Sony is competing:

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

To watch movies we have a special room where we use a projector and a 120" screen. Great stuff! But I never would want a TV that big, the screen just disappears into the ceiling when we don't use it.

There also is justification for 50-60" screens, but more than that? Not unless you have a house like Bill Gates.

No you don't. Honest.
The case for 70" is the exact same case as 55-60; just as the case for 42 in is the same as 37/40.
We're talking diagonal sizes so those extra 10 inches only add a couple of inches in width but over 50% viewing area. And they're still watchable at 6-8 feet. (Great immersion for movies.) And since they're relatively thin-framed devices, they don't take over the room.

32in is fine for dorm rooms.
40-46in is good for small apts and living rooms, but for dedicated viewing rooms, you really want to *start* at 55. (Rule of thumb: when buying an HDTV, go one size bigger than you think you need. When you get it home you'll find you still could've gone one size bigger.)

If you want to see who buys the (non-Elite) Sharps stop by the Display devices/LCD Forum at AVSForum. They have dedicated threads for the various 70in (2D and 3D, 120HZ and 240HZ) and 80in models. They even have pics of their installs. You'll discover there are no Bill Gates in there.

(For that matter, Bill Gates himself doesn't have the kind of house you're thinking of. The bulk of the cost of his house is the attached business meeting facility and the lake in the backyard. The house itself is positively "modest" by *millionaire* standards, never mind billionaires. )

Anyway, we're talking $2000-2500 displays sold at Sears, SAM's Club, and Costco. No Magnolia Home Theater buyers in the bunch.
(Thats what the $5000 Sharp Elites and their upcoming 90incher are for.)

And the fact that Sharp is doing brisk business on mid-range 70inchers at a tenth what Sony was charging just last year, highlights why quite a few folks think Sony should get out of the TV business. They are several *years* behind the industry leaders and barelly keeping up with the Vizios.

[SeaKing]

I see the big (over 50" is my reference) screens at the stores. They certainly look nice. I have some friends with big screens. 15 or 20 years ago, I saw a 6 foot back projection (or front - not sure, it varied over the years, it might have gotten to be 8 feet eventually) TV a friend had. I loved that guy, but he was a nut about TV. When not working, he and his wife watched TV. She had a disability and couldn't move around easily, and they seemed to live in their TV room.

Personally I have never gotten the bug. I just lost my "biggest" TV (about 21 or 23 inch) when the power supply blew out. It was an old CRT analog job that I had a government supplied converter hooked up to.
Once I had a really big TV a son left with me to keep. It was a giant CRT that could have a separate smaller picture on the big screen. He never would tell me how much it cost. Anyway, it essentially was two TVs in one, or it felt that way when you carried it around. 2 power supplies, etc. I finally gave it to another son when I had to move, and that caused a bit of a tiff with questions about what my son had instructed me to do about the TV, while he was away. The second son actually ended up throwing it away because the big picture died. The amount of ruckus that the first son then raised made me wonder how much the damn thing had cost.

Anyway, with my last big TV off at the electronics dump, I have now a 13" CRT digital TV I bought for about a hundred dollars at Walmart when the US went digital and my converter boxes hadn't come.
I put the converter on a 5" black and white analog set that I bought at HHgreg for $12. It works a lot better with the converter than it did by itself. I have it where I can see it while on my treadmill.

The 13" and 5' seem to be doing fine for me. When I move to my trawler, I won't need any bigger.

Now what I really want is a bigger computer monitor. Something like a 26" vizio would be nice.

[HansTWN]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

And since they're relatively thin-framed devices, they don't take over the room.

I always get the feeling that they do take over the room, you don't really see the thin frame since you are right in front of it. Beyond a certain point, thinness doesn't even matter anymore for wall mountings. So it is nice to have a retractable screen, you can just can get rid of the giant thing. And a screen works even in front of a window.

[luvshihtzu]

SeaKing,
I kind of understand why your son was upset about the TV going to the dump. Our old 30/32 inch Sony TV (it weighed a ton) broke and my husband wanted to throw it out. Think we spent over $5,500 for it and the set was just out of the five year warranty. I finally convinced him to have it repaired for $200 and we got a few more years out of it. It is still downstairs and I use it when there are electrical storms.

I was laughing to myself thinking about the Sony Beta Max. We still have the old top of the line model that we paid around $1,000 for at one time, still sitting downstairs with the old Sony TV connected. My husband was one of those who insisted that the quality of Beta tapes was so far above VHS tapes that we had to have the Sony Recorder. I had to buy very special expensive Beta tapes for it. They are still in a drawer unused and now we use our HP computer with TV tuner to do all our TV recording.
How times have changed. Wish I knew then what was coming down the line in electronics. Could have saved a fortune.

[Fbone]

I don't like how the picture is squished. Even on a 60 the display is small.

