On Monday, August 7th, there was an article in the New York Times business section with the headline "Picture Tubes Are Fading Into the Past." The article quotes Geoff Shavey, the TV buyer for Costco, as saying After the holidays, the days of picture-tube TV’s are gone. One year from now, we will not sell picture-tube TV’s.

People have been forecasting the demise of the CRT "within five years" for a couple of decades now. Is it possible that the forecast is now correct? The article discusses the CRT-based product offerings from Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba. All 3 companies have cut their lines of CRT sets dramatically, with Panasonic eliminating them altogether.

If you look at the top tier companies and the TV types that get all the headlines, eliminating CRTs makes sense. Who would want to buy a 250-pound 40" CRT when they could get a sleek 42" plasma set for $2000?

On the other hand, CRTs are still cheaper than flat panel sets. Greg Bosler, executive VP of TTE Corporation, says a 27" LCD with a digital tuner is about $800, while a 27" RCA brand CRT set with a digital tuner is about $350, and a set with only an analog tuner, it is about $240.

At the extreme low end of the market, I recently bought my daughter a 13" CRT TV with a built in DVD player for $94, with another $15 off if you had your supermarket club card. I wish I had bought two, because another daughter went into Target and bought a TV for her dorm room, but it didn’t include the DVD player. Can LCDs satisfy this market?

The answer depends on your price sensitivity, as prices are getting closer. Best Buy has an Insignia brand 15" 16:9 LCD TV on sale for $199, including an analog tuner. The way LCD prices are dropping, it is not a stretch to see this on sale for less than $100 soon.

CRTs are still out there now, but they are not really big business any more. For example, Chunghwa Picture Tubes announced on August 9 net sales of its TFT business increased to NT$7.1 billion for June, with the highest growth in the larger sizes. Their CRT business unit had monthly net sales totaled NT$2.0 billion. And this is in a picture tube company!

The digital tuner is another issue for the under $100 market as they are more expensive than analog ones. A basic analog tuner in high volume is only $1-$2, but a digital tuner is likely to be ten times the price - far too expensive for a $79 TV. A digital tuner is just silicon, and perhaps Moore’s law will eventually bring the price down into the same range. At that point, which I expect will be reached in 5 years, the CRT will truly be dead. -MB