Poll: Has "the economy" shaken your HD purchase plans?
By Darren Murph 
posted Nov 8th 2008 12:00PM
posted Nov 8th 2008 12:00PM
[Image courtesy of GreenLantern]
posted Nov 8th 2008 12:00PM
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I'm wanting a smaller flat screen for the bedroom. Honestly they're rather pricey for the size. However I've been seeing that the soft economy might make them more manageable. So I guess I'm waiting to take advantage.
To be honest, it's encouraging me to stop saving and start spending. Everyone who overspent and got themselves miles into debt is having this "Awwww, that's terrible that you were financially irresponsible, let us put the country further into debt to solve that for you" thing happening, while those of us who saved are facing rapidly dropping interest rates.
I bought a new house in mid august. It has a nearly complete media room (curtains, bar with no fridge, media cabinet) All it really needs is a projector, mount and a screen to be useful since i have a receiver and speakers. It remains shut with the vents closed off.
We have barely bought anything for the new house and are saving every penny.
I've scaled back but not because of debt (I'm debt free), but because my cash flow is a lot smaller now and so money is put into three piles, bills, savings, & food.
Food is over-rated.
Not so much because I'm getting more broke, but I'm certainly saving more money with my PS3 and/or Western Digital WD TV box and, um, an alternative movie acquisition method which lets me be more selective with Blu-Ray purchases.
No, I waiting for more channels in HD the prices of BluRay to drop.
I think the sudden plunge in consumer spending has the retailers scrambling to deliver some great deals. If you're in the market these days, you can get some really good deals. I recently bought the LG 42LG70 42" 1080p 120Hz TV from Fry's.com for $999. If you're in the market, monitor the deals sites like SlickDeals or TechDealDigger and you can score some really deep discounts.
Link to TechDealDigger's HDTV deal page: http://www.techdealdigger.com/hot-deals/hdtvs-sale/63
I was actually very seriously planning on buying a new TV on Black Friday. Mine is only 720 and I really want a 1080 one. But, yeah, that's not happening now. :-)
What's wrong with your TV being 720? You probably won't notice a difference with a 1080p tv anyways, depending on what size TV you get, and how far away from it you sit.
I would assume you have a blu-ray player already.... If not, then what would be the point in getting a 1080p TV? Don't buy into the marketing hype. 720p can be just as good, if not better, than a 1080p TV. Look at the Pioneer 5080 for example. 720p TV, but it's still better than a lot of 1080p TV's on the market today.
This is really the wrong forum to be asking the question. A better answer would be gleaned by looking at the market and seeing whether people ARE actually scaling down spending at stores and with companies that make this kind of thing.
Given the dire state of Circuit City, the collapse of Sound Advice, and the profit warnings various CE giants are giving, I think the answer is probably "Yes".
Most people don't realize they sit too far from the display to benefit from the resolution they are paying for. This is not to say that the added resolution above 480 lines isn't of any benefit, but a lot of people would probably benefit 'more' from a larger display with 720-768P resolution than paying for 1080P when they probably will never see the resolution.
It would be pretty hard to hinder my HD sales; I only rent blu-ray DVD's and will continue to do so until Sony gets their head out of their .... and cuts the premium on BR disks to a reasonable price.
For a while, I was thinking about getting a 720p HDTV and a dvd upconverter. However, talk of layoffs at my company has pushed that way back. Maybe next year I can get one.