Faster-Than-Expected Phase-Out of Picture Tube TVs

[Jerry Jones]

http://tinyurl.com/zqb42

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Claymonkey]

"For the first time in history, women care about the TV that comes in the house," Vitelli said. "Men are not just getting permission to buy a flat-screen TV--they’re getting directed to do so."

I find this especially striking.

[Jerry Jones]

Yes, interesting remark.

However, I'm content to wait -- with my 27" ATSC tuner tube TVs.

The price of the flat-panel TVs will have to drop to $500 or less before I bite (although I have a 20-inch LCD Acer Ferrari widescreen computer monitor).

Because my DVDs... in standard definition... actually look better on the tube TVs than on my LCD.

The high resolution TVs seem to make the flaws in standard definition DVDs stand out.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Dr Mordrid]

Once women discovered that flat screens don't take up so much space, opening up decorating options, the tube sets were doomed.

At our local and chain stores at least 75% of the full-sized sets are flat panels of some kind. The rest are rear projection and a small percentage of 13" tube sets.

[TnT]

Oddly enough my interest in buying a TV has faded more and more. I remember back in high school, damn - 8 years ago, when I worked at NEC, I just drooled over the new plasmas coming out.

[Brian Ellis]

There is another factor that the article does not mention: the environment. Just take the faceplate of a large CRT, 15-20 mm thick, say 6,500 cm3 of glass. This contains 15% lead (in the form of lead oxides) to prevent harmful X-rays from being emitted. This is about 1,000 cm3 or 11 kg of lead. At the end-of-life, most of them end up in landfills and the glass is shattered. Being a very soft glass, it is slightly water-soluble and there is a fear that the lead could contaminate water supplies under some circumstances. There is therefore pressure from environmentalists to reduce the quantity of lead in electronics, exemplified by the RoHS Directive of the EU, which forbids the use of lead in electronics, along with mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium and some bromo-organics, as from 1 July 2006. There are a few exemptions, CRTs being one, for the moment, but they are subject to frequent review. Similar Directives and Rules are being applied in China, several US States (notably Calif, Maine and Mass.) and elsewhere.

I am an environmentalist and have long fought against this Directive, on logical grounds, but in vain. You can see my thoughts at http://www.cypenv.org/worldenv/files...ility.htm#RoHS. This applies essentially to solder but similar arguments can apply to lead glass.

Also the energy required to make a CRT is roughly 4 times that of an equivalent-sized LCD panel. A CRT will consume typically 5 times as much power than an LCD panel in its lifetime. It is therefore logical that the CRT is doomed to die.

A couple of months ago, I visited a large electronics store in Switzerland. I noted that all their computer bundles (I'd estimate ~30 models), except the two very cheapest ones, were offered only with LCDs and they had no separate CRT monitors.

[paulw]

Once women discovered that flat screens don't take up so much space, opening up decorating options, the tube sets were doomed.

At our local and chain stores at least 75% of the full-sized sets are flat panels of some kind. The rest are rear projection and a small percentage of 13" tube sets.

About the same here Doc. I'm in a country that hasn't got HDTV yet..

[Jon P. Inghram]

Lets see... I've got a cheap 20" (19" viewable area) CRT TV from Best Buy that cost $100 with component and s-video inputs. If I wanted to move "up" to an LCD, the cheapest one Best Buy (not that I'd restrict my purchase to them, just using them as an example as many consumer cattle would consider them an excellent place to buy electronics) carries is a $200 15" 1024x768 "HDTV" LCD that has component and VGA inputs. Next up would be a $330 20" 640x480 LCD with component and VGA inputs again. No HDMI, and of course no digital tuners.

[Jerry Jones]

The women who are pushing their husbands to buy flat panels are doing so because they've budgeted for the cost of going to traditional movie theatres.

By the time they finish buying tickets for their children -- and high cost refreshments -- they've spent a huge sum.

So they're reasoning that it's actually cheaper to spend $2,000 on a big flat panel TV than to go to the movies several times each year.

So for these women, it's actually a decision based on the phase-out of traditional theatre film viewing.

But I work at Idaho State University and our statewide distance education system consists of classroom sites linked via IP video/audio data streams.

Professors can teach from any location; students can learn from any location.

All of our classrooms are equipped with multiple monitors.

- Some are very large tube TV monitors;

- Some are very large rear projection TV monitors;

- We're also experimenting with newer rear-projection flat panels.

Our university budget -- for now -- is such that we can't justify the expense of immediately replacing all of our tube TVs and our large rear projection TVs.

And I suspect substantial numbers of Americans would like to upgrade to flat panels, but can't justify the cost.

The environmental arguments in favor of flat panels are legitimate.

However, having worked for a city department whose primary responsibility was waste recycling, I think the answer to such potential environmental problems is to educate citizens to take advantage of existing recycling services.

