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Comment by lotsofpulp | Hacker News Reader

>I really have no idea how long the average consumer holds onto a TV, but if we guess 3-5 years

3-5 years is smartphone life. New TVs should easily last 10 years. My $600 1080p TV from 2016 is still in the living room. A subsequent $600 4K TV bought in 2020 is also fine. I don’t see what could prompt me to replace them until they break. The quality difference is negligible, especially with the garbage bitrate most streaming services provide.

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Agreed, and my TV is much older as well. I was just guessing about average consumers, but maybe you're correct. Maybe people don't cycle out TVs so quickly. I suppose the length of ownership has a strong bearing on cost. Part of the concern here as well is that Roku would be incentivized to err on the side of caution. ie, if not enough people keep their TVs for 10 years, they might need to practically plan for customers to keep their TVs for only 5 years.

Yeah - we barely watch TV in our house (relative to my experience growing up, at least), and we have two: a 50" in our bedroom and a 60" in the living room. They're 12 and 8 years old, respectively.

I'm just now starting to feel like I should consider a new one for the living room, but it's far from the top of my list.

Our TV is c. 2010, and still works fine. And given the current offerings, I have no plans to replace it any time soon.

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