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Some of those console sets which combine a TV and stereo/record player and were considered to be like a piece of furniture from the 60s 70s are quite expensive today if you were to buy an original. Don't be in such a hurry to throw it away if you have one even if it's not in working condition. There's a good market out there for nostalgia.
Few technologies have advanced as rapidly as consumer electronics, and especially equipment with displays. One need not be a senior citizen to remember a time when a television set was ungainly, flickering, and cost more than a monthly mortgage. Though I'm one of the younger posters here, even I remember a time when computers were giant boxes housed in air-conditioned spaces behind glass partitions, serviced by a specialist wearing a white lab coat. Those computers had less random-access memory, storage space or clock-speed than a "budget" smart-phone today (November 2018).
But most technologies haven't evolved as rapidly. Consider for example electric batteries. How much was battery energy density in 1980 (a prototypical year, representing the waning days of mainframe computer dominance and expensive, enormous TVs), and how much is it today? By what factor is today's superior? Answer: maybe by about a factor of 5, maybe 10. Whereas electronics have miniaturized by a factor of thousands or more.
Some things today are remarkably more sophisticated than they were 30, 40, 50 years ago.... others, have improved remarkably little. Next year we're going to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first Apollo manned moon-landing. There will be a spate of remarks, of how the computers back then were so breathtakingly primitive, and more on topic of this thread, how the cathode ray tube displays, on which the mission was monitored, were of such low-resolution. And yet, 2019 will pass, and the foreseeable future will pass, with no manned space-travel beyond low earth orbit.
We may well have a coming generation of retirees, who weren't yet born in 1969, but who will have worked their careers, retired, grown old and died, before the next manned lunar mission. Just imagine the wonderful high-resolution, luxuriously elegant pocket televisions on which they'll be watching videos of that 1969 landing... in the year 2039, 2049 and beyond... regaling their own grandchildren and great-grand-children, with stories about a window in time in human history, that used to be called "the space age".
if ( big if ) technology (not anything else) advances as fast or faster (Moore's Law) than the last 37 years....
no laptop computers or smart phones since VR will be everywhere. the opioid for the masses.
Yes, TV sets have become much more affordable. If only surgery and college tuition, and even phones, had gone the same way! Another thing: it was normal for a set to need service every year, maybe more often for color. Nobody repairs phones, everyone wants the latest model. But the price of some of them!
My first VCR cost $500.00 and it had a hard wired remote. We also had to decide between BETA or VHS.
My first PC was $1,800.00 and forget how limited it was.
. That's about right.
Bought first Sanyo VCR (mid 80's) for around $350.00 on sale. Shortly after, bought first microwave oven (Tappan??) at around $400.00. That things was big and heavy. I remember carrying it from the parking lot to our second floor apartment where we lived at the time. Man, it had me sweating.
. Bought first PC in 2000 for around $1,200.00. A 12/13? inch monitor with 10gb capacity and a b/w small printer included.
I still have in storage my first VCR from 1983, purposely as a museum piece. I'm sure it still works.
TVs up until not that long ago were heavy monsters. I recall in 1987 when a 25" TV was considered gigantic. I still have a 2007 flat 50" which weighs a ton compared to my recent 2017 55". I'm now waiting for an OLED 65" or even 75" to get cheaper and lighter. I'm sure it will.
Probably already out there, but by 2025 I bet we'll have affordable wall sized TVs.
For my wedding present my two brothers and my sister chipped in and bought us a 19" RCA color TV with a remote the size of a shoe. Price was $500 a very generous gift. Best Buy has a 55" TV for $249 for Black Friday. Just recycled the RCA which weighed 75 lbs, the 55" set 20 lbs. Progress.
That TV was probably made in China. Maybe the current administration will put a 25 or 50% tariff on it so you don't feel so fortunate.
I remember when handheld calculators first came out and were $500.
I also remember, as a kid, getting up and down to adjust the "rabbit ears" on the telly!
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A history of the TV remote control as told through its advertising
