How much did you pay for your first HDTV, and when?
 

An article in today's Wall Street Journal talks about falling prices.
40+ inch sets go for $700 or so and prices are dropping before
Christmas.

I paid $1350 at Costco for my first 32" LCD in mid-2006. I quickly
grew addicted to HDTV. Within a year, I had replaced all my TV's. I
purchased a 37" and 46" LCD in that time for about $1600 each.

How much were reasonable sized HDTV's way back before my purchases?

How much did you pay for your first HDTV, and when?
 

"NadCixelsyd" wrote in message
...
An article in today's Wall Street Journal talks about falling prices.
40+ inch sets go for $700 or so and prices are dropping before
Christmas.

I paid $1350 at Costco for my first 32" LCD in mid-2006. I quickly
grew addicted to HDTV. Within a year, I had replaced all my TV's. I
purchased a 37" and 46" LCD in that time for about $1600 each.

How much were reasonable sized HDTV's way back before my purchases?

I was working in HDTV R&D in the mid-90's, so it was very tough for me.

In my lab at work, I had completely insane state-of-the-art monitors with
kludged video sources made from PC's.
At MIT, Cable Labs, and in Japanese R&D centers, I saw
beyond-the-state-of-art stuff which was incredible but completely
unreachable for a decade or more.

At the time, conventional wisdom from everyone in the business was that HDTV
would always be limited to 48" and above since no humans can really see 720
much less 1080 at viewing distance. Japanese mfg execs said they needed to
extract hundred million $ out of the initial early adopter markets to pay
back their investments. This meant HD was gonna be real pricey, for a long
time.

Retail execs from Best Buy, Circuit City and others proclaimed that they
could no longer survive selling less than $1000 TV's with slim margins. We
didn't believe them but it meant that prices were gonna be high for a long
time.

At home, my wife (correctly) opposed spending $10 grand for a 60" HDTV (my
dream).

So I made her a deal in 1999:
I would redo a room as a home theater with new furniture and built-ins for
the technology.
And SHE would agree that when a 60" 1080i could be had for $2500, I could
buy it without question.
I told her it would probably be 2-3 years in the future. We agreed and the
timer started.

I think we executed the deal in 2002 with a rear projection, $2499, on sale
from $2999

Great deal, and I didn't replace that original HDTV until last year.

How much did you pay for your first HDTV, and when?
 

On 11/10/10 PDT 2:29 PM, NadCixelsyd wrote:
An article in today's Wall Street Journal talks about falling prices.
40+ inch sets go for $700 or so and prices are dropping before
Christmas.

I paid $1350 at Costco for my first 32" LCD in mid-2006. I quickly
grew addicted to HDTV. Within a year, I had replaced all my TV's. I
purchased a 37" and 46" LCD in that time for about $1600 each.

How much were reasonable sized HDTV's way back before my purchases?

In the Fall of 2003 I bought a ca. 57" Sony rear-projection set for just
under two grand, and it was the bees knees for quite a while. It in turn
got blown away a year ago for about the same price with a Plasma Samsung
a tad bigger, plus a smaller bed room sized LCD, also gorgeous, price ca
$750. The Samsungs are both 1080i, while the Sony was 720p.

--
john mcwilliams

How much did you pay for your first HDTV, and when?
 

In Sept 2006 I purchased a 57" Mitsubishi DLP for $2,300 plus tax,
and that was on sale. I remember I absolutely wanted an HDTV for
football season, so price was not an issue.

Today the same tv goes for about $1000 ( for the 60").
However I have to say after 4 years my TV still looks great and have
no regrets.

How much did you pay for your first HDTV, and when?
 

On Nov 10, 4:02*pm, "DockScience" wrote:
"NadCixelsyd" wrote in message

I was working in HDTV R&D in the mid-90's, so it was very tough for
me.

In my lab at work, I had completely insane state-of-the-art
monitors with
kludged video sources made from PC's.
At MIT, Cable Labs, and in Japanese R&D centers, I saw
beyond-the-state-of-art stuff which was incredible but completely
unreachable for a decade or more.

