Flat-planels rule, old boob tube all but dead (AP/CNN)

[eppur_se_muova]

REDWOOD CITY, California (AP) -- The lone conventional television set at Anderson's TV store sat along a side wall like a castoff. Its screen was dark as dozens of other gleaming flat-panel and big-screen models flashed nearby with vivid color images.

The staff at the Redwood City store hadn't even bothered to turn on the cathode-ray tube TV until a reporter asked to see it on a recent afternoon.

The obvious neglect reflected the wallflower status of today's CRT TVs, as well as the mature technology's doomed future. Experts say the old-fashioned boob tube that catered to generations of Americans will soon be all but extinct.

"It's already dead, but it doesn't know it yet," said Jon Paul Belstler, an audio/video consultant at Anderson's. "It's just trying to hang on."
***
By next year, the tube TV will cede its crown of dominance to LCD sets for the first time, according to the market research firm iSuppli Corp. Sales of CRTs will fall from an estimated 14.4 million units this year to 10.4 million in 2007, while sales of LCD TVs are predicted to rise from 10.9 million units to 17.8 million.
***
more: http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/ptech/10/23/tube.tv.declin...

Not a word about relative enrgy efficiencies or consumption of materials in manufacture; all that counts is the American consumers' "enthusiasm".

[skids]

1. LCD better than CRT, CRT better than plasma.

CRT's actually are fairly efficient energy-wise. LCDs are better still. It's the first-generation plasmas that suck energy like a black hole. Newer plasmas may have addressed this problem but you should definitely check before buying a plasma how much power it uses.


(At any rate, my next TV is going to be my current laptop. I can live without "big screen".)

[Warpy]

6. One of my old thrift shop TVs conked out a couple of weeks ago

and I decided to treat myself to a new set for the first time in my life. The old one was a 20 inch CRT. The new one is a 20 inch LCD.

I had lived with a projection TV with a 6 foot screen when they first came out and intensely disliked how it dominated a room. I liked the LCD for its size, it's light weight and its energy efficiency. I also ran into a sale.

Sports nuts into conspicuous consumption can have the 52 inch plasma screens and the high electrictiy bills. I live in a small house and a 20 inch set is perfectly fine. Besides, my eyes aren't good enough to tell the difference.

[hlthe2b]

9. I agree, totally, Warpy

I have no desire for an enormous screen... In fact I watch my Samsung wide format 19 inch LCD monitor/tv tuner more often than anything.... I don't even always watch tv on full screen, when watching...

The picture is great with a dvd playing... but I don't really care to see everyone's wrinkles, crevices, pimples, age spots, and clogged pores, so a smaller screen is just fine with me...

[Caution]

2. LCDs are significantly better than CRT in regard to energy consumption

Not sure about the consumption of materials in manufacture though.

[Ravenseye]

3. From what I undersatnd LCD's use less energy

Is that correct? I've read that uses, on average, 150 watts an hour awake and 30 asleep, while an LCD monitor is on average about 60 watts an hour awake, and 3-4 watts asleep. Is that about right? About half as much power for a comparable size monitor awake, and about a tenth asleep?

No idea about consumption of materials in manufacture.

[tridim]

4. I'm keeping my tube TV as long as possible

I just bought a 19" LCD widescreen for my computer and can't stand it. It shimmers and changes color values from the bottom to the top of the screen unless I view it directly dead-center and level. The LCD's I see in the store do the same thing. I also have to adjust the gamma and contrast depending on the time of day, it's so annoying. Maybe it's just me?

[Warpy]

8. Maybe it is

I have a 19 inch HP LCD screen (reconditioned, of course) and have no trouble with it. I think maybe you got a dog and need to return it to the store. You should be able to adjust the height and angle perfectly at a normal viewing distance and see an image superior to anything you can find with a CRT screen. Color shimmer is very unusual and indicates something is wrong either with the screen or with your video card.

While it's true that the viewing angle is a lot more important with an LCD screen, unless you're 10 feet away from it you shouldn't be having that much trouble getting into position. Glare can also affect viewing, but that can be compensated for by cardboard screens if you're next to a window.

