line yesterday. It was the first time the phone part of the little pocket tracker-computer had operated in ages.
- a3w 10mo agoAre TVs cheap, or does someone else pay the hidden cost? Food would probably be cheaper, if that was traded as freely as TVs. But since there seem to be good reasons to regulate prices that farmers allow to work, not every domain of production outsources environmental costs to non-citizens or nature in general.
- halestock 10mo agoWhat?
- gediz 10mo agoNot sure about the second paragraph, but about first one I kind of agree with "someone else paying the hidden cost". I believe Google, Amazon, Roku, etc. basically pay the ODMs to manufacture the TV for them, and market the devices with affordable prices to acquire more users, in order to gain more usage data from consumers.
- mschuster91 10mo agoTheir point most likely is that there's a lot of nasty chemicals and toxic emissions associated with any kind of large scale manufacturing, particularly when semiconductors are involved - the Silicon Valley is by far the US' largest agglomeration of Superfund sites for a reason. Other countries, particularly China, are known for much laxer standards and even more timid enforcement of these - of course, the generations after ours will have to live with the contamination, but for now, they can produce for far, far lower costs than Western countries with environment and labor protection laws and decent enforcement. And another thing... advertisers. Good luck finding a non-smart TV these days, you gotta pay a significant premium for what's known as "digital signage" (assuming that you can even get models actually usable). Normal consumer TVs and monitors? They're sold at a loss or near-loss price because the real profit is from the continuous (!) stream of ads over the life time of the device, plus analytics over the content that the users consume.
- mschuster91 10mo ago> Food would probably be cheaper, if that was traded as freely as TVs. But since there seem to be good reasons to regulate prices that farmers allow to work, not every domain of production outsources environmental costs to non-citizens or nature in general. Resiliency is also often priced out - and food is actually the perfect example for that. Remember the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine? A lot of countries in Africa were pretty darn screwed - domestic industry had gone down the drain following mismanagement (e.g. Simbabwe) and/or Western donations (can't compete with free), so once Western donations dropped down after we reduced overproduction, they went for Ukraine who at the time was famous for its highly productive arable land that could supply wheat at probably the cheapest prices in the world. But once the Russians invaded and farms had to close up shop (fields were contaminated, transportation infeasible, machinery destroyed, workers killed by acts of war or joining the army), the situation became very dire.
- bhouston 10mo agoUsing cost per area metric for LCD panels when we stopped for the most part increasing resolution means you will find that the main driver of lower costs is the cost of glass. Basically, we have been, since 2018 (I incorrectly wrote 2010 here earlier), only spreading out the same number of pixels on larger areas of glass, so the number of pixel components per unit area has decreased. I have tried to price out 8K TV/monitors and they are horribly expensive (also not supported on MacOS). Probably both because of the larger number of components and we haven’t yet achieved economies of scale.
- thfuran 10mo ago>Basically, we have been, since 2010, only spreading out the same number of pixels on larger areas of glass Only if you ignore that 4k entered and then became common in the consumer space since then, followed by the introduction of 8k.
- Forgeties79 10mo ago4K TV’s were not really a thing in 2010
- bhouston 10mo agoYou are correct, I should have said 2018 or there about.
- robin_reala 10mo agoI’ve not personally tried it, but Apple have an “Use an 8K display with your Mac” support document at https://support.apple.com/en-us/102236 https://support.apple.com/en-us/102236.
- bhouston 10mo agoYou are correct! I hadn't checked since I had an M1 MacBook, back then it was 6K (https://juicedsystems.com/en-ca/blogs/news/macbook-m1-and-m2-maximum-resolutions-a-comprehensive-guide-to-video-input-connection https://juicedsystems.com/en-ca/blogs/news/macbook-m1-and-m2...), but it appears that since the M2 (according to the same website), the upper limit is now 8K.
- poisonborz 10mo agoThe answer is almost always either "sales trick" or "slave labor".
