January 8, 2026
Your TV is cheap—your data isn’t
How Did TVs Get So Cheap?
From $1100 to $200—did ads, your data, and faster chips foot the bill
TLDR: TV prices have collapsed—Best Buy’s 50-inch went from ~$1100 in 2001 to under $200—thanks to mass-made LCDs and efficiency. Commenters argue the real subsidy is ads, data harvesting, and streaming deals, while others credit tech progress and globalization; cheap screens may cost privacy, not dollars.
You’ve seen the chart: TVs crashed in price, with “dollars per area‑pixel” down over 90%, and a 50‑inch going from about $1100 in 2001 to under $200 today. Cue the comments: “it’s not magic, it’s monetization.” Finnucane says manufacturers make money from ads and your data, not just screens. Growtika points to streaming giants paying for prime placement—those remotes with YouTube/Netflix buttons aren’t subtle—and the crowd runs with the meme: “your TV is cheap because it’s watching you.” Privacy panic meets bargain bliss, and everyone’s side‑eyeing the Smart TV home screen.
Then the globalization brawl: websiteapi drops a hard take about China and “arbitrage”, arguing imported goods got cheap while local services stayed pricey, linking an NBER paper. Others clap back with tech triumph: flerchin shrugs, “Moore’s law”—the idea that chips get cheaper and faster—plus the shift from clunky vacuum tubes to sleek transistors. Meanwhile snide crashes the party: big touch‑screen TVs for a DIY DnD table? Still “many hundreds,” factory emails required. The vibe: hardware got absurdly cheap, but you might be paying in ads, data, and convenience—unless you want giant touch, then get ready to spend. Meanwhile, the article itself chalks it up to decades of LCD mass production, cheaper LED backlights, and secretive factory wizardry.
Key Points
- •TV prices have dropped sharply; a 50-inch TV that cost about $1,100 in 2001 is under $200 today.
- •A “dollars per area-pixel” metric from 25 years of Best Buy Black Friday ads shows TV price per pixel-area fell by over 90%.
- •LCD technology’s rise—from 5% of the TV market in 2004 to over 95% by 2018—underpins most of the price decline.
- •Modern LCD TVs use LED backlights and TFTs on glass to control each RGB subcell, enabling efficient mass production.
- •QLED (quantum-dot enhanced LCD) improves picture quality, and OLED is a smaller but growing alternative technology.