jafir said:
It seems that the computer world is always trying to push upon us tech with serious design defects, and they just expect us to ignore them in favor of some sort of perceived benefit. LCD contrast is miserable. I don't know how many times I'm looking at a spreadsheet, etc. and I cannot see where they have put the cursor or highlight because the white and the grey selection look the same. (and no, this isn't just because I'm getting old, I noticed this 15 years ago too).
Part of the problem is the consumer being ready to place their trust in the wrong people. It's not so much that negative changes are forced on them, it's more that they force it on themselves. Back in 2005/6ish I was working in electrical retail. This was (in the UK at least) the point at which the sale of the new CRT TV sets had essentially stopped (still a few no name pink-cased 14" CRT sets with built in DVD players to go in kids' bedrooms around but not much more than that) and shops were now only selling flat panel sets. It was also the point at which almost all sets over 20" were sold as being 'HD Ready' (which actually meant little more than the TV contained a 1280x720 panel and an HDMI port - no 1080p, and no means actually built into the set to pick up any broadcast high definition either).
They were expensive - and terrible when displaying anything other than a specially prepared uncompressed HD demo box which the manufacturers reps used to dole out like sweets on their visits to stores.
Or rather the LCD sets were. Early fluorescent-backlit panels with appalling viewing angles (especially for cheap small sets which often used panels designed for computer monitors), terrible levels of motion blur and zero ability to scale properly to any standard-def resolution which still made up the bulk of broadcast TV at the time, nor to deal with noisy old SCART sources which were also still very common (and which were often set to composite even though most equipment supported S Video or RGB mode) without introducing terrible artefacting to the picture.
Personally, although I sold flat panel TVs there was no way I was parting with that much money to go backwards in picture quality so I still kept running my beautiful Panasonic TX32PB50 Quintrix CRT set at the time (in fact it survived as a guest room TV until 2016 and was only ditched because I moved house and didn't want to take it with me, a decision I now regret). I never personally owned a flat screen TV until 2013 when LCD finally started to mature enough that it could compete with the CRTs of 10-15 years before (that and HD content finally got common enough to want an HD screen).
There was a solution at the time though - plasma. It was only available in larger screen sizes and not from all manufacturers but it was a vastly better technology then LCD. It could display true blacks, did a much better job of scaling, the screens were much faster, the colours much more vivid.
But you trying selling one to a customer who wasn't technically minded. There was absolute hysteria surrounding the technology (and not in a good way). Various urban myths perpetuated about it; it apparently used so much electricity that you'd need to acquire a small nuclear power station to run it, apparently screen burn was an inevitability, apparently the screen couldn't be touched (actually it was more durable than an LCD screen) and my absolute favourite - 'you've got to get them re-gassed'.
Even when you put a large screen LCD next to a large screen plasma and demonstrated the visibly superior picture they just didn't care - they knew didn't want a plasma and you weren't changing their minds. We the sales staff they were not willing to trust. However they were perfectly happy to form opinions based on urban myths with no obvious source (which I would suggest largely came from a certain manufacturer who once made the best CRTs but ended up making mediocre at best LCDs due to a flawed decision to stop their own flat panel development and start a joint operation to make LCDs with a certain other prominent manufacturer).
Once we got to LED backlit LCDs and OLED the need for plasma diminished, but it was essentially dead in the water from the start as a mass technology because people wouldn't listen.