The American dream of sitting home all day in means-tested public housing while enjoying streaming programs on a beautiful OLED TV seems to be dying due to our evil AI overlords. Televisions are becoming MORE expensive, not less, because AI is buying all the processors, memory, and fab capacity. (See “TVs are finally being hit hard by the AI-fueled memory crisis: for the first time, the cost of the processors is higher than the display panels in some models”, October 2, 2026.)
Movies are still being made primarily in 2K Digital Intermediate because Hollywood can’t afford the memory and processing power to do editing and effects at 4K. Our brothers and sisters in Japan introduced practical 8K devices about 12 years ago (Wokipedia). I would have expected 8K televisions for desktop monitor use and for living room use by now.
Should we just give up on ever having an 8K television at consumer prices? I know that the theory is we can’t use that much resolution with current sizes and viewing distances, but I don’t believe it. There are a lot of situations where one can walk right up to a TV and inspect detail, e.g., if it is displaying a document. Maybe it isn’t necessary for enjoying a movie mastered in 2K, but there are lots of ways that a big screen can be used other than for watching a movie. Family photo collage, for example. One of our neighbors recently got a 100″ TV at Costco and there is nothing in front of it. If the machine were 8K, he could put an entire vacation’s worth of photos on the screen at once and people could walk up to the TV if interested. (I don’t like how it looks in his house, incidentally, when it isn’t on. It is a truly massive black hole in the wall. If I can take over from Donald Trump as dictator, I will order TV companies to put in all kinds of great features for what the TV can/should do when nobody is watching TV.)
Separately, who has bought a TV roughly 85″ in size lately? We have a low-end 86″ LG that we got for $900 at Costco in 2022. It was a floor model and came with a 5-year warranty. I wanted to see if something that huge was actually what we wanted. Should we splurge on an 83″ OLED? We never watch when the room is brightly lit (sometimes in the afternoon because of passionate NFL fans, but windows can be shaded). Or are the vastly-cheaper LCD TVs nearly as good? One of my big dreams, as noted above, is convenient software for running a slide show when the TV isn’t being used for TV (we might actually watch 10 hours per week).
Gemini on why we could never have a $900 OLED TV this size, even without AI as our enemy (not in quote style):
The reason OLED TVs max out at 83 inches instead of the standard 85 inches comes down to the fascinating—and ruthless—math of how panels are manufactured in factories.
Every OLED TV starts its life as part of a massive, garage-door-sized sheet of glass called “Mother Glass.” Most OLED factories use what is called a “Gen 8.5” size sheet. Manufacturers need to cut this mother glass into TV-sized rectangles with as little wasted glass as possible, much like cutting cookies from rolled-out dough.
Engineers figured out a highly efficient cutting layout (called Multi-Model Glass production) that perfectly fits two 83-inch panels and two 48-inch panels onto a single Gen 8.5 sheet with almost zero waste. If they bumped the size up to 85 inches, the 48-inch panels would no longer fit. They would have to throw away a massive amount of unused, highly expensive mother glass, which would make the 85-inch TVs prohibitively expensive.
Manufacturing an OLED panel requires depositing ultra-thin organic materials with near-perfect precision in a vacuum. It is a highly volatile process. A single microscopic dust particle or moisture drop can ruin an entire panel. If a tiny defect happens on a 55-inch panel, they throw away a 55-inch panel. If it happens on an 83-inch panel, they have to throw away a massive piece of inventory. The cost of all the ruined large panels gets baked directly into the retail price of the ones that survive the factory.
Standard LCD panels are completely commoditized; there are dozens of massive factories in China and Taiwan churning them out, driving prices into the floor. Large-scale OLED TV panels, however, are incredibly difficult to make and are almost exclusively manufactured by just two companies on earth: LG Display and Samsung Display. Without a flood of cheap, third-party competition, there is no pressure to slash prices.
OLEDs will likely always carry a premium simply because the organic technology fundamentally resists the kind of dirt-cheap mass commoditization that makes 85-inch LCDs so affordable today.
CES 2012:
So, geminispun, why is the mother glass a multiple of 83 instead of 86 or 85?
