Jump to content

The lowering costs of TV’s over the years


Guest

Recommended Posts

Of course we are all aware that things get cheaper as technology evolves, but like a lot of folk, I never really payed much attention to the inner workings of our tv’s. 

I’ve been marathon watching this guy on YouTube “12voltvids” his videos on repair are addictive and very informative, but it’s here I saw first hand why tv’s don’t cost anywhere as much as the did when plasma’s first came out, just check out how much stuff was involved to get those older tv’s to work, compared to newer/ish ones ?

This might not be news to most, but I just find it fascinating. Now I understand these are two different types of tv’s, but m 2018 OLED ain’t that crammed ?

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites



Guest Eggcup The Daft

Your 2018 OLED has much more going on inside it than these plasma sets.

You now have component miniaturisation, specialised componentry - more work done by dedicated processing on logic chips, different screening of components needed with LCD, and of course the lack of backlighting with OLED sets. Look, there's probably a fingernail sized chip in that OLED set that has much more going on on it than what is behind that plasma set. As they used to say on the BBC, "now... boffins have taken this room full of stuff and miniaturised it into this tiny box".

 

The downside to there being "less" inside is that things may well be harder to repair and repairs get done by replacing boards and so on. The latest TVs may be junk in a few years while the old stuff could actually be fixed. What if the special logic chip is no longer made? Didn't that already happen with the last of the Panasonic plasma sets?

Link to comment
Share on other sites



Great stuff @Sime V2. Apart from the cat..

My standard  def Pioneer Plasma retailed at 5 large about 15 years back. It was the best of the best back then. A comparative LG was around $2000. I still have it in my front room but it is next to useless. The problem is that it still works flawlessly and I find it difficult to turf it.

You can get a TV today for a grand. When my parents coughed up for our first color cathode TV it was $800. That's kind of equivalent to $5000 these days. Electronics, and I include HiFi, are comparatively very cheap these days.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@crisis I was really surprised just how much electronics are in those older tvs. 

 

My my first memory ever is being carried into our house and seeing our first color tv, and the show was Bell Birds. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

36 minutes ago, Sime V2 said:

@crisis I was really surprised just how much electronics are in those older tvs. 

 

My my first memory ever is being carried into our house and seeing our first color tv, and the show was Bell Birds. 

I cant remember what was the first color show but I suspect it was Don Lane or something like that.
My memory of moving the plasma is that it nearly killed me! ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites



1st colour show seen on a colour CRT telly was star trek.... I'll probably always remember the tune come on... 

 

 

my dad resisted buying a telly actually till we could afford a colour one.... when we got it ... I could understand why ! looked amazing !!! it was only a 21" 51cm which was LARGE back in the day and screen was some semblance of flat :D but not really hehe

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here we go, exactly like this minus the speaker bit on the left, but same looking tube and controls with the RGB logo down the bottom. 

77D4EB9C-2F53-4838-8045-F941A814C98B.jpeg

Edited by Sime V2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Eggcup The Daft
1 hour ago, Sime V2 said:

@crisis I was really surprised just how much electronics are in those older tvs. 

 

My my first memory ever is being carried into our house and seeing our first color tv, and the show was Bell Birds. 

I remember as a five year old, seeing inside the back of a black and white TV. Lots of valves, a big wire thing (transformer), the CRT and not much else. As a teenager I saw inside a colour TV and three massive boards of hand soldered components... much more complex than the plasma in your first post.

 

6 hours ago, Sime V2 said:

@Eggcup The Daft I agree mate, but all that stuff in those plasmas must cost more in the long run to make, I’m guessing. 

Probably. Certainly, a lot more to assemble. The big price reductions in the first five years of their production came entirely from the panels reducing in price according to the press at the time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 hours ago, betty boop said:

1st colour show seen on a colour CRT telly was star trek.... I'll probably always remember the tune come on... 

 

 

my dad resisted buying a telly actually till we could afford a colour one.... when we got it ... I could understand why ! looked amazing !!! it was only a 21" 51cm which was LARGE back in the day and screen was some semblance of flat :D but not really hehe

Never got into the first series of Star Trek which probably makes me a pariah but I loved everything else since expect perhaps Deep Space Nine.