At the time, conventional wisdom from everyone in the business was
that HDTV
would always be limited to 48" and above since no humans can really
see 720
much less 1080 at viewing distance. *Japanese mfg execs said they
needed to
extract hundred million $ out of the initial early adopter
markets to pay
back their investments. This meant HD was gonna be real pricey, for
a long
time.

Retail execs from Best Buy, Circuit City and others proclaimed that
they
could no longer survive selling less than $1000 TV's with slim
margins. We
didn't believe them but it meant that prices were gonna be high for
a long
time.

At home, my wife (correctly) opposed spending $10 grand for a 60"
HDTV (my
dream).

So I made her a deal in 1999:
I would redo a room as a home theater with new furniture and built-
ins for
the technology.
And SHE would agree that when a 60" 1080i could be had for $2500, I
could
buy it without question.
I told her it would probably be 2-3 years in the future. We agreed
and the
timer started.

I think we executed the deal in 2002 with a rear projection, $2499,
on sale
from $2999

Great deal, and I didn't replace that original HDTV until last
year.

And while you were working on your HDTV project(s), I was working at
Digital Audio and Video (DAV) on the Cineglyph telecine. Dave Walker
sold DAV to Film Systems who repainted and renamed the Cineglyph the
Nova scanner. I did the analog electronics - gain, lift, gamma, six
vector secondary color correction and the servo interface to a
MetaSpeed. LOTS of ICs from Analog Devices in that machine. They're
still building them and I have a Cineglyph (not a Nova) at work.

We bought a 50" Samsung DLP in December of '03. Out the door price
with an ATSC set top box and stand(not integrated back then) about
$4500. It's still chugging along but I need to install the second
replacement color wheel. Also have 3 (currently recording OTA) PCs
with HDTV tuners and 5 TBytes of USB drives besides the 6.5 TBytes in
the 3 computers. Never any reruns here.

G²

How much did you pay for your first HDTV, and when?
 

Link to Nova

http://www.telecine.com/nova.html

G²

How much did you pay for your first HDTV, and when?
 

Sony 34" XBR970 CRT in 05 for about $800. I would've bought 2 but getting
this 200lbs TV upstairs would've been impossible. I too grew addicted to
HDTV once I found the unencrypted channels on cable but added subchannels
along with PBS discontinuing its beautiful national feed makes me I remember
when OTA PQ didn't suck. Comcast also started recompressing the cable
channels around then but I always too cheap to pay the $10 they want for an
HD STB (still waiting for a Tru2way box I can buy).

How much did you pay for your first HDTV, and when?
 

NadCixelsyd wrote:
An article in today's Wall Street Journal talks about falling prices.
40+ inch sets go for $700 or so and prices are dropping before
Christmas.

My guess is that $20 per inch for the mid-range sets will be standard discount price
for a few years.

How much did you pay for your first HDTV, and when?
 

?

"NadCixelsyd" wrote in message
...

An article in today's Wall Street Journal talks about falling prices.
40+ inch sets go for $700 or so and prices are dropping before
Christmas.

I paid $1350 at Costco for my first 32" LCD in mid-2006. I quickly
grew addicted to HDTV. Within a year, I had replaced all my TV's. I
purchased a 37" and 46" LCD in that time for about $1600 each.

How much were reasonable sized HDTV's way back before my purchases?

~$3000 for a 53" Pioneer RPTV in 2000 (which is still looking very good,
btw).

How much did you pay for your first HDTV, and when?
 

"TM" wrote in message
...
?

"NadCixelsyd" wrote in message
...

An article in today's Wall Street Journal talks about falling
prices.
40+ inch sets go for $700 or so and prices are dropping before
Christmas.

I paid $1350 at Costco for my first 32" LCD in mid-2006. I quickly
grew addicted to HDTV. Within a year, I had replaced all my TV's.
I
purchased a 37" and 46" LCD in that time for about $1600 each.

How much were reasonable sized HDTV's way back before my purchases?

~$3000 for a 53" Pioneer RPTV in 2000 (which is still looking very
good, btw).