I know when I switched from CRT to LCD five years ago, my computer headaches went away.

[tridim]

12. I see the same effect on all the current LCD's

It's just a slight vibration I sense in my peripheral vision. I have perfect eyesight. My video card is brand new too and fairly high end. I think my eyes and brain just aren't compatible with 60hz (or whatever frequency the backlight is at), although 59hz and 72hz do the same thing. I guess I'll just have to improve my seated posture and place my couch dead center if/when I get an LCD TV.

[montana500]

20. refresh rates shouldnt matter on an LCD

That said, adjust your LCD monitors refresh rate by right clicking your desktop, clicking "properties", then "settings", then "advanced", the "monitor". If you can't adjust to 75mhz, then get an LCd that supports that refresh rate. The Samsung 940B is a solid LCd monitor that does support that.

[MADem]

5. I will say, in a household of close to a dozen televisions of all ages and

stages (one is a conversation piece from the late 1940s--it still works but isn't used) I will say that the flat panel TVs, in smaller sizes, are remarkably convenient--you can slap them up on a wall or off in a corner and they don't take over a room. And no hernias moving them, either, which is a good thing. Those little ones can be carted around under one arm!

[izzie]

7. I would get a new one if I had the money. They are so high.

I guess I will have to do something when they change the way they are run. On a fixed income it is not so easy to get up about 2000 to replace old sets. I would like to do the same for the PC tube.

[Warpy]

10. Unless you're looking for a monstrosity

you can get a flat panel set fairly reasonably. Check out Target and K Mart (not suggesting Wally World here). They have 20 inch sets for well under $400. Prices have come down about 35% from last year for LCD sets. I was pleasantly surprised when I went looking a couple of weeks ago. HD ready sets are more expensive, but those will probably start to decline in price, too, as the changeover date keeps getting pushed back because the gummint doesn't want a revolution on its hands.

LCD screens for PCs are now nearly as reasonable as CRTs. Check out http://www.ubid.com for reconditioned screens (a good deal, and they back up their merchandise very well) and http://www.overstock.com for reasonable deals on closeouts. Another good source is good old reliable http://www.tigerdirect.com .

I could never justify replacing the thrift shop monitors and sets until they conked out. They have obliged me over the years, though, and I've found reasonable places to replace them.

[izzie]

17. 400 is not bad, I put them out of mind as I was told it was 1000.

and have never gone and looked. I am one of these odd women who really never shops. I can only tell you food and books have gone up in price.

[Warpy]

19. Understood. I wouldn't know had my thrift shop TV

not bitten the dust. I loathe shopping.

[sinkingfeeling]

11. I'll just keep hanging on to my 28-yr. old Curtis Mathis 35 -inch console.

Never had a repair call. I have 4 other small color CRT tv's and no LCD.

[NNadir]

13. Plasma TV's cause nuclear plants.

Over in bizarro land, the unit of ecocrisisness is the "nuclear plant" which can be caused by plasma TV's.

Plasma TV's will cause "2 nuclear plants" worth of ecocrisis.

I suppose this crisisness could be eliminated by building two coal plants or a brazillion solar roofs (where's Arnie-worship when you need it), but there you have it.

Plasma screens threaten eco-crisis



The energy demands of Britain's obsession with flat televisions could require two nuclear plants

David Smith and Juliette Jowit
Sunday August 13, 2006
The Observer


Our insatiable appetite for the big picture is threatening the planet. A scientist has warned that if half of British homes buy a plasma-screen TV, two nuclear power stations would have to be built to meet the extra energy demand.

Britons were buying flat-screen TVs every 15 seconds from Currys and its online sister company Dixons during the build-up to the World Cup, and subsequent price reductions have ensured they remain hugely popular.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/nuclear/article/0,,1843726,00...

How is it, one wonders, that the Guardian believes that the only way to generate electricity is with nuclear plants?

[eppur_se_muova]

14. Well, they're quoting "a scientist".

So there you go.

