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The falling price of a TV set

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Re: The falling price of a TV set

#191

Post by thedaemon »

baot wrote: post #172
Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biking in a foot of snow, on roads with pot holes large enough to swallow a tire, or that flood, or turn to black ice, is dangerous and sucks. Add the lack of actual bike lanes on all but a few block long stretches and biking becomes a death wish. Sure I can get a studded fat tire bike, and bike down the middle of the lane with dozens of pissed off people behind me honking and screaming at me, but that still doesn't…

You only chose to live that far from work, in a place that gets a foot of snow, because you assumed you could make the journey in a petroleum car. It wouldn't have been possible 100 years in the past and it won't be possible 100 years in the future. Same for your employer choosing not to provide showers.

You are making wild general assumptions about this person's life. Most people in the USA can't really choose where to live, they are forced into a particular zone based on income or some other factor. You are also suggesting that they move from the place that gets snow. This is a ludicrous suggestion and very rude. We can't all live on the beach front property.

Re: The falling price of a TV set

#192

Post by rayvd »

ratiolat wrote: post #30

I have a 43" Panasonic plasma TV, which has THX certified display panel. Paid about 800USD for it back 2013 I believe. I'd like to replace it with a LCD one, but oh boy how much do the THX certified ones cost - https://www.thx.com/product-finder/

What does THX certified actually do for you on such a small screen?

Re: The falling price of a TV set

#193

Post by thedaemon »

jaytaylor wrote: post #13
Traubenfuchs wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But people want to watch Netflix, Amazon Prime or other stream services. Modern smart TVs have those integrated.

Just get a Chromecast or any other streaming player device and hook it up to the TV with only HDMI. Solved- TV don't need to be able to spy on you.

Yes because Google never spys on you...

Re: The falling price of a TV set

#194

Post by lonelappde »

ReptileMan wrote: post #140
tbyehl wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sucks is that the cycle of falling prices and models being replaced is so fast that they become not worth repairing -- or impossible to repair -- within a few years. I trashed an otherwise perfectly good 4-5 y/o 49" television last year because something on the IR receiver board failed. What leads I could find for a replacement board (a) had them listed around 50% of what a comparable replacement television cost…

That would not be such a big issue if we had closed recycling loop.

Recycling is fundamentally impractical because the costs of doing the recycling a part at a time overwhelm the cost of mass production of new goods.

Re: The falling price of a TV set

#195

Post by thedaemon »

timw4mail wrote: post #186
netsharc wrote: post #118

He mentioned cars. Can't wait until personalized ads show up in cars.. "visit McDonald's drivethrough in 0.5 miles, buy your favorite, the McRib(TM), and get a free drink with code xyz! Only 2 minute detour and the drivethrough currently has 2 cars in it!". And it will have user profiles and knows the driver's gender, etc, and shopping preferences. Child seat fitted since 2 months but weight sensor suggests no child…

Gas pumps all seem to have video ads now.

Which is super annoying. They are really loud and hard to "ignore". I do my best to ignore them.

Re: The falling price of a TV set

#196

Post by lonelappde »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #155
WalterBright wrote: post #136

> Automakers, for example, can now expect to see bigger profits from the loans they make on selling cars than from selling the actual cars. I took a community college class in accounting taught by a guy who used to sell cars. He told me the money a dealership made was not from selling the cars, it was from selling the financing. This was in the 1970's. BTW, I recommend taking a basic accounting class. It will pay off…

This. A dealer's margins on the cars are razor thin these days. They make the money on financing and servicing. Even if you buy the car in cash, the purchase is one time payment, but after that they have you as a recurring customer for the long run with service costs which is where the money comes in. No wonder modern cars are designed to be as difficult to service as possible by the owner. In my older Fiat I could c…

I read on HN that cars were a silly American thing that Europeans don't need.

