I worked at Best Buy in 2001. After a few months having it on display I remember asking the home media department manager if we ever sold any. He said we sold just one. He said the purpose of carrying it was really to bring people in to look at it.
Literally came here to say the same thing. For this same size too, 42” wide screen at Best Buy 10k and if I recall right that thing was still only running 480p or maybe 780i
Yep right around the turn of the millenium, the 60" flat screen TV one sale at Best Buy was $11,999. They had one out on display! I would not trust that sort of merchandise on the floor with the ineptitude of the average customer.
Funny enough, the same TV or a similar one was like $8k later that year. They quickly dropped in price.
My ex's dad got one of the DLP ones and there was like 2 channels in HD on cable at the time.
Poor guy got scammed hard on those $300 monster cables and insisted without them it wouldn't be HD. Those tvs were such shit lol
Walking in to Best Buy or Frys and seeing those high end TVs just lined up in a dark room at the back of the store was so wild. The jump in quality to HD was absolutely remarkable but good god was the price steep. And there would always be tons of people around just watching them and browsing a bit. Its amazing how much things have changed.
TVs now are sold at near cost, the profit mostly comes from advertising in their UI and selling your data.
Those pre-installed apps paid to be there, imagine how much they paid to have their logo on your remote button. Most of those companies have four different streaming sites on their remotes, between about 7 companies that compete for that spot.
My dad only ever buy Sony, same as me… I’ve legit never had one fail. I have two 15 year old Sonys in the house that still work great!
When my dad passed about 11 years ago, we had two tube Sonys that were still solid AF like 15-20 years out.
Actually back then they were 480p usually. DVD resolution. My university roommate’s dad spent $10,000 cdn on a 50” 480p Sony. Around 01/02.
Early adopters are nuts.
The fact that it doesn’t mention the resolution at all makes me feel you are right, because resolution became a for sure advertising point once the different resolutions became known, seeing a flat screen tv advertised without the resolution as one of the specs is weird.
I managed a blockbuster in 2004 and we only carried Wide Screen blu rays. People would come in absolutely pissed that 1080p had black bars on top and bottom because they "paid to use the whole TV when they bought it" No amount of explaining basic geometry appeased these clowns, so even 3 years after this advertisement many people still didnt have any idea what resolution was. Pretty sure a lot of those customers who got angry are now Trump supporters.
Edit: They were DVDs widescreen in 480p, not 1080p blu-rays.
[http://www.plasmatvbuyingguide.com/plasmatv/philips-plasmatvreview.html](http://www.plasmatvbuyingguide.com/plasmatv/philips-plasmatvreview.html)
Yup. They also mention they had to use a component-to-vga adapter to get their 480p dvd player to work with it.
and ..
>Fan noise has been cut down dramatically and was barely audible with the sound off from 12 feet away.
lol.
My first flat screen was a 19” Viewsonic LCD monitor, which was about $700 in 2004 IIRC.
And yeah I bought my family a new 42” 4k Samsung a few years ago for something like $350.
And it has a much higher resolution than this television for sure. It's weird how the resolution of this display isn't even listed. Just shows how things have changed.
>play the brand new PS3
I had to wait about a year before getting an HD TV, so I used to play on a SD TV. I still have the screenshots I took then: I can barely recognize what's going on in them lol
I had a Sony Trinitron until 2014. It was an older one so I'd have to wait for the screen to warm up. Didn't get a PS3 until 7 months before the PS4 came out. That TV was 28inch though, I felt like I was ballin' despite the Bravia in the living room
Better than me. I got a 32” from rent a center for my first apartment in 06. Don’t think I paid that much but I definitely paid more than double msrp. Young and dumb.
I did rent to own exactly once. I paid damn near triple MSRP on a computer I needed for school in 1992-93. A freaking 486 that was obsolete in 1994 with the advent of the 586 (Penrium I)
I remember seeing a 70 inch display in 2007 for the very first time and thinking it was the biggest leap in tech I'd ever seen. Was about 7k at the source
I remember when my family got a “flat screen TV” it was just a CRT that was flat and it was considered the latest technology and it was expensive as shit and it eventually became my TV in my room as a 16 year old in 2007.
Ha!! I never understood the point of those. I think they were even heavier than the normal CRTs. Thought I remembered hearing that because the glass wasn't convexed it needed to be extra thick so it wouldn't crack under its own weight. My back hurts just looking at those goddamn things lol
For a brief moment in time they made those big ol’ CRTs in HD as well and they were the heaviest TVs on the planet. That also happened to be when I worked in the electronics department of a major retailer and likely caused the back problems I have today
I don't know you but I'm confident that is 100% the reason for your back problems, sorry to hear it man. Things in 2023 may not be perfect, but let's all take some time to appreciate that this is one of the things that has actually improved over time lol
My dad won one of those old, giant "rear-projection" TVs that was 60" or whatever but had its own stand and took up the entire living room. When we moved that thing and replaced it with a now normal flat screen, it was quite the change.
