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?

"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.

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

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.

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

Link to Nova

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

G²

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).

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.

?

"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).

"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....