My headline is certainly more accurate than this article in PC World.
In the above article, dated Jan. 2006, a Samsung rep brags that price of 40" LCD TVs dropped to "only" $3000; the insinuation being "go buy one now!".
Well, if you did, you were one of the lucky few...who had to prep their homes for "Cribs MTV", that is. Now nearly two years later, a brand-name 40" LCD HDTV can easily be had for $1300 (a 56% price drop). Admittedly, that's a long time to wait for prices to drop, so perhaps even more remarkably, the prices of name-brand 32" LCD HDTVs (720p) have dropped more than 20% in the past two months! Before Thanksgiving, Sony, Sharp, Philips and Samsung 32" LCD TVs were going for ~$900; anything under $850 would have been a steal. Now every mainstream retailer from Amazon to Circuit City to Best Buy has name-brand 32" LCD TV's for less than $750 and deals can be found for sub $700 units. If picture quality isn't critical for you, 32" off-brand (Westinghouse, Insignia, Olevia, etc.) sub-$600 prices are easy to find. Off-brand 19" and 26" HDTVs can be had for less than $400...matching the prices of CRT (tube) TVs from just a few years ago...
The widespread adoption of LCD TV's in the U.S. is now imminent. Up until recently, the 40"+ sized TVs were the big sellers...early adopters had money to burn and they didn't want "small" screens. But 2008 will be the year of the meat-and-potatoes buyer: those people that have an eight-year-old CRT (20"-30") TV in their living rooms and simply want an upgrade and don't want to empty their savings accounts. By next Christmas, that promises to be a given and average consumers should be happily carting away 32" HDTVs for $400.
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