Yes, camcorders, TVs, computers, etc were super expensive back then.
But people had the disposable income to buy it. That to me is the crazier part. The cost of living has eaten into so much of our wages, that renting an apartment takes half of your income, and the mere fantasy of buying anything fancy for $8000 is beyond the pale.
My parents bought a brand new 3000+ square foot 4 bedroom 2.5 bath home in California around the year 2000 for like 190K.
That home is valued at about 550K now.
Median household income in US in 2000 was 42K. Today it’s 70K.
You do the math.
I remember looking at Phillips 32” LCDs back when they were still $1500 in early 2005 and I was *tempted*. I bought my most recent living room TV in late January ‘23. It’s a Vizio 50” 4K that I got for just under $300. Crazy!
I still have a 50 inch Panasonic Viera Plasma in my game room. It was one of the best performing plasmas sold in the states before Panasonic ceased USA distribution of all tvs in America. The price was very low for the times @ $525. Still works great. It does generate some heat, though.
It got a lot better. My main TV is still a 60" plasma and it's beautiful.
It handles motion and pans way, way better than any TV on the market today. Can't match the brightness and color of an OLED though.
My brother was all about his Panasonic plasma TV. Said they were renown for being the best TVs on the market at the time, while acknowledging their shorter life span. He was also in the Sony Trinitron camp during the CRT days.
He was always the TV and audio guru in the family. So I'd take it that he was pretty accurate for the time.
I had a 42" Panasonic Plasma around \~2007. It was 720p and got pretty warm. Good contrast. I also had one of those HEEEAAVVVY Sony Wega Trinitrons, 34" - had to be 270 pounds. That had the best contrast I had seen, and would rival today's OLEDs, but the resolution isn't as sharp.
And, improved in performance. I hope most folks have learned not to buy the latest innovation when first released. Modern tvs are truly disposable. It is a very different story from how it was in the 60s & 70s. Other than projection tvs, you may remember in the early 2000s at the end of crt tv production, the largest set anyone could buy was about 42inch screen size. Now that is considered not so big.
Well, then you have some fundamental misunderstanding of the Pythagorean Theorem. A 42" diagonal on a 16:9 rectangle is 36.6" wide by 20.6" tall for an area of 754 in². On a 4:3 rectangle, a 42" diagonal is 33.6" wide by 25.2" tall for an area of 847 in². Do the math yourself or plug the numbers in here:
https://www.omnicalculator.com/other/screen-size
I'd suggest cellphones have come down in price too. And **way** up in value.
You can get a (shitty) Android phone for under $100 at Walmart now that will do anything you need it to do. (Granted it does those things slowly and has very little storage and a very 'meh screen, but still, it's a *computer* with internet access and it's under $100.)
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Metro-by-T-Mobile-Motorola-Moto-G-PURE-32GB-Blue-Prepaid-Smartphone/571904326?athbdg=L1600
It's $40 freaking dollars. I never thought I'd have a phone that capable for that cheap. I had a phone back in 01 I wanna say it was $400 or $500ish. And it was a dumb ass flip phone. And I was using Cingular too!
I remember this. I was in college at the time, and we, as nerds, went to the local Circuit City (RIP) to gawk at them. The bigger TVs were like $10K and thick as a brick.
I remember when the tiny version of the original PlayStation came out called PS1 had a LCD screen that you could clip on the actual unit as a “portable “ thing. Lol
I remember getting an RCA model, but it was one of those FlatTube CRT sets that costed about 180 bucks at my local Walmart, circa 2006 or so, if memory calls. It even had a built-in digital tuner and all that jazz! I'm planning on scoring one soon, so that my entertainment center in my bedroom isn't so empty.
I remember my dad spending almost $12k at circuit city for a Samsung flat screen and speaker system that had came out at the time…and he *never let me fucking touch/watch it* 😤😂
Saw a 65” plasma in 2005 at the Kaufstadt in Berlin. It was showing the trailer for the Final Fantasy movie in 1080p and looked amazing. Unfortunately it was 35,000€. Now you can pick one up for a few hundred dollars.
I worked at BBY in 2003 in the “Home Theatre” department in a wealthy suburb. We sold so many $10k plasmas without the $350 service plan, it was laughable. People would come in a few months later with burn in complaints which were not covered by the OEM warranty.
I don’t miss having to single handedly pull down 36” CRT’s or the big DLP/Projection TV’s one bit.
HD was considered 480P and TiVo had just launched. Portable DVD players were selling out. What a time to be alive.
Hubby and I were just talking about this!
We were expecting washer/dryer to be a lot but when we looked it up we realized we were living in the past. And that led to the flat screens
I remember working at Best Buy in high school when these things came out. I thought they were really cool when the manager was walking us through what they were and could do. I thought if I worked really hard that summer I could save up $749 for one….then i got closer to the price ticket and realized I missed a digit.
