Last spring I went to a P.C. Richards to check out the Samsung LT-P468W, which they had just gotten into the store and hadn't even taken out of the box yet. I helped two sales clerks haul it out of a back room and set it up in front of all their other HDTVs. As soon as they turned it on, every other model in the showroom looked like dog crap, and the picture on the Samsung blew me back ten feet.
Unfortunately, so did the price tag, although I'd had a general idea of the full retail price before going in. Anyway, I resigned myself to not being able to a 46" HD monitor with two HDMI inputs any time soon, and have remained similarly resigned ever since.
Not that this is the only model of HD monitor that will ever be worth buying, but using it as a general guideline, a dazzling monitor that can display both HDTV from the cable box and act as a PC monitor, I have periodically checked with PriceGrabber.com and BizRate.com to see if and how much the price of the unit may have fallen. For all I know it is already a discontinued model, but as I say, I am simply using this as a sample to try and gauge how long it will be before the type of monitor I want falls to within a price range a person of average income can afford without clearing out his savings account.
All of this has been a protracted way of soliciting the opinions and insights of all of you on this question: How quickly do you think prices on top of the line HD monitors will fall, and in your opinion, what are some of the factors involved in said fall?
Usually the only price drop (special sales don't count) that permanently lowers the price on any line of models is when the successor model is released. This can happen any time of the year but particularly after the CES convention in January and CEDIA show in September.
__________________ "I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy"
11-25-2005, 06:09 AM
Pace of price drops, and Samsung LT-P468W
