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Comment by ForHackernews | Hacker News Reader

Part of the reason they're more expensive is that they're not subsided by ad revenue.

Neither were dumb TVs in the 90s, but they were still somehow affordable.

The price of the median purchased TV in 1997 was ~$4000, in nominal (1997) dollars. The price of the median TV in 2026 is ~$800.

So before we account for inflation, consumers are paying about one-fifth the price for a TV now. When we account for inflation, consumers are paying 3.7% of the price for a TV that they did in 1997. And it’s not even the same TV!

An apples-for-apples comparison, a 44” flatscreen TV with 1080i input was $45,000 in 1997 dollars, whereas the current price for a comparable model is $220. (The 2026 model is still better, with a lower operating cost and no burn-in, but it was the worst I could find.)

TVs today are significantly cheaper than those in the 90s. It’s not the TV’s fault they’re unaffordable.

> The price of the median purchased TV in 1997 was ~$4000, in nominal (1997) dollars

I'm sorry, what? How does this pass the sniff test? Are you saying people spent four thousand 1997 dollars for a tv? Or the equivalent of $4000 of 2026 dollars? Either way, that is extremely high and 1997 was not that long ago.

Nominal dollars refers to the sticker price, in dollars at the time. 1997 was thirty years ago. TVs back then were a large ticket item!

Yes people spent that much for a TV in 1997.

Not as a median, they didn't.

Right? I was there. My family had a tv. We didn't not spend the equivalent price of a honda civic on it.

You can't get a Honda Civic for $4k now. And you couldn't get one for $1.9k in 1997 equivalent dollars[0]. Perhaps you're thinking second hand. And forget that a 35" Sony CRT-TV was $3.8k in 1997 (2x average sale), or a 42" plasma was $23k (more than 12x average sale). Not everyone bought/replaced a TV around the time.. continued with their 25" 1992 screen.. and they were smart if they survived until ~2005 when prices drastically shifted.

[0]: https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/2026?endYear=1997...

I'd like to present a newspaper insert from Circuit City in 1997 that advertised the televisions they offered: https://web.archive.org/web/20261025051358/https://i.ebayimg...

Front page at https://web.archive.org/web/20261025052016/https://i.ebayimg...

A 35-inch Sony TV was $1.4k, or ~$2.9k today.

25-inch GE sets were $219, or ~$458 today.

And the original comment was the "median price of $4k".

Yep. And to be justifiably curt: It's fucking bullshit.

At best, it's deliberately manipulative. At worst, it's a pack of lies.

The median bullshit quotient here is: Festering.

> The price of the median purchased TV in 1997 was ~$4000, in nominal (1997) dollars.

I think you added a zero, where is this figure from?

The Sony KV-32FS120, a high-end set in 2004, had an MSRP of 600 USD.[1] (remember, HD hadn't really happened yet, so anything with that feature wasn't a normal consumer item until at least 2005 (unles you were in Japan)) 1080i basically didn't exist in 1997, unless you lived in Japan, where it had barely got of the ground. The modern day comparison is a 100 inch 8K OLED. Your median is so far off base I have a hard time we live in the same world.

[2] https://crtdatabase.com/crts/sony/sony-kv-32fs120

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