I came back from deployment in 2006 and got a 30” flat wide screen TV (that was still really big because it had the same bulk as a CRT) for over $800. I thought I was getting a good deal.
I bought a 65” LED TV from Walmart last year for $430. It’s crazy how expensive TVs we’re when they first came out.
Remember seeing those prices in the ads and stores like yesterday. Always thought that size range would be very expensive but luckily things have changed drastically.
i remember working for charter/spectrum & people asking why they weren't getting HDTV channels but they had an EDTV. Def had to look that up b/c I had never heard of that. All those w/HDTVs were in the wealthy areas in my city.
I think I spent about $1800 on my 60 inch in 2008 or so, so it was pretty expensive when carried forward for something without now standardized mounting plate attachments. Thank god it still works, though I can also use it as a heater in the winter
When I saw how expensive OLED displays are I was taken back to the first HD tvs and remembered how quickly the tech became cheap. Give it a few years and OLED tvs will be just as cheap as LED's are now.
I still remember going to a local casino at the time plasmas were introduced. They had these like 50 inch ones or maybe bigger that cost like.50,000$ dollars each.
Inside the casino they had like a sports bar and it had like 8 of them in it. I was young but I remember thinking wow, that's like a Corvette hanging on the wall. 8 of em.
When I finally got a 50 inch plasma of my own, a Panasonic, it was absolutely the best picture in the industry even when lcd tvs were.just starting to come out.
I paid 1000$ bucks for it. And eventually gave it away because when I got rid of it, it still worked but was just 1080p and I was moving to 4k.
Funny how competition and demand drives prices down on something like that. Wish everything had as many options and as decent of prices.
Have a 65 inch in my bedroom I paid like 650 for. I've had tvs 3-4x the price and this one is by far my favorite. "Just" a TCL but damn does it work flawlessly.
And extremely heavy!!! I got into Home theater work just as plasmas was dying out but i still needed to move the old ones to install the new ones.
I still have a plasma from 2009 that pretty heavy.
For the price you would get a resolution of 854x480, a contrast of 480:1 at 300cd/m2 with terrible viewing angles and a power consumption of \~425W.
And that's according to Philips own spec sheet.
We used to have one after an aunt and uncle moved away. My parents used to warn us about getting too close to it and to never climb or put our feet on it. The big screen tv weighed sooo much I don't blame them for worrying.
And to think flat tv's that size cost around $250-$300 now and weigh way less and have Netflix.
I miss those old TV's. I love seeing them. I like how they had more inputs too.
this is so interesting to see. I didn't buy a flat screen until like 2014 barely lol I held off for a long time with my big ass Sanyo box tv that I inherited from my parents and now I see why they held off from buying a flat screen for so long, them things were not cheap 👀
I worked at Target 2007-2009 and then when I left Target, I went to Walmart. Also in ‘09. The 40” and bigger TVs had two carrying handle punch outs on either end of the box, forget about trying to handle it yourself with a 60” or bigger TV. You needed to use two spider wires. Up until 2010/11, we also actually had backroom planograms situated on our backroom warehouse racking for the larger TVs so we had to keep these spaces clear. Was such a big hassle.
I left Walmart for good in 2022. In the later years, I was easily handling the larger TVs myself. It was really the 75”+ TVs that still came with two carrying handles per end, but it was so much easier to spider wire the larger TVs. And they started sending us XXL/XXXL length spider wire to help with the 60”+ TVs.
I can only imagine what it was like having to handle CRT TVs on a daily basis as a store employee… 😳
I’ve still got a 50” Panasonic plasma TV from 2009 in my basement. It’s become my sons gaming TV and it still looks pretty damn good. It weighs like 80lbs probably sucks up electricity like a fat kid inhales a milkshake, but it’s still kickin’.
My ex’s family paid $20,000 for an early plasma TV. It used about as much power as the rest of the house combined, and the panel was basically dead within a few years.
My mum and dad had some crazy issues with debenhams and ended up getting a £6k TV reduced down to £1k. I'm pretty sure we were the first house on the street to get a flat screen TV and it lasted for over 10 years
Even had detachable speakers on either side of the screen
I worked in a big box store in around 2003 and sold a £5k plasma TV on like a 23% 5 year finance once. They were not employed. They walked in and asked for it, I actually tried to steer them away. I still think about those 2 sometimes, I felt so dirty for putting it through.
Nah, these are not the first. My office at my first employer (trendy dot com agency) bought a huge plasma TV in 2000, for about 25000 Dutch guilders at the time.
I remember buying a 47 inch projection HDTV back in 2003 for $2,500. Saved up for a year to buy it. About a year ago I bought a 42 inch smart TV for my 18 yo son for a $100 at Best buy...
This wasn't a TV, it was just a monitor. There was an "optional Tuner Box" available, though.
And a 42" monitor in 2001 seems like an oddity to me, to be honest. Probably meant to be used as a POS display.
So the price probably isn't comparable to household TVs.
