A 42-inch Plasma For £5000? Things Ain’t What They Used To Be 20 Years Ago…

The What Hello-Fi? Awards 2023 factor is now out (and to be had in all just right newsagents, other folks!). Because of this that the problem the mag staff are running on as this Again Problems column hits the ether is, fairly soberingly for the “time flies” previous curmudgeons amongst us, the January 2024 version – within the stores in just right time for Christmas.

Normally, after I cross into our archives to have a just right previous reminisce, I head again to the certain volumes from the ’90s or ’80s. For me, that appears like a right kind dive again into the times of yore. Then I realised (with a relatively heavy middle) that actually, if I depend again from January 2024 a complete era of two decades, I arrive smartly into the twenty first century; so I raised my points of interest a decade.

A very long time in house cinema

And I’m fairly happy I did. For the January 2004 factor of What Hello-Fi? – as at all times turns out to occur every time I do that analysis – sprung some surprises, some pangs of nostalgia, and, at the face of it, some simple previous forecasting mistakes. 

Take the quilt itself. Majoring at the audio/visible facet of items, it highlights crucial product that merely doesn’t truly exist to any extent further – the DVD recorder. The technological leaps that experience bounded forth during the last 20 years were nearly inconceivable. And this factor of the mag gave only a trace of what could be to come back.

The extra issues exchange…

Two main issues leaped out at me so far as how TV and video recording tech has modified up to now two decades. The primary, and most evident from that duvet, was once how we now have now nearly utterly transformed to virtual recording with out bodily media in its various codecs. Certainly, some other folks now don’t really feel the wish to retailer favorite programmes or films in any respect; streaming plays the process completely adequately for plenty of customers.

In 2004, despite the fact that, the standfirst in our exceptional 13-strong(!) megatest of DVD recorders, begins: “With DVD recorders set to consign VHS to historical past…” So issues have been ever thus, after all. 

The King is lifeless; lengthy reside the King

One of the most first articles to seize my consideration when leafing in the course of the January 2004 version was once this information piece headlined “Demise of CRT a great deal exaggerated”. Er, no it wasn’t, was once my first idea.

To be honest to the What Hello-Fi? staff on the time, it wasn’t a remark from them, extra a affirmation from producers that they’d be staying within the cathode ray tube marketplace for a while but. It didn’t take lengthy despite the fact that, ahead of the new-fangled “flat-panel” tv would consign the previous tech to the scrapheaps of the sector.

Early adopters take the hit

A look on the nine-strong 42-inch plasma tv Workforce Check did no less than give a touch as to why CRT wasn’t fairly lifeless but. The costs for the ones trail-blazing units have been eye-watering, to mention the least. The most affordable units, from Daiwoo and Hyundai, would have set you again £2500 – sufficient nowadays for a display screen nearly two times the scale. And the most costly units on take a look at, from Pioneer, Sony and JVC got here in at between £4500 and £5000. For a 42-inch set. Reward be for the early adopter – the ones costs, as everyone knows, would come down swiftly; now you’ll select up an excellent 65in set for no longer a lot more than £1000.  

Goodness simplest is aware of what’s subsequent for us when it comes to display screen, streaming and storing generation. But when the previous (simply) two decades is the rest to head by way of, we’ll be having a look again on OLED displays with a nostalgic sigh, shaking our heads at simply how elementary all of it was once again then.

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