- echoangle 10mo agoThat doesn't explain a lot, why were those things not used in 2000?
- poemxo 10mo agoI think economies of scale, while only mentioned in the penultimate paragraph in TFA, is an underrated factor. Whenever something looks like alien technology but is available for $200-300, I assume an economy of scale helped. TFA goes into the industrial engineering efforts associated with LCD manufacturing, but I don't think those wins would have shown up without a huge market for TVs.
- xnorswap 10mo agoGlobal standardisation surely helped too. In the CRT era, there was a functional difference between NTSC and PAL CRTs.
- jonhohle 10mo agoNot only that, but NTSC and VGA (and higher) CRTs. I had a 1600x1200 CRT on my desk in 1999. HD CRTs existed, but were basically always out of reach for most people. PVMs fo broadcast and medical were different still. Now LCDs are used at effectively every scale - tiny embedded systems, watches, phones, tablets, laptop displays, monitors, TVs, projectors, and even billboards. CRTs can’t scale like that.
- PearlRiver 10mo agoHow many CRTs could you put in one standard sized shipping container versus LCD panels?
- NoMoreNicksLeft 10mo agoSaw a box at Costco the other night, looked like it was a queen-sized mattress. I doubt that they're less bulky than CRTs, just shaped different.
- jonhohle 10mo agoThe largest CRT had a 43” viewable screen and had a volume of 0.75m³. A 43” LCD TV has a volume around 0.025m³. I’m not saying you could fit 30 packaged LCD TVs in the space of one CRT, but the volume is completely different. If you don’t think LCDs are less bulky, you probably never had a CRT.
- gadders 10mo agoOne point is that the things that have increased in cost are more heavily regulated/government controlled than the items that haven't. I did hear an interesting quote from someone techy that said "If you punch a whole in a plasterboard wall, it is now cheaper to buy a TV to cover the hole than get someone to repair the plasterboard."
- alvah 10mo ago"One point is that the things that have increased in cost are more heavily regulated/government controlled than the items that haven't." This is one of the central theories behind Kartik Gada's ATOM concept. He may come across as a bit of crank to some, but he has some interesting ideas.
- Someone 10mo ago> One point is that the things that have increased in cost are more heavily regulated/government controlled But what’s cause and what’s effect? Things that get cheaper over time don’t need price regulation to ensure that people who need them can afford to buy them, for example.
- squigz 10mo agoNow let's compare reliability/longevity of things that are more regulated than not. I don't care how cheap TVs are if I have to buy a new one every 1 or 2 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
- xnx 10mo ago> I have to buy a new one every 1 or 2 years Is that a problem? I've probably purchased 7 TVs over the decades and only had one fail (replaced under warranty).
- rahimnathwani 10mo agoI did hear an interesting quote from someone techy Marc Andreesson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_1cTlLpNMg&t=4262s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_1cTlLpNMg&t=4262s
- yread 10mo agoDon't jinx it! https://www.notebookcheck.net/TV-prices-set-to-rise-over-memory-and-panel-shortages-as-Samsung-logs-record-profit.1199818.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/TV-prices-set-to-rise-over-mem...
- foxrider 10mo agoPlease just make SmartTVs unattractive and force companies to make dumb TVs again Please just make SmartTVs unattractive and force companies to make dumb TVs again Please just make SmartTVs unattractive and force companies to make dumb TVs again
- mghackerlady 10mo agoJust buy "digital signage"
- devilbunny 10mo agoWhich works, but is priced very high - and not just for the fact that the seller can't monetize ads. Digital signage displays are designed for much higher duty cycles than a home TV, for display in areas where ambient brightness is much higher on average. You're paying for the tech that you want, but you're also paying for a lot of tech that you don't want or need.
