![]() Modern TVs, with very few exceptions, are “smart,” which means they come with software for streaming online content from Netflix, YouTube, and other services. Perhaps the biggest reason TVs have gotten so much cheaper than other products is that your TV is watching you and profiting off the data it collects. market will do so by being cheaper than established companies such as Sony or LG, which forces those companies to also lower their prices.īut the story of cheap TVs is not entirely just market forces doing their thing. Basically, a new company trying to enter the U.S. Newer companies such as TCL and Hisense “have taken a lot of market share in the past couple of years from more established brands,” Willcox said. Unlike in the smartphone market, which is dominated by a handful of big companies, low display prices allow more TV makers to enter the market: They just need to buy the display, build a case, and offer software for streaming. These developments affect most gadgets, of course, but the TV market has another factor that makes it different from the rest of tech: massive competition. This, and various other improvements, can be thought of as a Moore’s law for televisions: Over time, the companies that make components can dial down their manufacturing process, which drives down costs. “A few years ago you would have a lot of waste now you can punch more screens out of that same mother glass,” Willcox said. The ones today are huge, roughly 10 feet by 11 feet, and manufacturers have gotten more efficient at cutting that large piece into screens. Willcox, the senior electronics editor for Consumer Reports, told me. “TV panels are cut out of a really big sheet called the ‘mother glass,’” James K. One of the biggest improvements is simply a large piece of glass. “There isn’t much secret sauce in there.” He told me that the most expensive component in a modern television is the LED panel, and that TV manufacturers can buy those panels from third parties at lower prices than ever before because of improvements in the manufacturing process. “A TV is a control board, a power board, a panel, and a case,” Kyle Wiens, the CEO of iFixit, a company that sells tools and offers free guides for repairing electronic devices, including TVs, told me. TVs, meanwhile, are almost entirely screen. The difference is that an iPad, computer, or phone has a screen, yes, but that’s not the bulk of what you’re paying for. For $800, you can get an 11-inch iPad Pro, then use it mostly to watch Netflix in bed less than that amount of money can get you a 70-inch 4K television that you use mostly to watch Netflix on the couch. Why are TVs so much cheaper now?ĭirt-cheap TVs are counterintuitive, at first. Most things, such as food and medical care, are up from 80 to 200 percent since the year 2000 TVs are down 97 percent, more than any other product. Or take this chart from the American Enterprise Institute comparing the price, over time, of various goods and services. I just found a 4K 55-inch TV, which offers a much higher resolution, at Best Buy for under $350. For example, ’s list of the best TVs of 2012 recommended a 51-inch plasma HDTV for $2,199 and a budget 720p 50-inch plasma for $800. But while, say, new cars are priced near where they were 10 years ago, in the same time frame TVs have gotten so much cheaper that it defies basic logic. Like so many other gadgets, TVs over the decades have gotten much better, and much less expensive. That’s probably why our family kept using the TV across three different decades-that, and it was heavy. My parents don’t remember what they paid for the TV, but it wasn’t unusual for a console TV at that time to sell for $800, or about $2,500 today adjusted for inflation. This whole contraption was housed in a beautifully finished wooden box, implying that it was built to be an heirloom. I remember the screen being covered in a fuzzy layer of static as we tried to watch Hockey Night in Canada. You couldn’t always make out a lot of details, partially because of the low resolution and partially because we lived in rural Ontario, didn’t have cable, and relied on an antenna. It was huge, for one thing: a roughly four-foot cube with a tiny curved screen. ![]() The television I grew up with-a Quasar from the early 1980s-was more like a piece of furniture than an electronic device. This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic, Monday through Friday.
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