22 hours ago, Sime V2 said:

I wish I had a picture of our first tv, it was a Phillips, rectangular box on 4 legs, glorious machine. 

I cant even remember what brand we eventually got but it cost a shitload in the day and we weren't "rich". It was a huge investment for my parents in the day. We have 5 TVs in our house now and two of them are only here because I cant bring myself to dump them. ?‍♂️

Link to comment
Share on other sites



On 21/01/2019 at 9:47 PM, crisis said:

I cant remember what was the first color show but I suspect it was Don Lane or something like that.
My memory of moving the plasma is that it nearly killed me! ?

It was the Tommy Leonetti show made by CH9, around the same time Laugh-In was big on TV here, he was another American-Aussie based TV entertainer prior to Don Lane, I just remember that because he used to come into a restaurant I used to work in after school.

 

The problems with a lot of TV's these days is that the manufacturers are skimping on the power supplies, less than stable voltages can be the reason other things fail.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 hours ago, Tweaky said:

The problems with a lot of TV's these days is that the manufacturers are skimping on the power supplies, less than stable voltages can be the reason other things fail.

I've never experienced any problem with any TV however a Leowe TV my cousin bought set fire to his house...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Our first tv was one of these. I didn’t have channel 0 (now channel 10) so I missed the coolest show any primary school kid could want to see - 6 Million Dollar Man. It took an age to warm up and when it was returned off the picture reduces to a small white dot in the middle.

 

FA2B4E09-1081-4350-9D07-5595FC1F7B1B.png

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, Sime V2 said:

Eww. 

Pretty devo. We were all heading up the river for the long weekend when the lady house-sitting for him phoned and said the TV bust into flames. It burnt the lounge room and some of the rest of the house. A lot of smoke and water damage.

Link to comment
Share on other sites



You couldn’t even buy a 51cm CRT for this price, some Sammie’s out of the box have been adjusted with the R tweeted up.  Not sure why and it gives the entire images a red tint, but for the price and a bit of adjustment awesome value:

 

https://www.jbhifi.com.au/samsung/samsung-nu7100-55-4k-uhd-smart-led-tv/636855/?utm_campaign=jb-au-20180124-big-brand-sellout-THU (MQSu94)&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Newsletter Active (Opened 60 Days)&_ke=eyJrbF9lbWFpbCI6ICJwc2NoYW4wMDAxQGhvdG1haWwuY29tIiwgImtsX2NvbXBhbnlfaWQiOiAiTFF6bnRSIn0%3D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Addicted to music said:

You couldn’t even buy a 51cm CRT for this price, some Sammie’s out of the box have been adjusted with the R tweeted up.  Not sure why and it gives the entire images a red tint, but for the price and a bit of adjustment awesome value:

 

https://www.jbhifi.com.au/samsung/samsung-nu7100-55-4k-uhd-smart-led-tv/636855/?utm_campaign=jb-au-20180124-big-brand-sellout-THU (MQSu94)&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Newsletter Active (Opened 60 Days)&_ke=eyJrbF9lbWFpbCI6ICJwc2NoYW4wMDAxQGhvdG1haWwuY29tIiwgImtsX2NvbXBhbnlfaWQiOiAiTFF6bnRSIn0%3D

I remember paying $2,000 for  51cm Sony around 1994 (it had awesome sound for a telly), and our first colour TV was a National 48cm for about $400 back in 1977.

 

From 1993 till about 2000, I used to repair TVs, and used to hate the Cheap Korean and Chinese TVs that started to flood the market. Brands like Masuda and President (just a couple I remember) that had exploding power supplies. I used to wear safety goggles when powering up for the first time after repairs. When the power supply caps went, they'd explode and instantly fill the workshop with smoke, and all the innards would be scattered around the bench. The mid range Korean (NEC Samsung Toshiba etc) jobs weren't so bad, but they used to keep me pretty busy. Brands like Sony, Philips and National Panasonic were good, and some of the European ones.

Edited by bob_m_54
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites



  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...
To Top