Re: The falling price of a TV set

#197

Post by lonelappde »

chadash wrote: post #67
gruez wrote: post #62

>With less demand for actual TVs, there’s less reason for manufacturers to price them even more highly. I don't buy this reasoning. Tablets and phones supposedly replaced laptops and desktops (or so I've heard), yet the prices for those hasn't really budged in the past couple of decades. >But the most interesting and telling reason for why TVs are now so cheap is because TV manufacturers have found a new revenue stre…

Prices for laptops and desktops are way down. Best Buy is selling a core i5, 256 SSD, 8 GB ram Dell laptop for $399 as of this writing. That's plenty of power for most used. Where prices continue to be high is for business laptops, where people will pay a lot more money for a little bit more performance (and better build quality, lighter weight). I remember a time when a half decent laptop was $1500.

What's the screen quality on that $400 laptop? Screens, keyboards, trackpads, is how laptops differentiate. The overpowered (thermally throttled) CPUs are just to get the ricers' money.

Re: The falling price of a TV set

#198

Post by mrandish »

scarface74 wrote: post #173
mrandish wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I agree. The article's claim about app rev share offsetting big parts of the cost just doesn't make sense. The reason that prices are lower is that manufacturing capacity is much higher, not supporting analog input saves money, vertical integration onto a handful of ICs, container shipping and supply chains are cheaper and Costco, WalMart etc will sell TVs for very low markup to drive traffic.

Roku is built into many of the lower end TVs. I’m sure they get a cut of the revenue that Roku receives. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-11/streaming... Nearly every inch of real estate on Roku is for rent. For $1 million, a streaming service can take over the home screen to advertise a show. When Hulu got the rights to stream Seinfeld, it paid Roku to transform a portion of the screen into an image o…

I'm not claiming that TV manufacturers don't get some money from rev shares. My point is that it's not money the manufacturer can count on because subscribing or buying extra services is optional for customers on every set that I've seen. The CPM from just displaying ads in a program guide has to be tiny as CPMs for display only is crap everywhere. In my view, that's why some of these UIs have every pixel for sale, it's not highly valued.

For myself and my sample of family and friends, TVs are displays. We buy the screen we want based on size, specs and image quality, we never connect the screen to the internet, run one HDMI into it and control the feed upstream from a cable or satellite box, streaming box (FireTV, AppleTV, etc) or HTPC running something like Plex. As for the remote control, after configuring the screen to HDMI-1 and turning off all the stupid hyped-up color, frame interpolation and other gimmicky modes that try to create pixels that were never in the source signal, I take the batteries back out of the remote and toss it in the box full of all the other unused TV remotes in the basement waiting for when the screen gets donated to a friend or relative in several years (I just had a funny image pop in my head of all those remotes sitting in the box commiserating like the forgotten toys in the attic in Toy Story).

Manufacturers get zero incremental revenue from us. I'm sure they get some rev from some people but it's going to be a blended average with a fair number of zero samples. The reason I think this is I have a little personal experience doing software bundle deals with hardware consumer electronics manufacturers. It was similar in that if consumers bought into the upsell on our apps there was a rev split with the manufacturer. CE manufacturers invariably assigned zero net present value to any theoretical future revenue that isn't guaranteed. They live and die by their quarterly COGS when it hits the dock in Shenzen. I'm not saying their business can't change over time but that's where it's coming from.

Re: The falling price of a TV set

#199

Post by lonelappde »

kube-system wrote: post #105
gruez wrote: post #62

>With less demand for actual TVs, there’s less reason for manufacturers to price them even more highly. I don't buy this reasoning. Tablets and phones supposedly replaced laptops and desktops (or so I've heard), yet the prices for those hasn't really budged in the past couple of decades. >But the most interesting and telling reason for why TVs are now so cheap is because TV manufacturers have found a new revenue stre…

An entry level laptop was still ~$1000 two decades ago. https://mobile.twitter.com/akpix/status/551801976267485186

$1200 and $1500 if you don't count the fake savings (mail in rebate and rebate for buying MSN subscription)

Re: The falling price of a TV set

#200

Post by refurb »

bluedino wrote: post #63
altec3 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years ago my parents walked in to a Toyota dealership to buy a new Camry with cash. They were talked into financing it, bought it, then got home and realized they should have just paid cash. The next day they went back to the dealership to pay it off and the guy who gave them the loan was a huge asshole to them the whole time.

Why would they go to the dealership to pay the loan off?

That’s seems odd.

Sometimes you get a better price when you get financing.

So you get financing, then pay the loan off the next month. And you pay it to the lender, not the dealership.

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