Re: hdtv purchase now or later?

["Rich Braun" <user=44@nabble.blu.org>]

 Laura Conrad <[hidden email]> wrote: 
> If anyone needs a 19 inch SD TV, my old one is out on the street in 
> front of 233 Broadway in Cambridge. 

The People's Republic of Cambridge classifies those as toxic waste.  You have 
to go to the DPW and get a sticker for something like $20 to get rid of an old 
TV larger than a certain size (I think 19" is under the cutoff so eventually 
maybe the city will come take it away if no one here on BLU is gracious enough 
to take it off your hands...;-) 

Here's another tidbit about the market:  manufacturers announced a total of 
about $20 billion in new fab plants for plasma TVs a couple years ago. 
Similar commitments are now going into large-panel LCD TVs. 

It's just like the condo craze of the past few years:  too much money chasing 
after too few customers.  With only 6 billion people in the world, you run out 
of customers fast if every other investor has jumped on the same bandwagon as 
you.  When condos and HDTV became coffee-shop and hairstylist talk here in 
Boston and then in 10,000 other cities around the world, it became obvious 
there would be a glut and a lengthy retrenchment. 

I wouldn't be surprised if by 2009 the smallest TV available is 23" and the 
going rate, including QAM and every other kind of tuner, will be under $200 
for that size. 

My eyes glaze over whenever I walk into a Best Buy (or 50 other store chains 
all selling the same merchandise) and see a solid wall of 50 to 100 
nearly-identical TVs.  Difference in quality between models is *much* less 
than it was among large-screen TVs of every previous generation.  (I'm early 
adopter of one of those, a 55" rear-projection Mitsubishi HDTV circa 6-1/2 
years ago.)  If enough other consumers feel the same way, even the high-end 
purveyors will be driven down to commodity prices. 

-rich 


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