- awakeasleep 10mo agoRight, but what everyone is whingeing about is for it to be available even at a higher price point. Digital signage shows the market is already solving this problem so if all this complaining is to mean anything people are talking about yet another new market that fits in between the smart TV price and the digital signage price
- mark_l_watson 10mo agoMost smart TVs have advertisements and spyware that yields additional profits. Same with some electronic devices: Apple devices and Windows laptops sold directly by Microsoft have less advertising and spyware, but at a higher price. Years ago I got so fed up with the smart TV experience that I bought a $200 dumb TV at Walmart, only had one HDMI input and terminals for a local antenna - hooked an Apple TV into it and had such a good experience. It is easy to lose sight of how much money is made by collecting data on people and advertising.
- Numerlor 10mo agoComputer monitors have been getting a lot better while being cheaper, with no ads or services. You can get a high resresh rate 4K ips for about $200 nowadays. Display tech is just advancing faster than other tech at the moment
- bitshiftfaced 10mo agoHow does this work with respect to using a remote? I know something like a Roku remote would work display-wise, but you usually program it to use the signal that the your brand of TV responds to. That way you can use the Roku/whatever remote to turn on the actual TV and control audio. Speaking of, how does audio work for this set up?
- afavour 10mo agoHDMI standards allow plugged in devices to control the power state of the TV. e.g. my Apple TV will turn the TV on when I press a button on the aTV remote and will turn the TV off when I turn the Apple TV off. Audio is a separate challenge, I'm not sure what you'd do there. Do computer monitors have eARC outputs? None of the ones I have do. Again if you had an Apple TV you could pair it with a HomePod (or pair of them) to avoid the issue but that's a niche solution.
- WmWsjA6B29B4nfk 10mo agoSamsung already makes a bunch of "smart monitors", putting there the same software they use on TVs. Not sure about other manufacturers, but would be surprised if they don't catch up soon.
- haolez 10mo agoWho wants to be a co-founder with me on a company that's focused on just making dumb appliances? We can start with TVs - just remove all the smart stuff, make it compatible with apps for whoever wants them without an additional Apple TV-like device, and that's it. Start building trust with consumers and find out a way of guaranteeing that this trust would never be betrayed. It's just a boring company forever. Economy of scale would be against us, but maybe there is a way to surpass it. Fun thought exercise :)
- emptyfile 10mo ago[dead]
- discordance 10mo agoYou could surpass that by just charging more. I would pay more for a high quality dumb set.
- Tepix 10mo agoWhy not keep your Smart TV disconnected from the internet instead?
- haolez 10mo agoFor how long will this work? Eventually, these companies are just going to insert LTE capabilities and use their own connection for data acquisition.
- randallsquared 10mo ago> find out a way of guaranteeing that this trust would never be betrayed I have no idea how to solve this. The pressure to cash out just gets stronger as the business succeeds more. Even starting the "business" as a non-profit is no guarantee, as we've seen with OpenAI!
- haolez 10mo agoAgreed. This is the hardest problem and I don't know how to solve it either.
- thaack 10mo agoI think it's also understated that competition in the consumer TV market is very strong. South Korean, Chinese and Japanese manufacturers are all fighting each other and it's a market where the average consumer wants the lowest price/size. No one player controls over 30% of the market. [1] Competition is good. [1]https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1740046963#:~:text=Hisense%2C%20TCL%20and%20Sony%20round,of%20the%20global%20OLED%20market. https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=...
- nxm 10mo agoChart on the site reveals that anything that's propped up by the government/tax payers inevitably exceeds inflation since the government becomes the piggy bank and inefficiency becomes the norm. Government backed student loans and Obamacare subsidies are just examples
- relaxing 10mo agoTrend was in effect before Obamacare passed so that can’t be it. The cheap stuff getting cheaper is all made in China so I don’t think socialism is the issue.
- cramcgrab 10mo agoAi spyware.
- krautburglar 10mo agoTV is a mind-control system. Even if they were expensive to make, they would still be given to the proles at minimal cost.
- thijson 10mo agoSomething I haven't seen mentioned, the TV's got a lot lighter too. That's purely anecdotal from me having had to move TV's around for the past few decades, and that's not comparing CRT's to LCD's. Even the LCD's have become lighter.
