Depends how much you watch it. I have a 20" CRT I bought, oh, 10 - 15 years ago. It’s the only TV I’ve ever purchased (I’m 43). I’ve only ever owned one other TV, and it was a hand-me-down. I watch TV, oh, 5 hours a week tops?
Don’t make any assumptions without all of the facts. Yes, it’s a CRT, and I only have the one. It gets used about seven or eight hours a week and I’m fairly certain that it uses less energy than those with multi-TV homes. What’s the breakdown in green costs for the materials and energy to produce a TV that will be discarded after five years vs one that is kept for twenty?
My computer monitor is also a CRT and that gets a lot more use. However, economic concerns have made it impossible to buy a new one. My electricity bill is $25 a month, and I suspect most of that is due to a refrigerator with a warped door.
I would say it comes out to be every six or seven years, but that’s not upgrading so much as change in circumstance. I moved countries, lived with people who already had a TV, then upgraded to flatscreen, then that finally actually died and I replaced it with an HD set last year. Three TVs of my own, and using two TVs belonging to others, over the last 18 years.
When the magic smoke comes out of the previous one.
Bedroom TV is about 9 years old. Living room TV is about 11 years old. No plans to replace either any time soon.
My mom has had her TV since the early 90’s and she bought it used from a yard sale.
My boyfriend is a broadcast engineer. Our TVs have never broken but if they do, he’ll fix them before replacing them.
My mother’s father is a TV repairman. I don’t think it would ever occur to her to replace a broken TV without taking it to a repairman first.
That’s my signal too. My current one is a year 2000 $99 model w/a digital box connected. But I have to admit that I don’t use TVs all that much. Once I thought my TV was broken. It turned out that I’d unplugged it before a trip a month prior (there were intense storms predicted before I left) and had never tried to turn it on in the couple weeks I’d been home.
I rarely see local TV or listen to local radio. If we’re ever attacked by the Russians, it’ll probably take me days to find out.
I think you have to recycle CRTs in most areas now. They’re very bad for the environment. My neighbor burns his trash and, one day, I saw a CRT on the top of the heap. Needless to say, I stayed inside and waited for the big-boom when I saw he’d lit off his trash fire. Honestly, my neighbor is such a putz that I suspect the inhaling the lead smoke could only improve their IQ.
I bought my HDTV in 2009 just before the digital switchover. At the time, my previous TV (crt) had begun having the problem of the screen going blank at random times. I bought that TV in the late 70s. So 30+ years.
If my current TV doesn’t crap out, I’ll wait for the OLEDs to reach the market at a reasonable price and buy one larger than my current TV.
In my lifetime (30 years), I’ve had 8 TVs (counting the ones my parents had when I grew up). I, personally, have bought 3 in the last 8 years.
There’s nothing wrong with keeping a TV for a long time, but I don’t know if it’s really something to be proud of.
If the 2012 model cars got twice the gas milage, were cheaper, and took up less garage space than the 2008 models, it’d make sense to buy a new car every few years. TVs are getting way better really fast.
I’ve purchased 4 over 33 years, and the first one was used. But that’s just me. I know people in my circle who seem to buy a new one every couple of years, mainly based on size (the new 90" model is out? Well let’s get one!) But they are CONSUMERS with money to spend. I don’t get it personally, but there it is.
My philosophy is, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I have three TV’s, only one of which I watch frequently. I have a 32", which I got around 2001, a 25", which I got around the same time, and another 25" which I bought around 1993 or so. They all work, all still have a good bright picture. And I do watch the TV a lot. I have cable and just can’t be bothered to try watching video on my computer without it stuttering.
And by the way, my car is 16 years old. I believe if you can keep something running for a long period of time and you’re satisfied with it, it’s better than replacing it every three or four years.
My main TV is a 43" HD rear-projection Sony that I bought in the late '90s. I’m totally happy with it, and don’t plan on replacing it until I have to.
I play my Atari 2600 on my 32" LCD TV.
Since I moved out on my own, 35 years ago, I’ve only had 4 TVs and that includes the little teeny second hand B&W set that I owned for most of the 80s (I didn’t watch very much TV back then, I mostly worked, or went out dancing). I had a larger color second hand set through most of the 90s up until 2004 (still didn’t watch very much TV back then, mostly worked, by then I had two jobs, and for entertainment, I went out, or played video games, or surfed and chatted online). My mom and sis got me a big color TV for Christmas 2004 (It was still one of the big heavy types though and if I hadn’t moved to a different state, I probably would have kept it).
I have a flat screen now, and I don’t expect to replace it until it dies. I do watch a lot more TV than I used to, so I’m not sure how long it will last, the sales guy said 5 or 6 years so we’ll see.
When I met my husband he had a HUGE Sony CRT (30?32?) and it was already 5 years old. It still worked when he finally talked me into replacing it 5 years ago. About a year ago we added a second TV to the house so we’re much closer to your norm than the news report norm.
That said we replace our computers and other gadgets more often than the norm so I think it’s more a matter of what’s important to us than any effort to be green.
Hm… I bought a CRT in 2004, which I gave away last year. I also bought one a flat TV for an apartment where I stayed for one year (sold it to the building manager when I left). At the same time as I gave away the CRT, I bought a smallish TV (new; I think it’s a 24"), a secondhand laptop with Windows XP Pro (I was sick and tired of my clients demanding XP Pro and rummaging inside “my” computer, this one is work-only and only for clients who demand XP), and a secondhand computer monitor. The TV gets used as a monitor most of the time, and as a TV only if a visitor wants to watch something else than I do (in which case I plug in the other monitor).
I expect that my next computer will take a lot less time than my next TV but, as my brother told me “well, you make your living on IT, it’s normal.”
We have a tendency to replace our big screen TVs when some asshole breaks into our house and steals them.
It happened to us twice in six months. On the second occasion, the insurance company cut the check and said, “Bye.”
~VOW
I’ve had the same tv for at least 20 years that was given to me by my brother. I remember when he gave it to me that I thought it was HUGE. Now, it’s just a standard 32" tv. It just won’t die, and until it does, why should I buy a new one?
Now that I think about it, I have never bought a tv - any tv I’ve owned has been a hand-me-down.
I’ve only bought one TV ever and it turned out to be a bust when I can’t receive digital signals in my area, so I use it as a monitor. I was given the other two TV’s that I owned: one was probably over 20 years old when the wire-attached remote (!) started shocking me so I threw it away before it could do any real damage, and the other was just a big CRT which the government has rendered useless and I probably would not even be able to give away.
I bought my first TV in 1950–with my Bar Mitzvah geld, but in fact I rarely watched it. It was 10" and, needless to say, B&W. It got replaced at some point, but I had nothing to do with it. I finally bought a used 12" B&W in 1968. Got another second-hand color TV, probably also 12", in 1977 and somewhere along the way the first one died. Got a brand new 20" TV in 1991 and got cable at the same time. That one stopped working on 09/09/01 and the repair shop carted it away on 09/10/01 (which, you will recall was a Monday) and returned on on 09/12/01 so we missed seeing all gory pictures (most of them, anyway). It stopped working in 2008 and I replaced by a 26" LCD-TV and I hope never to have to replace it. So the replacement times have been 9 years, 14 years, and 17 years, an average of 13 1/3 years. But they have been getting longer, so maybe the current one will last 20 years. Probably at least ten years longer than my life expectancy.