Do TV’s really become obsolete? As long as they can be connected to devices and show a decent picture, to me they’re not obsolete.
Absolutely they do. In my time as an Telly salesperson from the mid 90's to early 2000's, the manufacturers released:
Dolby pro-logic & dolby digital built-in on certain Toshiba & Hitachi tellies. JVC did a '3d surround' Cant quite remember what they called it but that's what they claimed. it did work of sorts but it was a gimmick really.
Sony flat screens. They made these CRT flat screens with thicker glass which made them weigh more than a washing machine at half the size.
CRT screens getting bigger & bigger. Toshiba made the largest 4:3 at 37" at the time.
Then Telly aspect ratio changed from 4:3 to 16:9 in the late 90's. By the time I left in early 2001 nearly all tellies were 16:9 except portables.
Freeview. Some tellies had analogue & digital tuners back then. I used to tune them in analogue because people were still used to 5 channels or they had sky or cable boxes. The digital TV signal in South Essex at the time was dire anyway.
Plasma was becoming mainstream when I left as well, but most peoples budget for a Telly was £3-400 at the time. They certainly wouldn't want to pay £1-2K which was cheap for a plasma, about the same price these big screen
jobbies are now.
No such thing as HDMI back then. Scart leads were the go-to connector.
I doubt very much you'll see a CRT set in someones home these days.
Me - last purchase was a 32" LED backlit LCD panny which I still have bought in late 2012. Only reason I bought it is they'd just turned off the Analogue signal so I had no choice. None of the built-in apps work anymore but that's not a problem as I have a youview box & chromecast linked up to it.
My worry is when my telly dies, I wont be able to buy the same size screen due to this pointless screen size arms race the market wants to play.
