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Comment by yzydserd | Hacker News Reader

I'm not a big fan of the price graph in the article.

Are TVs really 90% cheaper since 2020 than they were in 2000? The product seems to me to be one of those that always costs the same, you just get more for a similar amount of money as time progresses (like laptops).

What does it mean for the average hourly wage line to show a 100% increase? Like it shows clothing to be a constant cost. But that's before a 100% increase in hourly wages, so has effective clothing cost halved? And food and beverage tracks the wage increase, so is it the same effective cost?

And you get artefacts like the 90% drop in TV price looking to be the same scale as an 80% increase in food and beverage cost. I can buy 10 times as many TVs, but half as much food.

Why is is More expensive vs more affordable? Seems odd to mix terms of affordable and expense when the graph isn't corrected for earnings.

I suppose it may work for some.

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> Are TVs really 90% cheaper since 2020 than they were in 2000? The product seems to me to be one of those that always costs the same, you just get more for a similar amount of money as time progresses (like laptops).

Yes, unambiguously so. In the early 2000s, a high definition 38 inch TV cost three thousand dollars (https://archive.org/details/Circuit-City-Ad-2001-04-29/page/...), and "high definition" then would have meant 1080i if not 720p.

I bought 3 TVs in the last 15 or so years. Each time I spent less than the last and got a much better (and lighter!!) tv.

Before that I couldn't afford a TV and had a used 13 inch tube TV someone gave me.

I know it was nearly 2 decades ago, but in 2006 or 2007 my siblings camped out at Best Buy all night to buy laptops for $300.

That does sound right. But imagine we're plotting the cost of a laptop from 2015 to 2025. We're getting say 4x the memory and 4x better speed (if not more), but would we show a graph that indicates laptops are 4x cheaper in 2025 than 2015? I wouldn't.

4x is an enormous understatement of the gains in computers the last 10 years.

And I don't see why you wouldn't. You can get used computers for basically free that are faster than a 2015 top-of-the-line computers. People upgrade and the old computers are often literally thrown away.

The average price of what is considered a good TV in any given year has gone down over the years. While the GP did get a better TV each time, absolute price also went down each time, likely without even factoring inflation in.

I’m being downvoted for each comment I make on the topic but anyway …

I found a source article [0] about how the Bureau adjusts the cost for features with a “hedonic” score. So yes, a new feature (a Netflix app? AI? Voice recognition? Soundbar?) is counted as an improvement with value and that in turn affects a prior.

On another BLS page: “if a television in the CPI is replaced by one with a larger screen and higher price, the BLS can make an adjustment to the price difference by estimating what the old television would have cost had it had the larger screen size.”

I bought a 42” mid range TV in 2012 for 900, a 55” mid range in 2017 for 900, and a 55” mid range in 2024 for £1200. Although this is a 30% or so discount (in inflation adjusted terms) the BLS can call it 80% because it has Smart Features like OLED and internet connectivity and so forth.

[0] https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/questions-and-ans...

Anecdote: I purchased a Samsung 46” mid-range DLP (rear projection) TV in 2005 for $2500. It was 720p and had one hdmi port. IIRC there were some plasma and perhaps early LCDs available for 2-3x the cost or more. So, I’d say the cost has gone down by at least 90%, if not more.

So by pixel math alone, a 4K TV of equivalent size gets you 8x TV these days. :P

Heh, yeah, and if you're not buying a high-end OLED or something like that, you're likely paying 90+% less than I paid in 2005 for my TV, for 8x the pixels. Plus you don't have to deal with the damned light engine crapping out after a few thousand hours of use :)

> Are TVs really 90% cheaper since 2020 than they were in 2000?

This prompted me to look at my TV purchases. My last two TV purchases were both Samsung 55" TVs, one in 2009 for $2400 and one in 2017 for $1000, both bought at Best Buy. In both cases they were a tier down from the top of the line models.

Suppose TVs really did get 90% cheaper over 2000 to 2020. If we work out the average annual decline in price and apply that to my 2009 TV we get that in 2017 an equivalent TV should be around $1000, so that matches.

If we assume the decline continued at the same average rate after 2000, and apply that to those two purchases we get that today they should be around $440.

Looking at Samsung 55" TVs on Best Buy, it looks like $440 today would be around the top of the tier below the top tier (e.g., regular LED instead of QLED).

They’re probably comparing like items—so maybe a decent mid-range tv is the same price, but the same tv would be much cheaper. I paid $1k for a decent tv in 2009, and then bought a new decent tv this year for the same $1k, but it’s a much nicer tv than before.

But I agree with you about the essential meaningless of that number. People buy a tv every X years (for me 15, apparently), but they buy food almost every day.

Right, but imagine that with cars not TVs. To show the cost change of a car from 2000 to 2020 I wouldn't show the cost of a 2000-quality car in 2020. I'd show the actual median cost of a car in 2020.

It's more complicated for cars, because you often can't get a 2000s-quality car even if you want to. There just aren't any cars on the market today with the size and (lack of) features my current car has; whenever I need a new one, I'll have to either buy another ancient car from the 2000s or pay more for extra features and dimensions I don't need.

With TVs, though, Best Buy sells 2000s-quality TVs for like 60 bucks. I don't think it makes sense to say that TVs haven't really decreased in price just because most people would prefer to buy the fancier ones.

They still make small and normal sized cars (for now), they just aren't as popular anymore.

I just did a check of the msrp for a cheaper Toyota Corolla near San Francisco and it's MSRP is almost exactly the same as the base 2000 Corolla when adjusted for inflation.

I got my Samsung 64-inch plasma on sale for $2800 (or was it $2100?) somewhere around 2010 or earlier. Best TV I've ever owned and I still use it.

Per inch and resolution, a 90% drop in cost sounds right to me.

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