[Barbara]

Just heard at the TV news.
"We're witnessing a surge in flat screens prices because production can't keep up with demand".

Flat screens bell curve?


(You know you're a peakoiler when you see bell curves everywhere)

[lowem]

Yep, definitely, when you see everything in terms of "peak <whatever>" ...

So far we've got what, Peak Water, Peak Fish, Peak Food, Peak Dell (lol), Peak Empire, Peak Uranium, Peak Outsourcing, Peak Coal and that's just what I could find with a quick Google Blogsearch.

I'm sure there're a lot more than that!

[smiley]

Flat panel displays are really one of the greatest commercial scams of this moment. All my friends and colleagues are asking when I'm going to buy one. My answer hasn't really made me popular.

1) My current TV isn't broken (yet)
2) Flat screen TV's are expensive.
3) The picture quality of an LCD screen is horrendous, the resolution and color strength of a plasma screen are actually a lot worse than a normal tube
4) The energy consumption of a plasma screen is enormous. A plasma would add about 80 euro to my electricity bill on a yearly basis.
5) The average TV has a projected lifespan of 15-20 years. The flat panel less than 10.

So I'm not going to throw away a perfectly good TV, to pay a heap for a product of inferior quality and higher maintenance costs.

[strider3700]

plasma sucks for power but LCD should save me money over my current clunker. However when a 19" montior and a box to hook it up to cable like a TV and a remote control comes in $200 cheaper then a LCD 19" tv I can smell the rip-off. I won't replace my TV unless it dies. Even then I may not bother.

[Free]

Go front projection!

Seriously, this must be one of the best kept secrets next to PO - why do you want to have a cheesy horrendously overprized flat screen TV when you can have a much bigger, better picture for much less money?

My beamer was the best investment in a gadget I ever made. People still think it's like the old days: clunky, expensive, difficult to handle, bad picture, lamp costs etc.

They missed the revolution - today you get a Beamer the size of a shoe box with a lamp life of 4000 hours for under $1000 which has a picture that rivals that of a real cinema.

Make sure you take a DLP though and not a LCD!

[lowem]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('smiley', 'F')lat panel displays are really one of the greatest commercial scams of this moment. All my friends and colleagues are asking when I'm going to buy one.

[MicroHydro]

I just bought a medium sized Chinese LCD TV so I will have something to watch Discovery, National Geographic, and Animal Planet in Aotearoa. (My old US standard set wouldn't work here, so I had to give it away.) The LCD picture quality is acceptable to me. My motivation was to have the low power consumption, since we don't have air conditioning here. It has been hot enough today downunder without adding another major heat source. Maybe there is a shortage in Europe, but there are plenty of flat screens available here on sale prices.

TVs are also very cheap now by historical standards. A 25 inch color TV with remote cost US$620 in 1971 (Dallas Fed report 1997 - this also jibes with my memory). That would be equivalent to US$2950 now. The 27 inch color LCD I bought cost the equivalent of US$800 in NZ, has a bigger screen, takes up less space, uses less power, and doesn't emit X-rays like the 1971 TV did. But the cost was only 27% of the Nixon era cost. I would call that a bargain. The LCD might be dead in 10 years, but so might the local power grid.