BUYERS of consumer electronics are haunted by one question: Should I buy now or wait for new features, better performance and lower prices?
Certainly anyone who has considered buying a high-definition television has had that thought. The prices on 40-inch and 42-inch high-definition TVs have dropped almost 39 percent this year. Riddhi Patel, principal television analyst for the market research firm iSuppli, expects them to drop another 30 percent next year. She said that 47-inch and 52-inch sets, whose average price fell more than 40 percent this year, could drop another 25 percent before the end of 2008.
For consumers who care greatly about what advances are just around the corner, the only correct answer would be to wait. But with technology, that’s almost always the case.
Of course, gadget marketers can’t afford to have that kind of thinking take hold. First adopters, those willing to pay top dollar for the latest features, drive the industry. So the marketers make a compelling argument: future-proof your purchase by buying a top-of-the-line device so it will remain state-of-the-art as technology inevitably leaps forward.
To save money, a consumer could buy an HDTV with screen resolution of 720p — industry jargon for a TV with about 1 million pixels of color composing the picture on the screen. It sells along with TVs having a resolution of 1,080p, which has about twice as many pixels. In general, more pixels means crisper, clearer pictures. However, the difference in price for a 720p liquid crystal display, or L.C.D. HDTV set and a 1,080p can be relatively small.
Best Buy, for example, sells a Samsung 1,080p 40-inch L.C.D. set for $1,500 while the 720p version costs $1,350. Feature-laden HDTVs, those with the highest resolutions, contrast ratios and hookups in the back for every imaginable device can cost more than $3,000.
A case can be made that it is wiser to disregard any thoughts of future-proofing when buying a TV. For TV watchers, an HDTV with 1,080p is currently more than users really need because even high-definition programs are broadcast at a lower resolution than 1,080p. To take advantage of 1,080p, you would need a compatible game console or a high-definition DVD player like Blu-Ray or HD-DVD costing hundreds of dollars more.
Prices are dropping, but it will be at least a year or two before the new high-definition DVDs become a mainstream product. Buyers may realize that what they bought not that long ago is out of date compared with whatever is on the market now. This can be especially distressing if technical standards change.
Consider the buyer who future-proofed a TV purchase five years ago. In 2002, the average selling price for a 50-inch HDTV was about $8,900, according to the research firm Pacific Media Associates. Fujitsu had a $15,000 high-definition set that was unable to display today’s 1,080p resolution. It had inputs for S-video, composite and component cable to move audio and video signals from game consoles, VCRs or DVD players. But it lacked a place to plug an HDMI, or high definition multimedia interface.
HDMI, the latest standard, is a single cable that can carry uncompressed video and audio from a tuner, DVD player, digital video recorder or other source to a high-definition TV. Consumers can get those features even on today’s bargain-brand sets. Vizio’s $2,200 52-inch L.C.D. TV, for example, is packed with features that were not on the market a few years ago. The 1,080p set has four HDMI inputs and a screen that is resistant to burn-in and glare; both features were unavailable on any large screen TV a few years ago.
It is no coincidence that there are parallels to buying a PC and an HDTV. Not only are TVs beginning to resemble computers, but the economics are similar. Like makers of computer chips and PCs, manufacturers need first adopters willing to pay top dollar to get production of large-size TVs running at full capacity, which drives down costs. That, in turn, allows them to lower prices to attract the next level of buyer, whose demand starts the cycle all over again. As technology and increased production capacity make it cheaper to build products based on older specifications, companies lower the prices on existing products while introducing new features and better performance to entice high-end buyers.
But if a consumer bought a high-end PC with a fast processor, a big hard drive and plenty of memory for $2,000 or more two or three years ago, it might not be able to run the new Windows Vista operating system or some of the newer programs like video editors that use lots of random-access memory. It might also be wiser to buy the TV technology that serves your needs and not try to anticipate the future. Consumers debating whether to buy a $2,000 set that will suit you now versus a $4,000 model with many bells and whistles would probably be better off spending the $2,000 and using the savings to invest in a certificate of deposit. At 5 percent interest, in four years a consumer could have $2,400 to spend on whatever is new, which would probably be a lot more advanced than what $4,000 would buy today.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that early adopters made a big mistake. There are moments in the evolution of any technology when buying decisions become a bit less risky — when the pace of change slows or the market matures. HDTVs may be approaching such a moment.
When it comes to resolution, Dale Cripps, founder and co-publisher of HDTV magazine, says consumers are not likely to see anything higher than 1,080p for quite some time. The maturing of the HDTV market means you should not expect “a huge curve in the near future where we will have revolutionary technology that will blow us away.”
When it comes to future-proofing, Alfred Poor, author of “Professor Poor’s Guide to Buying HDTV” (Desktop Wings), says shoppers may actually have it backwards. More expensive sets are more likely to be “past proof” because high-definition programs look great on cheaper HDTV sets while costlier HDTVs with better technology typically do a better job displaying standard definition programs. “People often return their new high-definition TVs because regular shows don’t look as good as they did on their old TV,” he said.
Mr. Poor is no advocate of future-proofing. He advises consumers to buy what they would enjoy watching today. But then he starts making his list of must-haves.
He thinks it is a good idea to buy a set with 1,080p resolution and at least one, but preferably three or more, HDMI inputs. Because consumers are likely to have many devices like a DVR or DVD player, it pays to have a TV that can support them. And the newer HDMI 1.3 interface adds additional color depth and better audio, including better synchronization between audio and video to ensure accurate lip-synching.
Mr. Poor likes sets with L.E.D. backlighting but “it’s not awful if you don’t have it.” L.E.D.’s, he said, “can display richer colors and help reduce motion blur.” Because the lights have no mercury like the florescent tubes that backlight most L.C.D. TVs, the technology is more environmentally friendly.
To reduce motion blur, Mr. Poor also prefers L.C.D. sets with a frame rate of 120 hertz, or Hz, which means the TV can display twice as many images each second as conventional 60-hertz sets. The 120-hertz sets can display movies more smoothly with some high-definition DVD players.
Future-proofing may be an elusive goal. But for gadget lovers, feature envy is never going to be overcome.