I bought a 55" RPTV Mits 55511 back in '02, that was about $3k, have
it in a bedroom now, still looks good hooked up to the cable box via
component.
Also bought the Mits 73" DLP back in October of '05....they were
almost $5k then...about $1500 in Costco today...but it still looks
great, have it in the living room.
Oh yeah, and a Vizio 50" Plasma in the master bedroom I picked up in
March of '06....that was about $1.7k.

When I look at the above, it sure seems excessive....(doesn't even
include the two sound systems...)...though the wife hasn't killed
me....yet....

How much did you pay for your first HDTV, and when?
 

On 11/10/2010 3:29 PM, NadCixelsyd wrote:
An article in today's Wall Street Journal talks about falling prices.
40+ inch sets go for $700 or so and prices are dropping before
Christmas.

It wasn't HD, but it was big screen. In 1979, I bought a front projector
50 inch Mitsubishi. I talked them down from about $3,000.00 to $2,150.
Of course $2,150 was a lot of money 31 years ago.

It had three really big projection CRT's, and a mirrored door on the
front. The image was projected by the CRT's onto the mirror, then up to
a curved silver-gray metallic screen. It had a very nice picture, but
the brightness faded significantly over time. I had it for about 10-12
years. Eventually, I gave it to a local elementary school. The kids
loved it for cartoons.

--
Jim

How much did you pay for your first HDTV, and when?
 

NadCixelsyd:

How much were reasonable sized HDTV's way back before my purchases?

I bought a 46" Hitachi RP HDTV around superbowl time 2005 for ~$1200 at
Sears. My wife can't wait to get rid of it and buy a plasma or lcd that we
can hang on the wall but I still like the picture.

How much did you pay for your first HDTV, and when?
 

All:
A few months ago,I bought a used but still very nice looking and workable Samsung 40" LED TV
UN40B6000. Due to the need of this seller, I was able to get it for only $650. It worked great; but I
accidentally damaged a small part of the display; so, I then sold it . I have since bought a Samsung 46"
LED UN46B6000 for $800 and a Samsung 32" LED UN32B6000 TV for $700. Not bad for someone
who looks around the internet. :-)


Keith

How much did you pay for your first HDTV, and when?
 

On 11/28/10 PDT 12:28 AM, Mac Cool wrote:
NadCixelsyd:

How much were reasonable sized HDTV's way back before my purchases?

I bought a 46" Hitachi RP HDTV around superbowl time 2005 for ~$1200 at
Sears. My wife can't wait to get rid of it and buy a plasma or lcd that we
can hang on the wall but I still like the picture.

I do hope you thoughtfully please your wife at Christmas with, say a 58"
Samsung Plasma, which is what I got last year, and it's a beauty. Dunno
about wall installation, though; mine's next to the wall on a table. The
short throw swivel is useful.....

--
john mcwilliams

Plasma 32" XBR968 CRT in 05 for about $650. I bought 1 but getting
this 200lbs TV upstairs have been not possible. Color is black and grey that I like most but added subchannels there is no discount to buy that
along with PBS discontinuing its beautiful national feed makes me. I remember that I bought 2007 it's really surprised for me that is buy any one thing

How much did you pay for your first HDTV, and when?
 

On Fri, 31 Dec 2010 06:18:32 +0000, deepunirwan
wrote:


Plasma 32" XBR968 CRT in 05 for about $650. I bought 1 but getting
this 200lbs TV upstairs have been not possible. Color is black and grey
that I like most but added subchannels there is no discount to buy that
along with PBS discontinuing its beautiful national feed makes me. I
remember that I bought 2007 it's really surprised for me that is buy any
one thing


Philips 42" Plasma, CIRCA 2006 - $1,000 (Refurbished)

After 6 months the image retention was so bad, I sold it to some
college kids for next to nothing.

A_C

How much did you pay for your first HDTV, and when?
 

deepunirwan wrote:
Plasma 32" XBR968 CRT in 05 for about $650. I bought 1 but getting
this 200lbs TV upstairs have been not possible. Color is black and grey
that I like most but added subchannels there is no discount to buy that
along with PBS discontinuing its beautiful national feed makes me. I
remember that I bought 2007 it's really surprised for me that is buy any
one thing





going rate for LCD is about $20 per inch !-)