26 thoughts on “Teevee Deals”

  3. I’ve seen a 40-inch LCD 1080p set for a surprisingly good price — as in, I could theoretically go pay cash for it right now — but the added monthly cost of HD is what would kill us.

    As for my computer, while the relatively new monitor supports HDMI, the WinXP bugbox it’s hooked up to doesn’t. So, odds are I’d use the cash to upgrade the computer instead.

  4. Since we moved to the country we’re on peasant-vision, so the old 27″ Sony is all we’ve got. Could not talk SWMBO into satellite TV and a flatscreen even for the Olympics. We watched the figure skaters on the Internet (we have a decent link using Motorola Canopy radios).

    I’m jealous …

  6. Two things. One is motion blur. LCDs have terrible, terrible motion blur, and these 120 Hz and 240 Hz video upsamplers only do a mild job of mitigating it. Why do I want to spend all of this money just to watch motion blur?

    Second thing is power consumption. Your run-of-the-mill color CRT TV uses about 80 watts. Triple that for even a smallish flat panel TV.

    A flat panel LCD monitor is a savings in power usage over a comparable CRT, but there is something about HDTV’s — is it the video processor?

  7. but the added monthly cost of HD is what would kill us.

    You can pull HD down over the air through an antennae. Not necessarily free in the sense that your tax dollars already pay for it. However, I watched a Dallas Cowboys games over the air at 1080i and you could see the sweat rolling down their faces while they were standing out in the middle of the field and the ripples of heat coming off the heaters from the sidelines.

  8. LCD motion is pretty bad (as is contrast ratio, or color range) but recent screens do it well enough. I get less eye fatigue working with an LCD rather than a CRT for example. Still compare before you buy.

    LCDs consume less power than CRTs. This is why they are used in laptops (besides less bulk). Plasma however is an energy hog. As for digital decoding circuitry, a CRT would need the same power for displaying likewise encoded channels. The advantage of digital encoding for television is that you can transmit more TV channels over the same bandwidth.

  9. Not necessarily free in the sense that your tax dollars already pay for it.

    I think you are confused. HDTV broadcasts are not paid for with tax dollars.

  10. I think you are confused. HDTV broadcasts are not paid for with tax dollars.

    It’s reasonable to think that, but you are wrong. The link shows the federal government coughing up over a billion dollars just to provide HDTV converters for people with analogue TVs. This is a subsidy for HDTV broadcasters. The federal government is also mandating a switch to HDTV from analogue. I’m not sure who all benefits from that, but it is a gift with considerable monetary value.

  11. Damn Jim, what are you going to do when there’s no more other people’s money to spend?

  12. Karl, the switch to HD already happened, and yes the government paid a billion dollars to hand out 45 dollar coupons to everybody so they could switch, but those boxes are only needed for people using antennae to capture ariel broadcasts. Anybody using satellite or cable systems was already HD compatible and didn’t need any help.

    The subsidy was deemed necessary because courts ruled that conversion of most of the analog tv channel space to cellular phone leases was a taking of public airwaves that required the people be compensated. The money people received for converter boxes came out of the license money the government earned from auctioning off the analog channel space to the phone companies.

  14. Forget 50″ .. the LG 42LH30 42-Inch 1080p LCD at $664 looks like a deal!

    But then I never watch TV on a TV and my Apple 23″ 1920×1200 (more than 1080P) computer monitor is just fine.

  15. “And it’s nice to see electronics continue to drop in price, even if space access doesn’t.”

    Of 21st Century expectations, I like to tell people that we didn’t get the flying cars, but the big, flat, non-CRT TVs pretty much arrived on time…

    But yeah, I have a 37″ 720p LCD TV that’s almost three years old. Could’ve gotten something 40′ or more and 1080p for the same money today, but like computers, you have to lock yourself in at some point if you want to actually do anything (plus being mindful of the shifting deadline of the digital broadcast switchover, back then), and upgrade at some later time.