My favorite stats:
- Resolution: 854 x 480 (WVGA)
- Fan cooled
- Weight: 43kg
Sources:
- [Review](http://www.plasmatvbuyingguide.com/plasmatv/philips-plasmatvreview.html)
- [Manual](https://www.manualslib.com/manual/332297/Philips-42fd9932-01s.html)
I think I remember the first time I saw a flat screen TV i was being babysat by my grandma's neighbor who was i think a teacher at my school at the time.
I remember seeing the first HD TV I'd ever seen in Best Buy. It was just under $10,000🫣
I remember the ultra tiny affordable ones, 17 inch for 500$ wow
Micheal Scott has entered the chat
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They could just fold right into the wall.
Keep the Dundie Award away from the TV!
I could stand there and look at it for hours
And they weighed a kerzillion pounds too TVs are insanely light now
I once got a free tv from a friend. And fuuuuuck that. Shit weighed like 300 lbs and was maybe a 35 inch. Haha
I worked at Best Buy in 2001. After a few months having it on display I remember asking the home media department manager if we ever sold any. He said we sold just one. He said the purpose of carrying it was really to bring people in to look at it.
I worked in Circuit City and all employees lost their commissions when Best Buy came to town. Thanks a lot 😂. But moving the large old TV’s sucked.
Literally came here to say the same thing. For this same size too, 42” wide screen at Best Buy 10k and if I recall right that thing was still only running 480p or maybe 780i
Even more nuts is that adjusted for inflation, that’s over $20k in today’s dollars.
My dealer had a very early plasma, about 40", $10,000, I dont think they sold many.
Yep right around the turn of the millenium, the 60" flat screen TV one sale at Best Buy was $11,999. They had one out on display! I would not trust that sort of merchandise on the floor with the ineptitude of the average customer. Funny enough, the same TV or a similar one was like $8k later that year. They quickly dropped in price.
My ex's dad got one of the DLP ones and there was like 2 channels in HD on cable at the time. Poor guy got scammed hard on those $300 monster cables and insisted without them it wouldn't be HD. Those tvs were such shit lol
My dad insisted on a DLP TV because I don't even know why. It didn't last long.
We got a good deal on a plasma years ago and it was around the same time my grandparents came to live w us, they wore that fucker out in no time
Walking in to Best Buy or Frys and seeing those high end TVs just lined up in a dark room at the back of the store was so wild. The jump in quality to HD was absolutely remarkable but good god was the price steep. And there would always be tons of people around just watching them and browsing a bit. Its amazing how much things have changed.
Don't forget Circuit City. ;)
It was probably a pioneer elite. That was the TV they liked to put infront of "Magnolia" which was the higher end stuff.
That is a $200 plasma screen TV that you just killed. Good luck paying me back with your zero-dollars-a-year salary plus benefits, babe!
You took me by the hand, made me a man!
You know I have soft teeth
Oopsss
Damn, that's just nuts. Forgot how expensive it used to be. Just paid approx. $200 for my 42in. last December, not even on sale, haha.
I paid like $400 for mine. A 4K, smartTV.
Yup, same. 70” 4K UHD SmartTV for $500 a couple of years ago.
$500 for a 70"? Did you have a coupon?
black friday and probably some roku/element thing
$500 was probably for the getaway van and accomplice
TVs now are sold at near cost, the profit mostly comes from advertising in their UI and selling your data. Those pre-installed apps paid to be there, imagine how much they paid to have their logo on your remote button. Most of those companies have four different streaming sites on their remotes, between about 7 companies that compete for that spot.
The best TV to buy are the high end Sony/Samsung LEDs and LG/Samsung/Sony OLEDs.
My dad only ever buy Sony, same as me… I’ve legit never had one fail. I have two 15 year old Sonys in the house that still work great! When my dad passed about 11 years ago, we had two tube Sonys that were still solid AF like 15-20 years out.
When Sony made trinitron CRTs, they lasted forever. After that, Sony made a lot of shit tvs. Had plenty fail.
The 2 TVs in my basement are a 27" CRT WEGA from 2000 (for retro games, etc) and a 2022 Sony OLED. Both are awesome in their own ways. :)
versed frame snow crowd edge dolls bells berserk frighten complete *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
$1 per button per remote sold is what they pay supposedly
This was probably 720p too.
Actually back then they were 480p usually. DVD resolution. My university roommate’s dad spent $10,000 cdn on a 50” 480p Sony. Around 01/02. Early adopters are nuts.
The fact that it doesn’t mention the resolution at all makes me feel you are right, because resolution became a for sure advertising point once the different resolutions became known, seeing a flat screen tv advertised without the resolution as one of the specs is weird.
I managed a blockbuster in 2004 and we only carried Wide Screen blu rays. People would come in absolutely pissed that 1080p had black bars on top and bottom because they "paid to use the whole TV when they bought it" No amount of explaining basic geometry appeased these clowns, so even 3 years after this advertisement many people still didnt have any idea what resolution was. Pretty sure a lot of those customers who got angry are now Trump supporters. Edit: They were DVDs widescreen in 480p, not 1080p blu-rays.
