Industry shivers as LCD sales run out of steam

[The News Bot]

It’s news that will send a ripple of fear through every major consumer electronics company. Despite ongoing and massive capital investment in panel production, LCD screens are not selling as well as expected.
According to the latest industry market research, there’s a steady decline in the street price of screens for both PC and consumer use. [...]

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[Nabs]

slowing of demand may be the result of several factors:

1. The lcd industry appear to be releasing screens in a staggered fashion - gradual intro of 1080i nevermind p. Are consumers simple waiting until 1080p screen resolutions are available and LCDs can take their inputs accordingly.

2. Connections, manufactures have limited the connections available to date and to some degree are limited themselves by technology advancement - e.g. hdmi 1.3

3. Delays in releasing new updates to panels - philips and clear are a prime example. Loewe and imminent new chassis etc...

4. HD DVD/ Blur ray format war does not help. These are the technologies that will/ should make maximum use of HD video.

5. Price will always be a factor.

Industry should wake up to the fact consumers often are well informed about technologies on the horizon and are less likely in the mainstream to shell out large amounts of money until they see stability in advancement. Who would wish to spend thousands now when in a year they will have a technology that will not be able to display items to their full effect.

[Monster]

Plus the fact that for many people, the picture quality on SD TV is just not good enough when presented on an LCD display and in many instances, not as good as people's beloved CRT's.

This is probably further compounded by the poor set-ups in the majority of major high street retailers. Although they do seem to have improved a bit over the last few months with brand lead promotions...

[hornydragon]

I wonder if this all from the manufacturers who said plasma would be dead in the water and was outdated.......where it is going from strength t strength and selling more?

[hamster]

I think much of it was newcomer set makers getting overexcited about the world cup. Both it and the Olympics never boost the market significantly, only bring demand forward a bit from the autumn.

[LV426]

I think the manufacturers often shoot themselves in the foot by

a) having unreasonable policies on pixel defects
b) fitting TVs which will (still) be primarily used for standard resolution sources, with cr@ppy scaler/deinterlacers, thus not doing the LCD panel justice
c) failing to provide digital tuners

etc....

[hamster]

I absolutely agree - a recent chipset we did was for max size 26" as far as we were concerned for acceptable performance - we know customers using it for 42"...not pretty.

[kenfowler3966]

I am perfectly happy with my 5 year old Toshiba 36" crt, except for the size in the room, and it still equals the picture of many new sets, even hd ready ones as displayed in the shops. I have yet to pay the extra for sky+ as my hdd dvd recorder acts as a perfectly good pvr, let alone an extra amount to get the hd version of sky.

I have hundreds of ordinary dvd's both bought and recorded and a good standard dvd player to play them. I will not be replacing these again with hd films, although I may buy new films in dual format to futureproof if they become available. However I will not be doing this until the winning format becomes known, or unless reasonably priced players are dual format capable.

I have a stand alone £29 freeview decoder so I can watch widescreen tv whilst recording from sky.

I am only likely to go hd when the tv packs up.

This must be typical of a large number of even enthusiastic AV addicts like myself with limited funds after all bills are paid. This is why the sales are slowing, what about all those who bought crappy lcd sets or early plasmas where the logos burnt in and only last 10,000 hours at best, which even if still working are not hd ready? Once burnt, twice shy? I certainly not buy equipment that could not be returned if a pixel was faulty.

I can see the advantages of hd but will not go down that route until forced. The manufactures don't help themselves by selling near obsolete equipment, eg analogue tuners are stil prevalent, or half compliant sets which will not actually support the final output from hd equipment. Even if I had the money, the best bet is to sit tight until the hd revolution matures in practice, the dvd war is won etc. I learnt the hard way that early adoption is very expensive. My dvd hd recorder cost £800+ about 3.5 years ago. A new model with a hard drive twice as large is around £250 now. In 3 years hd technology will be mature and probably a third of its current price. With luck basic sky boxes will be hd compliant and there will be no extra fee for the better quality, as widescreen is seen to be standard now.

[MAW]

I find, from my end of the market, customers are not well informed at all. Th HD ready logo is a 'good thing' I suppose, but as pointed out above, it's less than 1/2 the story. It says nothing about the quality of some vital components. Most people have no idea about the pros and cons of 1080 panels. IMHO it's all bull anyway, they will still be just as crap as some of the lower res panels, and will never be a 1:1 match for what is broadcast. The message in CI is that plasma still rules the roost.

[Paulie-W]

I would suspect that most people just don`t have the spare cash now days to go and get a new flat panel anyway. At least until their old ctr`s have gone phutt.

I was lucky in that i took my wife to the ideal home exhibition, and she wanted one there and then I nearly fell over (she`s a total technophobe).

[ukkev2000]

I'm with Paulie-W, they just cost too much.

The whole industry was amazed when flat-panels took off, it caught all the players off balance and hence they all rushed to ditch CRT and change over to LCD.

The truth is in the shops though - look at the cost of a decent panel, say £1500, I think that wedge is a bit too thick for most sorts, with spiralling mortgage payments and higher fuel costs.

That's the problem.

The other elements, like movie judder when panning L-R are less significant in trms of major sales numbers (as opposed to the smaller av-obsessive cliques that you find on web forums Do you seriousy think that there are 10xmillions of people going "nah,not until they make 1080p panels"?

Panel sales won't improve until FTA HD becomes the norm and HD Ready panels become cheaper. Even my Sky-loving buddies baulk at the cost of Sky HD.

[Fordy]

Originally Posted by ukkev2000

Panel sales won't improve until FTA HD becomes the norm and HD Ready panels become cheaper.

Yeah, like £500 for a 36" cheaper.