  16. my monitor has been my TV for about 3 years.

    If I want resolution I go to see the film in a theater, but fact is that I can’t think of a single movie I’ve seen in about 20 years where the definition of the film mattered, and looking back on it, I don’t care about ANY of those films.

    Just saying.

  17. There is also another point. How big a screen is worth buying depends on the likely viewing distance.

    What is the pixel size on a 50″ 1920×1200 1080p monitor/TV? I suspect that if you put a big TV (even an HDTV one) in a small room you will be disappointed. As in, able to see obvious pixels.

  18. The link shows the federal government coughing up over a billion dollars just to provide HDTV converters for people with analogue TVs. This is a subsidy for HDTV broadcasters. The federal government is also mandating a switch to HDTV from analogue.

    Why? So that the feds could reclaim the analog spectrum, and auction it off, bringing in $45 billion to date. Your tax dollars are not paying for the switch to HDTV; on the contrary, the switch to HDTV is cutting your taxes.

  21. “on the contrary, the switch to HDTV is cutting your taxes.”

    Yea, sure, and J. Wellington Wimpy will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.

  22. But if you buy one from the link, it will help me get one, too. Not to mention buy my next bowl of gruel…

    Good thing you don’t live in Colorado, Rand. In their never-ending greed for tax revenue, Colorado passed an onerous piece of legislation affecting on-line sales tax collections, so Amazon ended their Associate program here.

    TechFlash reports: Amazon.com is retaliating against a newly minted Colorado sales tax law. The measure, recently signed by Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, requires online retailers like Amazon to inform Colorado residents how much they owe in sales tax on Web purchases and provide a summary of people’s Web purchases to the state.

    Amazon is responding by cutting off its Colorado affiliates—businesses that link to Amazon products and receive a fee on any resulting sales. It’s a sign that Amazon will continue to play hardball with states that try to tap the company for sales-tax collection.

    Amazon’s response is surprising because Colorado lawmakers tried to protect Amazon affiliates in crafting the legislation. They originally drafted a bill along the lines of what other states have attempted, classifying Amazon as a retailer with a physical “nexus” based on its ties to local affiliate websites (thus forcing it to collect sales tax).

  23. I buy from Amazon occasionally (more often than I should, probably), and never for large items like a TV, but I know that it adds up over time.

    My only frustration is being able to find the cookie set by Amazon that shows which affiliate your purchase will support. I frequent MANY different sites that use the Amazon Affiliate program, and some have a much larger user base and are much more commercialised, and I have less desire to provide them with money from my purchase.

    To date, if I’m worried that the cookie will be set to one of those sites, I will actually use the search bar on TTM or another affiliate site so that I know the cookie is set to support them, but I’m still skeptical about which affiliate is actually receiving the benefit, which bugs me, because I like supporting TTM and others in that way, and wouldn’t mind “spreading the wealth” if I had access to, and could decipher, the affiliate cookie.

  24. Also, FWIW, my two HDTVs are both CRT, and both are well below 40″, and weigh over 100 lbs. each. I’m not too worried about someone breaking into my house and walking off with one of them as easily as an LCD or LED TV can get carried off.

    And no need to worry about motion blur or macroblocking, either. 🙂

    It will be a long time before I find a pixel-based HDTV that meets the picture quality and consistency of either unit, I’m afraid.

  25. Douglas: a short list of movies that I think demand to be seen on as large a screen as possible, preferably from a 70mm print:

    Lawrence of Arabia
    2001
    Star Wars
    Blade Runner
    Lord of the Rings trilogy
    Avatar 3D

  26. And no need to worry about motion blur or macroblocking, either.

    Macroblocking is an artifact of the compression used in digital TV, not the screen technology, so you can get it on CRTs as well as on LCDs. It may be less noticeable on CRTs, however, as individual pixel boundaries (and therefore macroblock boundaries) are less distinct on CRTs.

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