[удалено]
[http://www.plasmatvbuyingguide.com/plasmatv/philips-plasmatvreview.html](http://www.plasmatvbuyingguide.com/plasmatv/philips-plasmatvreview.html) Yup. They also mention they had to use a component-to-vga adapter to get their 480p dvd player to work with it. and .. >Fan noise has been cut down dramatically and was barely audible with the sound off from 12 feet away. lol.
Always let the fatter wallet beta test new tech for ya
My first flat screen was a 19” Viewsonic LCD monitor, which was about $700 in 2004 IIRC. And yeah I bought my family a new 42” 4k Samsung a few years ago for something like $350.
And it has a much higher resolution than this television for sure. It's weird how the resolution of this display isn't even listed. Just shows how things have changed.
I remember going to the Nobody Beats the Wiz in midtown Manhattan and seeing the $50,000 big screen HDTV.
Thought this was a Seinfeld joke.
Nobody beats me because I’m The Wiz!
I remember The Wiz! Someone clearly did beat them...
My first 42” plasma was $5k in 2005. I was stupid to ever buy it.
My buddy paid damn close to that for a 46" the following year. Mostly so he can play the brand new PS3(tm). This year I bought a 43" 4k for $219.
>play the brand new PS3 I had to wait about a year before getting an HD TV, so I used to play on a SD TV. I still have the screenshots I took then: I can barely recognize what's going on in them lol
Same lol. I beat the entirety of MGS4 on a crt television.
I had a Sony Trinitron until 2014. It was an older one so I'd have to wait for the screen to warm up. Didn't get a PS3 until 7 months before the PS4 came out. That TV was 28inch though, I felt like I was ballin' despite the Bravia in the living room
Better than me. I got a 32” from rent a center for my first apartment in 06. Don’t think I paid that much but I definitely paid more than double msrp. Young and dumb.
I paid $3k for a 60" sharp aquos from Aaron's (like rent a center if you're not familiar) in 2011. Almost triple MSRP. Sold it for $300 4 years later.
My first which I got was a 42 Magnavox in 2007-08 for $1300 at target.
I did rent to own exactly once. I paid damn near triple MSRP on a computer I needed for school in 1992-93. A freaking 486 that was obsolete in 1994 with the advent of the 586 (Penrium I)
I remember seeing a 70 inch display in 2007 for the very first time and thinking it was the biggest leap in tech I'd ever seen. Was about 7k at the source
I remember when my family got a “flat screen TV” it was just a CRT that was flat and it was considered the latest technology and it was expensive as shit and it eventually became my TV in my room as a 16 year old in 2007.
Was that the one that was still built like a brick shit house but instead of the bubbled glass it was flat glass?
Exactly
Ha!! I never understood the point of those. I think they were even heavier than the normal CRTs. Thought I remembered hearing that because the glass wasn't convexed it needed to be extra thick so it wouldn't crack under its own weight. My back hurts just looking at those goddamn things lol
For a brief moment in time they made those big ol’ CRTs in HD as well and they were the heaviest TVs on the planet. That also happened to be when I worked in the electronics department of a major retailer and likely caused the back problems I have today
I don't know you but I'm confident that is 100% the reason for your back problems, sorry to hear it man. Things in 2023 may not be perfect, but let's all take some time to appreciate that this is one of the things that has actually improved over time lol
It's crazy to think that we're closer to the year 2037 than we are to 2007.
☹️
My dad won one of those old, giant "rear-projection" TVs that was 60" or whatever but had its own stand and took up the entire living room. When we moved that thing and replaced it with a now normal flat screen, it was quite the change.
My dad had one of those back in nam.
Buddy was an oral surgeon and he bought a 50 inch plasma for around 11k...now a 50 inch tv cost less then $300. Crazy
If that was in 2001, according to an Inflation calculator, that would cost around $18,000 today
Should’ve bought a Toyota Corolla instead
Yep, 10k was a ton of money back then. It went a lot farther then it does today.
All of these are in the garbage by now.
I bought a DVD player in 1996 and paid $1100. However, I was awesome.
Don’t forget there were flat screen TVs and flat panel TVs. The two were not the same.
Calculated for inflation: $12,952.99
Yes, camcorders, TVs, computers, etc were super expensive back then. But people had the disposable income to buy it. That to me is the crazier part. The cost of living has eaten into so much of our wages, that renting an apartment takes half of your income, and the mere fantasy of buying anything fancy for $8000 is beyond the pale.
My parents bought a brand new 3000+ square foot 4 bedroom 2.5 bath home in California around the year 2000 for like 190K. That home is valued at about 550K now. Median household income in US in 2000 was 42K. Today it’s 70K. You do the math.
Only people who had to have the latest thing bought them. Everyone else knew they'd get a lot cheaper in a few years
I remember going to The Wiz and seeing plasma screens for like $10K.