Here in Boise, we routinely organized widely-publicized "household hazardous waste collection events" to recycle the components found in CRT monitors, cell phones, PDAs, organizers and various other electronic devices.

Tube TVs aren't the only household items that pose environmental hazards.

In fact, environmental hazards are significant in connection with virtually every household product intended for cleaning, painting, etc.

That said, the prices of flat panels need to come down.

They're still too expensive.

The manufacturers can maintain these prices because of high demand and they hope the demand stays high so they can maintain their profit margins.

They're happy to quit manufacturing CRTs because corporate profit margins for those are razor thin.

The corporate profit margins on flat panels are substantially higher.

So if the corporations really wanted to do the environment a favor, they would bring down the prices of the flat panels to a point where institutions and individuals could easily justify the replacement costs.

Until then, substantial numbers of individuals and families will continue to use their tube TVs, in my humble opinion.

And while the thrust of the article I cited suggested that tube TVs are being phased out faster than expected, the truth of the matter is that even this article contained a quote from TTE corporation (RCA, Thomson), which suggested that corporation believes the tube TVs will continue to be sold in stores such as Wal-Mart for several years to come.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Brian Ellis]

They're happy to quit manufacturing CRTs because corporate profit margins for those are razor thin.

The corporate profit margins on flat panels are substantially higher.

Whereas I partially agree with the second paragraph, you are wrong with the first. In my quality as environmental consultant for UNEP, I visited two CRT and one LCD plant in China a couple of years ago. I can assure you that CRT assembly is highly automatised under clean-room conditions (we had to view the processes through windows) and is very profitable. The reject rate is under 1%. OTOH, the materials in LCD manufacture are a fraction of the price of CRTs but the manufacture and assembly is much more complicated. Even with the best technology, based on a criterion of a maximum of 5 dead pixels, the reject rate is enormously higher (it was 90% on 15" monitors a few years ago, although much lower today) and this is reflected in the price, which was in the thousands at that time, with zero profits for the makers. It is only by extreme diligence and new technologies that they have improved the yield to between 80 and 90%, thus reduced the prices and become profitable.

I believe the "silent majority" are like myself. I have an 11 year-old 28" set in our living room and it still works perfectly. I'll continue using it for our family viewing until it renders its soul to its maker. Only when that happens will it be replaced by an LCD of similar dimensions, the choice being on environmental grounds (no high-lead glass, no highly toxic phosphors, lower energy in manufacturing and use). We have only 2 other CRTs in the house, a 15" TV monitor for my video work and a 5" tube in my oscilloscope. All 4 computer monitors are already LCD, one 19", 2 18.1" and 1 17".

[Jerry Jones]

Sorry, Brian, but you seem to be incorrect about the profit margin for flat panel TVs vs. CRT TVs.

http://tinyurl.com/l82q4

"Sanyo's relationship with Wal-Mart (WMT) could be a boost even though sales of higher profit margin flat, thin style TVs may take away sales from its CRT TVs."

And I'll be happy to add literally dozens of new links to even more industry articles about the higher profit margins of flat panel TVs.

Somebody apparently deceived you on your trip.

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Jerry Jones]

And here:

"Consumer electronics companies also want out of the tube TV business, in part because profit margins have become so thin."

"The government has mandated that all TVs eventually include a built-in digital tuner to receive over-the-air digital broadcasts, and while even picture-tube sets are being made compliant, manufacturers would rather switch to selling thin-panel TVs, which can generate bigger profits."

http://tinyurl.com/zqb42

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net

[Brian Ellis]

I was talking about manufacturing profitability of the CRTs and LCD panels, not of the retail profitability of complete TV sets. Apples and oranges. I can assure you that CRT manufacture in China (and I suspect over 85-90% of them are made there now, a few in Korea) is very profitable. They are all made by corporations, sometimes joint ventures with Japanese and European companies, some entriesly Chinese-owned, and their ratings on the Shanghai stock market is very good. They are not government controlled, so there is no way they can obfuscate the figures. I had access to their accounts, because these companies were beneficiaries of UN Multilateral Fund capital grants used to replace ozone-depleting CFC solvent cleaning of the shadow masks and my job was to check a) that all CFC solvents had been replaced, b) that the capital equipment supplied under the grant was operating correctly c) that the funding was correct on both capital and consumables d) that the quality of the goods produced was not worse with the substitute process. This is a very rigourous and detailed procedure and resulted in reports of about 30 pages for each enterprise. I probably still have photos of the processes I was mandated to control, but this would require some hunting out!

[MultimediaMan]

At the risk of ducking a rolling pin: "Of course, LCDs do not attract as much dust as a CRT TV, and LCDs are substantially lighter than CRTs thereby making housecleaning easier..."

:P

[Jerry Jones]

Brian,

Thanks.

Very interesting job you have, by the way.

One of these days I'd like to meet you in person.

I hear Cyprus can be a pretty nice place to visit.

That's where you are, right?

Jerry Jones

http://www.jonesgroup.net