- EvanAnderson 10mo agoI'm assuming it's a function of building the devices down to a price point. Fewer atoms makes for lower cost. I look at some large TVs of 2016 vintage being sold for surplus and I was shocked at how heavy they were. I don't have the specific numbers handy, but I recall they were >40 lbs heavier than I expected them to be compared to today's TVs.
- squigz 10mo agoComing from rear-projection TVs as a kid to 75"+ TVs I can pick up with one hand is still super surprising to me
- piltdownman 10mo agoI remember nearly killing myself as a younger man trying to hook up a games console to our powerhouse of a 32" Philips Trinitron, tipping the scales at a svelte 150lbs or so.
- EvanAnderson 10mo agoThere was a 32" flat screen Sony CRT up for surplus on the same site. I really, really wanted it and then I saw it was nearly 300 lbs. I was sad to see it go but I didn't have the manpower to move it!
- piltdownman 10mo agoDefinitely noticeable and inversely correlated with the quality of native sound from the average LCD/LED TV nowadays - putting sufficient wattage speakers and optimising for audio with acoustic cavities became an afterthought once soundbars were accepted as a necessity. Cooling systems are also greatly improved.
- rootsudo 10mo agobecause sociey values TVs more then cars, education, health, etc
- DustinBrett 10mo agoThe top-end TV's are still quite expensive, if you want the best possible picture.
- noobcoder 10mo agoI think because major manufacturing moved to Asia which drastically cuts labor and production costs. Almost 99% of the tvs are flat and require same uniform manufacturing
- xbar 10mo agoNow do that with houses.
- dostick 10mo agoTVs did not become cheap at all. The intermediate technology which is LCD, that became cheap. that’s like saying mechanical hard drives became cheap. But who’s buying. Also article uses 50” as a benchmark. Consumer moves towards larger sizes and OLED.
- 112233 10mo agoWhenever cheap TVs with spyware come up I always have the same question — how can I detect /learn that the TV includes esim or other means of directly connecting to remote servers? This is not a rhetorical question — do I read FCC, something else? Use SDR?
- palmotea 10mo agoWhy would a maker of a cheap TV bother with cell connectivity? It doesn't come for free as there would be extra components and an ongoing cell service subscription they'd have to pay for, and that could add up to a big fraction of the total cost at the low end. Plus the vast majority of buyers are going to connect the TV to their network anyway to use streaming apps.
- karmakaze 10mo agoFree neighborhood internet sounds great until we consider what could follow.
- 112233 10mo agoHardly anything in current TV pricing makes any sense. 763€ for LG OLED42C5, while cheapest current gen iphone is pushing 1k€. If, as is asserted, telemetry is such a golden ore, getting uninterruped access to it would surely cover the cost, at least in some markets.
- gruez 10mo ago>how can I detect /learn that the TV includes esim or other means of directly connecting to remote servers? I'm not aware of any confirmed instance of this, so for now this is just an urban legend.
- flashgordon 10mo agoDid they? I can get a 70" "smart"-tv for a few hundred bucks with a crap load of bloatware. But I cannot get the same TV that is "dumb" at anywhere near that price point (I just want a bunch of HDMI ports that I can connect other devices into - including my laptop). Those cost a lot more from what I recall. And part of this was due to TVs being a great port-key to grab your viewing habits etc?
- tsoukase 10mo agoMaterial goods became cheap since the 2000s because of the low cost production in developing countries like China and India and services became expensive because of local labor. If the goods where produced locally they would be similarly expensive.
- TYPE_FASTER 10mo agoComputer software is on the chart, computer hardware should be as well. Compare the cost of a new Apple II or Commodore 64 system with a modern Chromebook.
- sabdud3 10mo agoMost TV's are full of bloated AndroidTV come pre-installed, and most of the apps preinstalled pays most of the TV