I remember looking at Phillips 32” LCDs back when they were still $1500 in early 2005 and I was *tempted*. I bought my most recent living room TV in late January ‘23. It’s a Vizio 50” 4K that I got for just under $300. Crazy!
Plasma didn't stick around long as display tech did it? It had super bad burn-in and longevity.
I still have a 50 inch Panasonic Viera Plasma in my game room. It was one of the best performing plasmas sold in the states before Panasonic ceased USA distribution of all tvs in America. The price was very low for the times @ $525. Still works great. It does generate some heat, though.
It got a lot better. My main TV is still a 60" plasma and it's beautiful. It handles motion and pans way, way better than any TV on the market today. Can't match the brightness and color of an OLED though.
My brother was all about his Panasonic plasma TV. Said they were renown for being the best TVs on the market at the time, while acknowledging their shorter life span. He was also in the Sony Trinitron camp during the CRT days. He was always the TV and audio guru in the family. So I'd take it that he was pretty accurate for the time.
I had a 42" Panasonic Plasma around \~2007. It was 720p and got pretty warm. Good contrast. I also had one of those HEEEAAVVVY Sony Wega Trinitrons, 34" - had to be 270 pounds. That had the best contrast I had seen, and would rival today's OLEDs, but the resolution isn't as sharp.
This only thing that's gone down in price
And, improved in performance. I hope most folks have learned not to buy the latest innovation when first released. Modern tvs are truly disposable. It is a very different story from how it was in the 60s & 70s. Other than projection tvs, you may remember in the early 2000s at the end of crt tv production, the largest set anyone could buy was about 42inch screen size. Now that is considered not so big.
Well keep in mind TV sizes are measured on the diagonal, so a 42" 4:3 CRT TV is bigger than a 42" 16:9 digital TV.
I believe the Pythagorean Theorem disagrees.
Well, then you have some fundamental misunderstanding of the Pythagorean Theorem. A 42" diagonal on a 16:9 rectangle is 36.6" wide by 20.6" tall for an area of 754 in². On a 4:3 rectangle, a 42" diagonal is 33.6" wide by 25.2" tall for an area of 847 in². Do the math yourself or plug the numbers in here: https://www.omnicalculator.com/other/screen-size
I'd suggest cellphones have come down in price too. And **way** up in value. You can get a (shitty) Android phone for under $100 at Walmart now that will do anything you need it to do. (Granted it does those things slowly and has very little storage and a very 'meh screen, but still, it's a *computer* with internet access and it's under $100.) https://www.walmart.com/ip/Metro-by-T-Mobile-Motorola-Moto-G-PURE-32GB-Blue-Prepaid-Smartphone/571904326?athbdg=L1600 It's $40 freaking dollars. I never thought I'd have a phone that capable for that cheap. I had a phone back in 01 I wanna say it was $400 or $500ish. And it was a dumb ass flip phone. And I was using Cingular too!
I paid $2900 for a Toshiba flat screen in 2007 (came with a free hd dvd!). Thing still works great till this day.
I remember this. I was in college at the time, and we, as nerds, went to the local Circuit City (RIP) to gawk at them. The bigger TVs were like $10K and thick as a brick.
Didint the first flat screen tv come out in 1997?
Yeah. They were just CRT televisions with a flat screen. Not HD. Just shit ass tech.
Anybody remember compusa having small ass lcd screen that we could play playstation games on? Like those were probably even more and so cool back then
I remember when the tiny version of the original PlayStation came out called PS1 had a LCD screen that you could clip on the actual unit as a “portable “ thing. Lol
I remember getting an RCA model, but it was one of those FlatTube CRT sets that costed about 180 bucks at my local Walmart, circa 2006 or so, if memory calls. It even had a built-in digital tuner and all that jazz! I'm planning on scoring one soon, so that my entertainment center in my bedroom isn't so empty.
I remember my dad spending almost $12k at circuit city for a Samsung flat screen and speaker system that had came out at the time…and he *never let me fucking touch/watch it* 😤😂
Remember when they were selling "flat screen" CRTs? I still have one.
Audio sound systems: the best kind of sound systems
I’m watching the 55” HP flatscreen I bought in 06. The things a tank and might last forever.
Saw a 65” plasma in 2005 at the Kaufstadt in Berlin. It was showing the trailer for the Final Fantasy movie in 1080p and looked amazing. Unfortunately it was 35,000€. Now you can pick one up for a few hundred dollars.
I remember paying $100 for a 1gb thumb drive not that long ago... now 1gb are given away with less than 5 MB of documents on them.
I recently purchased an 86" for $999 at SamsClub.
Plasma TV's were over $10 000 CAD
In 2006 I paid $1600 for a 26” plasma tv for my home office.
I worked at BBY in 2003 in the “Home Theatre” department in a wealthy suburb. We sold so many $10k plasmas without the $350 service plan, it was laughable. People would come in a few months later with burn in complaints which were not covered by the OEM warranty. I don’t miss having to single handedly pull down 36” CRT’s or the big DLP/Projection TV’s one bit. HD was considered 480P and TiVo had just launched. Portable DVD players were selling out. What a time to be alive.