I upgraded 10-year old 65 OLED to 83 OLED last year. 65 panel still going strong, but software on TV has gotten slow, so now it’s in the bedroom as display for AppleTV.
83 OLED is beautiful and worthy upgrade if you like to watch games or anything really. Not sure what they use to master, but TV shows from last 3-5 years universally look gorgeous with amazing details (my guess it’s most likely due to upgrade to 4K cameras).
It needs adjustment of bunch of settings, there is a spreadsheet on Reddit with correct values (I couldn’t figure out good settings for Dolby Vision and HDR myself). It also runs PS5 Pro at 120Hz. I plan on using it for years so I went for OLED instead of cheaper alternatives.
You also need to consider software, most TV software is absolute junk, LG is usable, thus I stay in LG camp for all my TVs.
With this said most likely there is no difference from cheapo $900 TV for most viewers. Yes, it’s way better, but most people just don’t care. If you don’t have good sound, sound should be the first upgrade.
I bought mine at Black Friday from Amazon – historically best time for discounts, although it seems they run discount through the year way more than they used to.
Hi Phil, I was listening to Bill Clinton at the 1996 Democratic National Convention. He sounds just like you, but the things that he is saying would be taken as a radical extremist right-wing position today. He is boasting about putting 100k police on the streets, getting 60% of the way to eliminating the federal debt, reducing the federal workforce, and getting a million people OFF welfare (!!):
https://youtu.be/BJ8g4WyLhjA?si=8bWlzoSF9jRSSpoD&t=613
The last president who dropped out so close to the election was Calvin Coolidge and he also had this line of thought that the main goal of politicians and government workers should be to limit the size of the government and reduce government spend.
My question is, what do you think made this massive shift? To that extent, having Clinton as a member of DOGE today would be quite possible given the things that he is saying in that speech. What exactly happened that all talk of fiscal conservatism got thrown out of the window or labelled as “far-right” or “alt-right” talk?
The “off welfare” transition of the 1990s turned out to be an “onto means-tested everything” transition. An American who pays $100/month for a 3BR apartment, $3/month for $0-deductible health insurance that is accepted everywhere (Medicaid), shops via SNAP/EBT, and talks on an Obamaphone isn’t “on welfare” because he/she/ze/they gets no cash benefits but instead only a 98% taxpayer-funded lifestyle.
> because AI is buying all the processors, memory, and fab capacity
But clearly we can’t get rid of the AI, because we need content for our > 80″ TVs. What kind of sick, twisted world do we live in?
(We get by with a 32 inch, 2014 Samsung watching DVDs and videos off a USB stick, which would have seemed like the stuff of science fiction when I was a boy. If I want hi-def, I just gaze into my wife’s sparkling eyes. It’s getting harder to find DVD players new.)
You don’t cast Google Photos to the TV ambient mode? Screensaver then runs those vacay pics…
CCR: Our ancient LG doesn’t have Google Photos built in, I don’t think, and even if it did it couldn’t turn itself on and start running this automatically every morning. I don’t have a big Google Photos library since I’m using iPhone and Dropbox.
When traveling I bring along an old Google chromecast dongle. Hotels are usually blocked but AbnB’s are usually hackable. Then I can recursively view vacay pics while on vacay…
Hey Google stop. Google stop. Not those vacay pictures. Please stop.
Phil, you reference “digital intermediate” in the post (which the link says involves using actual film in the process). I had thought nearly all films were now produced digitally end-to-end (filming to production to showing) and Grok says 90-95% are done this way. Am I missing something?
I hate to say that Wokipedia has any errors, but I don’t think they’re right regarding how people in the industry use the term “digital intermediate”. I guess I shouldn’t have linked to it!
https://www.nickschaden.com/2025/06/26/4k-movie-quality/ is maybe better.
“Modern movies build their 4K transfers from a digital intermediate (DI), a version of content that serves as the intermediate step between raw footage shot and the final movie. For older movies made before digital post production, generally studios create 4K transfers by digital scanning the original film negative.”
