Depends on the retailer. It's amazing what's still available in the Electronics section of say Sears, Bay, etc. Where quite a few people still shop.

I certainly think TI will continue to make the DMD's as long as manufacturers order them but how long will that be?
DMDs are perfectly safe as long as there is a front projection market.

But its hard to sell them though if the consumer is not asking for them and retailers aren't stocking them!
Certainly, but what needs to occur here is an understanding of why the decline and what can be done to reverse it. Perhaps it's a time to increase investment in the technology rather than decrease?

The only downside unique to RP today is the cabinet depth (viewing angle issues are shared to a large degree with LCD).
The other downsides are off axis viewing and reliability. According to the CR survey, 18% of RP TVs had failures in the first 3 years vs 3% for LCD & Plasma. 25% of the RP failure rate was attributed to bulbs, so LED RPTVs would be able to reduce this failure rate to 13%. This is still a negative for RP and adds to the overall cost to the TV manufacturers and disappointments with the consumers.

I don't see the sales trend changing for RP.

The other downsides are off axis viewing and reliability.
And still more downsides (at least with current technology):
- The need for some overscan when doing 1 to 1 pixel mapping at the set's native resolution.
- Alignment, focus and linearity issues.
- Brightness consistency (central hot spots, corner fading, etc.)

pretty much expected. 42" and now 50" are the most common sizes sold on the market and the prices on plasma and LCD have come down so far that it makes no sense to but RPTV in those sizes.

However 60", 70" and beyond it still makes sense for RPTV, but that will probably change as time goes on.

For those of us that cant deal with a reflective coating in our viewing area and the angle of view is not critical, you cant go wrong for a 61" set that has a retail price of $1999 like my JVC currently does. The dollar per sq inch is a great value.

The next set I get for my family room will be plasma, so I'll be adding to those stats.

Was at BB tonight taking a look at TVs. Man, RPTVs are few and far between that is for sure. Only a handful were on display. LCD is by far the most prominent type, which I found surprising. I was expecting Plasma's to be either equal or slightly more.

its a shame...i love my dlp and although i own a 42" lcd for the bedroom, i enjoy the dlp much much more. my only regret was that i only got a 52"! looks as though ill have to buy one of the larger led dlp's before they stop making them...

Quote:For those of us that cant deal with a reflective coating in our viewing area and the angle of view is not critical, you cant go wrong for a 61" set that has a retail price of $1999 like my JVC currently does. The dollar per sq inch is a great value.


Replace 61" with 52" and $1999 with $1300 and % feel my DLP is great!

Very happy with my $1300 DLP HD TV. That's what counts! Even took a look at the HDNET test pattern and could read the 2nd last line. Could actually read the last line! I could not justify higher prices even though my last large RP CRT SD tv just scrapped was $1400 8 years ago.:p

We're getting off topic guys. This thread is about RPTV sales so lets stay on it.

The other downsides are off axis viewing and reliability. According to the CR survey, 18% of RP TVs had failures in the first 3 years vs 3% for LCD & Plasma. 25% of the RP failure rate was attributed to bulbs, so LED RPTVs would be able to reduce this failure rate to 13%. This is still a negative for RP and adds to the overall cost to the TV manufacturers and disappointments with the consumers.
25% of the failures may have been attributed to bulbs, but I'm betting that most of the other failures can be attributed to the bulb-based technology...colour wheel and all that.

LEDs and the coming laser-based light sources do away with lots and lots of failure-prone components.

pretty much expected. 42" and now 50" are the most common sizes sold on the market and the prices on plasma and LCD have come down so far that it makes no sense to but RPTV in those sizes.
The problem with this view is that you are freezing RP at it's current level of technology and price, while advancing the technology and price declines of plasma and LCD.

25% of the failures may have been attributed to bulbs, but I'm betting that most of the other failures can be attributed to the bulb-based technology...colour wheel and all that. .

What about all the RPTV convergence problems discussed on this forum???

That's related to CRT-based RPTVs. LCos, DLP, LCD do not (really) have those issues - the convergence of the small chips is usually correct out of the box and stays that way.

Yeah, it's kind of a bad time for shopping for a new big screen TV. If you want 70'' screen, so that you can enjoy your home theatre the way it is supposed to be - sitting at the proper distances from the screen and speakers, while at the same time noticing the additional detail of the 1080p resolution, you are simply out of luck these days. There are only 3 outgoing RPTV models on the Canadian market at that size, and they will probably be phased out without replacement. LCD and plasma just cannot go there yet. Too bad.

There are not a lot of rooms that can fit a 70" screen so I can understand why they aren't making and selling a lot!

I suspect that once someone decides they want a screen bigger than 60 to 65", they start looking at front projection.

I just bought a 50" SONY LCOS set from Sony and I must say that the PQ is second to none. In fact, my wife wanted a flat panel instead, but looking at them side by side she admitted that the PQ of the SXRD was better that the 1080p LCD flat panel from sony we were considering.

I ended up with a bigger screen for a lower price and better PQ. If we were going to hand it on the wall I would have considered the flat panel, but it wasn't a factor for me this time (this TV is going on the basement and there's plenty of room).

The only regret is I couldn't convince her to get the 55", though... ;)

can.rules, yeah I'm not the least surprised that the LCOS RPTV had a sweeter picture than the LCD Flat panel but my experience is that PQ is often not the deciding factor for people buying HDTV's!

can.rules, yeah I'm not the least surprised that the LCOS RPTV had a sweeter picture than the LCD Flat panel but my experience is that PQ is often not the deciding factor for people buying HDTV's!
When I was looking at TVs recently, I was not "blown away" by any PQ from either Plasma or LCD flat panel over my RPLCD (which is over 2 years old now). Granted, that was looking at a series of TVs in a big box retailer, so not exactly an ideal location, but I was expecting more. My money is still on RPLCD and I would just love to get one of the new high frame rate Sony Bravia SXRD's, if they were available in Canada.

Cheers.

Okay, now lets get back to sales figures and the topic at hand