[RainingLemur]

Originally Posted by SeaKing

Once I had a really big TV a son left with me to keep. It was a giant CRT that could have a separate smaller picture on the big screen. He never would tell me how much it cost. Anyway, it essentially was two TVs in one, or it felt that way when you carried it around. 2 power supplies, etc. I finally gave it to another son when I had to move, and that caused a bit of a tiff with questions about what my son had instructed me to do about the TV, while he was away. The second son actually ended up throwing it away because the big picture died. The amount of ruckus that the first son then raised made me wonder how much the damn thing had cost.

Ah. TV-zilla. We had one of those. I think it was one of the last CRT's that Sony made. http://www.amazon.com/Sony-KV-32HS42.../dp/B0002HVIBG

BEAUTIFUL picture. Simply gorgeous. Just...moving the blasted thing was definitely a team-effort. I felt bad when we ultimately sold it. It would've been great to have in a guest room, or something. But, we upgraded to a 50-inch Sony model that we got at a great price and MonstroTV was sold off for about $400 about 3 years ago. I have no clue how much it retailed for when it first hit the shelves, but I can imagine that it definitely put a hurting on the wallet.

[SeaKing]

To Several: RainingLemur, luvshihtzu

I am not sure yet what the name of the TV was. I know it could have two pictures on the screen. The screen was very flat. I would estimate it was at least 30" diagonal. It was a CRT. The whole thing was very black. It weighed a ton. It had such dimensions that my arms wouldn't go around it and I had to grab it by my fingers on some edges. It was some 15 years ago or so, when I was younger and as strong as I had ever been but I had a tussle with it by myself.

We had no place for it, and just stored it while my middle son was overseas. He had told me to use it like my own, and not worry about what happened to it. I decided to let my older boy have it because he wanted a bigger TV. Then the big picture died, and we both decided to toss it.

My middle boy later said that it might have been fixable, but that meant we would have had to tote a giant broken TV around to wait for him to come home, and see if it was fixable. We decided to follow his original instructions and toss it.

Later, he seemed not to remember that understanding. Anyway, he just gave me a Samsung 7" Tab Plus, so I guess he has forgiven us.

I think I will try to look that "beast" up when I get a chance.

[fjtorres]

Sony finally made it official that Hirai is in charge and that Stringer is just a figurehead.
His first task: own up to losses of US$2.9Billion.
http://www.foxbusiness.com/technolog...b-annual-loss/

Quote of note:

Hirai, a 51-year old Sony veteran known for reviving the PlayStation gaming operations through aggressive cost-cutting, said he would not hesitate to scale back or withdraw from businesses if they were not competitive.

"I have a very strong sense of crisis about the environment surrounding us," Hirai told a news conference. "We cannot be afraid to make painful choices for the future of Sony. Our rivals and the operating environment won't wait for us."

They've already scaled back on ereaders so that quote could be ominous.
On the other hand they are actually delivering updates for the T1 so...

Things may get interesting...
...or, Sony being Sony, nothing may change.

[Kumabjorn]

Kind of ironic if they leave TV business. I remember how smug Morita was when he got to mention that in Japan.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

Kind of ironic if they leave TV business. I remember how smug Morita was when he got to mention that in Japan.

Any smugness they had got burned out when they had to pay Samsung to use their LCD plant...
...and to add insult to injury, then had to pay again to get *out* of the deal.

They literally got suckered coming and going...

[Kumabjorn]

Should have clarified, by "that" I meant when US closed its last TV plant.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

Should have clarified, by "that" I meant when US closed its last TV plant.

Oh. So they celebrated in Japan when that happened?
Interestingly, the seeds of Sony's downfall date to the same time period, 1995:

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/18/us...ted=all&src=pm

Zenith's product line is still considered one of the best in the industry and the company has played a leading role in the development of high-definition television. If the Government later this year approves the HDTV standard agreed to by most European and American electronics manufacturers, as expected, Zenith stands to receive substantial royalties from others using its technology as the new market grows. With the deal, LG Electronics becomes the first major South Korean television manufacturer to side with the Americans and Europeans in the dispute with Japan over HDTV standards.

One bad call and their entire TV empire collapsed.
The same thing happened to their ereader business and game console business.
The modern tech business is very unforgiving.

[Kumabjorn]

Celebrate is perhaps a tad too much, but when Akio Morita was interviewed about it he proudly stressed that Japanese makers where more efficient and US makers always had labor problems that didn't exist in Japan.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Kumabjorn

Celebrate is perhaps a tad too much, but when Akio Morita was interviewed about it he proudly stressed that Japanese makers where more efficient and US makers always had labor problems that didn't exist in Japan.

Too bad the Koreans didn't have those problems either.
And they didn't have a problem figuring out that digital broadcasts would work best with native-digital displays.

Some solace: none of the asian consumer electronics companies have figured out the digital content businesses, so Sony has *some* company in those markets.