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Comment by CodingJeebus | Hacker News Reader

I think it's a function of growth at all costs (or to put more bluntly, capitalism). TVs need to continuously improve to keep selling, as do video game systems, etc. And graphics are the easiest benchmark to advertise progress, but also some of the most taxing systems to build because they're so complex that there are huge markets of commercial game engines to address this.

Good gameplay requires taste, nuance, experience. Things that are hard to quantify if you're an MBA.

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TVs dont need to continuously improve. They just need to fall apart continuously. Which they now do. Ever own a 4k tv without problems for 5-10 years? Me neither. If you did please list the make and model as I would like to have one that is just as good as my old workhouse 1080p panel. Sony bravia I tried shit the bed and from the forum crawling I did this is not an unexpected issue. Most people seem to expect their TV to fail in about 5 years now it seems.

I have a 4K 43" TCL (model number 43S423) which has been working for 7 years. Unfortunately that doesn't disprove your claim because that would require over 10 years of service.

> TVs need to continuously improve to keep selling, as do video game systems, etc.

I think that's true, and it's actually a very interesting topic. Just imagine the prospect that technology has effectively stalled out, and our civilization is stuck perpetuating the perception of forward progress.

But to the extent that it has stalled out, a huge factor in that is, again, capitalism: so much of the technological progress since WWII was built on top of the fundamental research that was being funded largely by the US government. And since around the 1980s (hm, I wonder who might've been in office then?), that funding has been steadily reduced, and now effectively eliminated under Trump.

In parallel with this, we've seen the massive consolidation of all industries, but especially the tech industry, and what does a giant behemoth monopolist/oligarch want? It's not to move science and technology forward; that would be much too risky, and could even lead to an upstart disrupting them! No; it's to make tiny incremental improvements to keep people happy, while raking in money just for being on top of the heap.

> TVs need to continuously improve to keep selling

All while getting cheaper in the process. Thanks capitalism!

Getting cheaper due to mandatory spyware that requires networking knowledge to properly isolate and disable. Thanks capitalism!

That's annoying, but it's not why scaled manufacturing is lowering unit costs of panel production. Look at bare panel prices, they've followed the same cost curve down.

The same problem exists in the airline market. Airline ticket prices are historically very low, but people complain about seats, fees, and so on. But then they keep buying the absolute cheapest ticket.

What consumers say they care about, and what they actually care about, are not the same. Otherwise they'd pay more for the less irritating product.

> But then they keep buying the absolute cheapest ticket.

I would love to shop around and find seats that give me the things that I want without having to spend more on extra fees, but the model they have now is to basically show me the nickle and dining seat, and then pay to upgrade it to the fee free version.

>All while getting cheaper in the process.

All while getting worse; advertisements, terrible interfaces, privacy invasions, frame gen, weird color options, etc. I don't hate capitalism or anything, but new TVs are dumb as heck.

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