Note it's the obsession with BIG screens that's causing the increase in power demand.

It took two people to write this article.

[NNadir]

16. Actually there's a "scientist" who says electrical power consumption will...

...fall, so there's nothing to worry about.

Nuclear plants? We don't need no stinking nuclear plants!

We're going to conserve our way to requiring only solar cells on our McMansions.

The "scientist" in question is a guy named Amory Lovins. I know he must be right because he has a degree in "Physics" so he's a "physicist" and must, therefore, know everything worth knowing.

He's such a great physicist, in fact, that he got to create his own physical unit, the "negawatt," which he coined somewhere around 1980, precisely the year that electrical power consumption began it's profligate fall to almost zero, just as he predicted.

How do I know electrical consumption will fall to zero? Because I saw it on TV, "big screen," and because Amory Lovins won a big prize for smart guys, called the MacArthur prize, which gave him a lot of money so he could buy (in this order): A McMansion in Snowmass, some solar cells for his McMansion roof, and maybe even a bigscreen plasma TV so he can watch TV shows all about guys who care about the environment, just like he does.

Here's a great interview that we could watch on our plasma TVs, all about how to eliminate our "dependence on foreign oil" by 2050:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/hardtalk/4989662....

(Please note that in ten years we can also watch on our Plasma TV's a show in which Amory Lovins tells us we can end our "dependence on foreign oil" by 2060. The year doesn't matter, because no one will be alive to point out how exactly our "dependence on foreign oil" actually came to end.)

[Kolesar]

21. Lovin's "message" is hard to interpret

I have read some of his material. I note that he has this happy, optimistic attitude, but when he gets to specifics, he loses me. I remember him describing how efficiencies will take us down to almost zero energy consumption, and I could not follow it. I am well read in energy and trained in scientific and engineering terms. He lost me in obscure references and terminology that I had to guess at from out of context. Oh well

[NNadir]

23. Lovins has no specifics.

Happy and optimistic isn't science; it's marketing.

Lovins is a guy out to live the good life and make money with various renewable scams. Since people really, really, really, really, really want his stuff be true - science be damned - they fork over the bucks. He takes the money and goes off in ADD style to the next daydream.

Here's some crap about him written in 1994.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.07/dream.car_pr.ht...

It's twelve years later. Science is partly about prediction. Exactly how have Lovins' predictions played out.

He's a marketeer and nothing more. His most recent scam was the "hyper car" some kind of hydrogen-wind-solar-ultralight-entropy free-no gas-runs on air, water, laundry soap, blah, blah, blah, bullshit. He got all kinds of people to give him money for his company and then quit and went home to Snowmass. What's left of the "hypercar" company stopped talking about making cars at all. Now his company is a materials company.

[eppur_se_muova]

24. His org is Rocky Mountain Institute (rmi.org)-- site very heavy with buzzwo...

catchphrases and "programs" which don't seem to involve anyone doing much of anything except publishing papers...some interesting links on their site to work done by others, but it's kind of a mystery what they do themselves. Note the heavy 'commerce' orientation of many of his own publications (search Amazon, e.g.). I have to wonder how he gets to be called a "physicist" -- I would have guessed a business school graduate. (A "who we are" link is notably absent.)

Renewable energy resources include sun, wind, falling water, and biomass. Technologies range from inexpensive hand-built devices to pricey custom-built installations. RMI is not currently active in renewable energy research, but introductory information is available at this site on the following technologies:

[NNadir]

25. He has a M.S. in Physics.

It sounds good when he's marketing whatever it is he's marketing.

[phantom power]

15. If I read this right, the problem is really... soccer games.

[hatrack]

18. CRT, Plasma, whatever the technology . . .

Kind of a shame that the shit that gets broadcast doesn't change, isn't it?

[Kolesar]

22. This reads like advertising hype. You are not happy until you have a big screen TV

I mean really big. That 27" that replaced your 19" isn't big enough. What's the matter with you? Get out there and buy, buy, buy!