I am not buying a new TV as long as:
1) My current 12-year-old, 42-inch TV still works, and
2) So-called “smart” TVs keep stuffing themselves with useless apps and features that make the TV practically unusable.
👍🏻
> This is the truck that America’s king of retail bought new in 1979, when the founder of Walmart could have chosen to buy anything he wanted. And as the years went on and his fortune multiplied, Walton refused to give up on his 1979 Ford F-150. In fact, he drove it until the day he died, back in 1992. After all, this was a modest man who never forgot his roots. But he was also an incredibly intelligent man with a quick wit. A man who realized the value of something built with an eye toward quality.
https://www.ford-trucks.com/articles/walmart-founders-1979-ford-f-150-is-one-big-slice-of-americana/
A neighbor who lives up the street from me has that exact same truck, except his is a 1982 model. Same color, same everything! He drives it during the summer and leaves it outside all winter long, exposed to New England weather!
BTW, did you notice the shotgun ammunition displayed behind enclosed glass in one of the pictures? Too bad the article doesn’t explain much about it or why it is there.
@George
The shotgun shells are for hunting birds, most likely. Looks like a pheasant on the box (with a $5.95 Wal*Mart price tag). The front of the box also has “Warning: Keep Out of the Reach of Children”. When I was a boy my dad left his guns and boxes of shells laying around (he used to hunt pheasant). When I was four my friend and I took some shotgun shells and were hitting them with rocks to make them go off. My mom smelled the little fire we made with stolen matches, and reprimanded us for playing with matches but didn’t see the shells. She would have freaked out. My parents had a 1989 F-150 for their RV, and I had a 1999 for towing my project car (and helping friends move).
“I just don’t believe a big showy lifestyle is appropriate. Why do I drive a pickup truck? What am I supposed to haul my dogs around in, a Rolls Royce?”, from TFA, which kind of looks like one of Phil’s photo essay posts.
Sounds like Phil’s neighbors should listen to Walton on this. He could put a “Keep Florida Redneck: Buy Murican Trucks” on his minivan. Or “Yeah This is My Minivan, and I Won’t Help You Move!”
Stick a fork in *me*, I’m done.
It occurred to me I’m missing the elephant, or Honda Odyssey, in the room. When we create the Greenspun Museum in Jupiter (the town, not the planet, he’s not Musk) we can exhibit his ’22 Odyssey and touch the door handle for luck. Any other donations of Phil memorabilia are welcome. Who knew Phil and Sam Walton were so alike (other than one’s obsession with giant 8K OLED TVs and 64TB SSDs.)
And yes, the Greenspun Museum will have a placard stating that the land it is built on has been proudly stolen from indigenous people or peoples.
Land in Jupiter isn’t stolen from the indigenous. Most of Jupiter is on land that wasn’t previously land. The indigenous didn’t have the technology to turn the “river of grass” (Everglades) into buildable land and, therefore, they lived on the Atlantic Coastal Ridge (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Coastal_Ridge ) and got their food from the ocean and, perhaps, rivers. There are a handful of rich people who today live on the ridge, but we’re not among them and any future museum would surely not have a sufficient endowment to be located on this incredibly valuable land.
(Our Odyssey is a 2021, not a 2022, which would be for the ridge-dwelling elite.)
> I will order TV companies to put in all kinds of great features for what the TV can/should do when nobody is watching TV
Samsung’s “The Frame” TVs ave a motion/ir sensor that detects people, and will display art (subscription) or your slides if the TV is off but a person is in the room:
https://www.crutchfield.com/p_30565LS3PH/Samsung-The-Frame-Pro-LS03HW-65.html
Phil, I just bought Hisense 85″ Class U65 Pro Series 4K ULED MiniLED Smart TV from Costco for around $1000. I like it.
The 8k TVs might be the same sort of failed churn that 3D and curved-screen TVs were.
“Everybody” is streaming and streaming 8k content too much data and there’s no content anyway.
The main market is for “cheapish” TVs and customers are price sensitive.
Doesn’t unexpected.
“walk up to the TV”
What, using your feet, like an animal?