Deflation of television, 19- inch edition

I found a receipt in the house dated 12/23/2007 for the purchase of a nineteen-inch LCD TV, specifically the Polaroid TLA-01901C, for $298. Polaroid ought to be ashamed of this piece of junk. The sound is tinny, the channels change slowly, but at least I can hook up my Nintendo GameCube up to it. The screen is small, though that comes with the portability.

33 months later, the popular 19-inch Sharp LC19SB27UT is selling for about $200. The decent 32-inch Toshiba 32C100U and LG 32LD350 are selling for about $340 today, so in 33 months, for 13% more, I could get about 2.8x the screen area. Wow!

BTW, here's a cool chart of the average price of a 32-inch LCD TV.

12-28-10: That rate has been in the 19% to 20% annual range for twenty years on a display area basis. That means the price per square inch of AMLCD falls 50% every three years.

The implication is that the price of a 42” LCD TV in 2010 should be about one-half its price in 2007.

1-23-11: Just caught this story, which implies 42 inch screens will hit $399 this year, at least the Insignia brand will. I just caught a flyer from BrandsMart for a 42" Panasonic at $399 model, so the estimate sounds realistic.

A new story out 2-2-11, "With 2011 TV models set to come to market later this month, some leftover 2010s will have their prices axed to the max by the beginning of March."

It's accompanied by this chart

, showing the 32 inch TV dropping 14.7% from 2010 to 2011, not quite as much as the 26.8$ drop from 2009 to 2010.

9-12-11: Found this