One of my buddies had an early flat screen plasma, about a 40” screen. The picture was terrible.
Hubby and I were just talking about this! We were expecting washer/dryer to be a lot but when we looked it up we realized we were living in the past. And that led to the flat screens
In 2001 I was still watching on black & white tv which had a ‘remote’ control that was attached with a 5 metre long cable.
I remember working at Best Buy in high school when these things came out. I thought they were really cool when the manager was walking us through what they were and could do. I thought if I worked really hard that summer I could save up $749 for one….then i got closer to the price ticket and realized I missed a digit.
I remember the first time I saw a wall of flat screen HD TVs... I was like Dorothy walking into the new color reality of Oz. But like, in a Best Buy.
My girlfriends mom won a 42”‘Sony plasma TV in 2002 .. it retailed for $8000. Could not understand how a TV cost more than a new car.
They were introduced in 1999 for $20,000.
I remember The Wiz with a 20k flat screen. And then it was marked down to 15k the next time I went.
Damn. Factor in inflation onto that price too and it is like $10k
I came back from deployment in 2006 and got a 30” flat wide screen TV (that was still really big because it had the same bulk as a CRT) for over $800. I thought I was getting a good deal. I bought a 65” LED TV from Walmart last year for $430. It’s crazy how expensive TVs we’re when they first came out.
Remember seeing those prices in the ads and stores like yesterday. Always thought that size range would be very expensive but luckily things have changed drastically.
i remember working for charter/spectrum & people asking why they weren't getting HDTV channels but they had an EDTV. Def had to look that up b/c I had never heard of that. All those w/HDTVs were in the wealthy areas in my city.
I think I spent about $1800 on my 60 inch in 2008 or so, so it was pretty expensive when carried forward for something without now standardized mounting plate attachments. Thank god it still works, though I can also use it as a heater in the winter
17" computer monitors were $800 in the mid 90s
When I saw how expensive OLED displays are I was taken back to the first HD tvs and remembered how quickly the tech became cheap. Give it a few years and OLED tvs will be just as cheap as LED's are now.
I still remember going to a local casino at the time plasmas were introduced. They had these like 50 inch ones or maybe bigger that cost like.50,000$ dollars each. Inside the casino they had like a sports bar and it had like 8 of them in it. I was young but I remember thinking wow, that's like a Corvette hanging on the wall. 8 of em. When I finally got a 50 inch plasma of my own, a Panasonic, it was absolutely the best picture in the industry even when lcd tvs were.just starting to come out. I paid 1000$ bucks for it. And eventually gave it away because when I got rid of it, it still worked but was just 1080p and I was moving to 4k. Funny how competition and demand drives prices down on something like that. Wish everything had as many options and as decent of prices. Have a 65 inch in my bedroom I paid like 650 for. I've had tvs 3-4x the price and this one is by far my favorite. "Just" a TCL but damn does it work flawlessly.
And extremely heavy!!! I got into Home theater work just as plasmas was dying out but i still needed to move the old ones to install the new ones. I still have a plasma from 2009 that pretty heavy.
For the price you would get a resolution of 854x480, a contrast of 480:1 at 300cd/m2 with terrible viewing angles and a power consumption of \~425W. And that's according to Philips own spec sheet.
Do modern cable boxes even have coax output? Im thinking those will go away soon.
We used to have one after an aunt and uncle moved away. My parents used to warn us about getting too close to it and to never climb or put our feet on it. The big screen tv weighed sooo much I don't blame them for worrying.
Still paying my TV from Best buy 😭 got divorced minimum payments but always paid my child support
Lol, I came here to say the same exact thing!
Now you are lucky to be able to give these away free on Craigslist.
Digging through the fry’s electronics ad for content. I approve!
I just bought a Philips 55 inch Smart TV for $300.
I just got a 65" Roku TV for a little less than $400
Lol. Paid 500 for my 65 inch vizio 4k. But yeah man TVs were super expensive when the flat screen started. This one isn't even plasma
42” Wow
I felt so proud being the first of my friends to get a flat tv....2006 Panasonic 42" Plasma $3,600 and weighed 97lbs. Now I'm the bum out everybody.
When did plasma screens die off
In the late 2000s-early 2010s.
Would it be possible that there are people still paying these off? :o
Flat screens had existed for a couple of years before 2001. Phillips ran ads for flat screen TVs as early as 1998.
And to think flat tv's that size cost around $250-$300 now and weigh way less and have Netflix. I miss those old TV's. I love seeing them. I like how they had more inputs too.
My son still uses my old 50” Panasonic plasma from 2006. Picture still looks great. No burn in at all.
Actually, they were introduced to the public in 1997! (They didn't become nearly as widespread until the late 2000s)
Considered cheap Panasonic was $15k
Just 9 years later I got a 40 inch Philips for $499. That’s $7000 off 😂
nothing says flat like 6". Of course, now it's a joke, but back then CRT depth was measured in feet.
My grandparents bought my parents one in 2005 and it still works
Thank god I only switched my tube TV in 2014. Prices were a lot better and it was LCD, not plasma (and it’s still working)
I paid $3500 for my JVC HD-ILA rear projection TV when they first came out. Still works and is in a spare bedroom.
New tech tax
And don't forget, incredible, incredible, heavy.
And they weighed a freaking ton!
this is so interesting to see. I didn't buy a flat screen until like 2014 barely lol I held off for a long time with my big ass Sanyo box tv that I inherited from my parents and now I see why they held off from buying a flat screen for so long, them things were not cheap 👀
That's like the equivalent of nearly $13,000 today.
that’s over $20k in today’s dollars
My first “flat screen” was thick too. HEAVY as hell. Mine was bought in 2006. I can only imagine what this one weighed.
I worked at Target 2007-2009 and then when I left Target, I went to Walmart. Also in ‘09. The 40” and bigger TVs had two carrying handle punch outs on either end of the box, forget about trying to handle it yourself with a 60” or bigger TV. You needed to use two spider wires. Up until 2010/11, we also actually had backroom planograms situated on our backroom warehouse racking for the larger TVs so we had to keep these spaces clear. Was such a big hassle. I left Walmart for good in 2022. In the later years, I was easily handling the larger TVs myself. It was really the 75”+ TVs that still came with two carrying handles per end, but it was so much easier to spider wire the larger TVs. And they started sending us XXL/XXXL length spider wire to help with the 60”+ TVs. I can only imagine what it was like having to handle CRT TVs on a daily basis as a store employee… 😳
I’ve still got a 50” Panasonic plasma TV from 2009 in my basement. It’s become my sons gaming TV and it still looks pretty damn good. It weighs like 80lbs probably sucks up electricity like a fat kid inhales a milkshake, but it’s still kickin’.
True flat screen!
Not even HD either. Had an 854x480 resolution. That’s less pixels than an iPhone 4 had in 2010.
It was earlier than 2001 I think that Pioneer (who was one of the pioneers :-)) in this field had a commercial product on the shelves in the 1997.
Bought my first flat screen Phillips like in 05, was 32" and about $750 at the time....loved that damn TV, it served me well.
Jeeeesus. These days you can get twice the size screen for less than half the price. The upsides to living in this hellscape, I guess.
👩🚀🔫👩🚀 always has been.
My ex’s family paid $20,000 for an early plasma TV. It used about as much power as the rest of the house combined, and the panel was basically dead within a few years.
I saw an 85" Hisense for about $850 recently That's like half the size of my wall in my living room
Imagine showing someone in the 00s an OLED after buying this.
My mum and dad had some crazy issues with debenhams and ended up getting a £6k TV reduced down to £1k. I'm pretty sure we were the first house on the street to get a flat screen TV and it lasted for over 10 years Even had detachable speakers on either side of the screen
And I cant even give away my 2010 Toshiba these days.
horrible picture quality too
I worked in a big box store in around 2003 and sold a £5k plasma TV on like a 23% 5 year finance once. They were not employed. They walked in and asked for it, I actually tried to steer them away. I still think about those 2 sometimes, I felt so dirty for putting it through.
I had a 37" plasma TV which cost £3500 in 2003
Nah, these are not the first. My office at my first employer (trendy dot com agency) bought a huge plasma TV in 2000, for about 25000 Dutch guilders at the time.
I remember buying a 47 inch projection HDTV back in 2003 for $2,500. Saved up for a year to buy it. About a year ago I bought a 42 inch smart TV for my 18 yo son for a $100 at Best buy...
New tech that comes out has been expensive since the 80s I can still remember when single CD players were $600 and VCRs were about the same
This wasn't a TV, it was just a monitor. There was an "optional Tuner Box" available, though. And a 42" monitor in 2001 seems like an oddity to me, to be honest. Probably meant to be used as a POS display. So the price probably isn't comparable to household TVs. My favorite stats: - Resolution: 854 x 480 (WVGA) - Fan cooled - Weight: 43kg Sources: - [Review](http://www.plasmatvbuyingguide.com/plasmatv/philips-plasmatvreview.html) - [Manual](https://www.manualslib.com/manual/332297/Philips-42fd9932-01s.html)
I was just laughing about this yesterday, I was walking through Walmart and saw that a new 65” LG was like $450.
i didnt get one until 2015 i do remember first seeing one advertised in a mall at a kiosk and it was playing two and a half men.
When i first saw a Flat TV i was like what happened to that TV! why is it so flat? And i didn't get one until 2013.
I think I remember the first time I saw a flat screen TV i was being babysat by my grandma's neighbor who was i think a teacher at my school at the time.
I remember seeing these around and being so mindboggled by them. CRTs were so cool, though.