So, I bought a Japanese "Monitor"...

My Japanese Lesson

In sixth grade, I remember my best friend and I, we both read and then, watched and re-watched, Rising Sun. We had just hit puberty and well, the movie with Sean Connery was ... But, anyways that's the period in which I grew up. I was raised at a time when the Japanese economy was thought to be a threat and that Japan would one day take over the U.S. economically. Of course, this was before Microsoft turned most Japanese products into commodities, such as televisions. Though, I wonder what happened to Softbank? Did it go the way of Yahoo? On a side note, I remember the last U.S. television manufacturer, Zenith, was bought out by LG or (Lucky) Goldstar as that company was known around that time. You see, this was before what the Economist now calls Japan's two lost decades. Rising Sun is an oft cited example of this.

"Japan’s economy has barely grown in nominal terms after two “lost decades”, and is again suffering from deflation. Where Japan was once bearing down on America, it now feels the hot breath of China on its neck. Remember “Japan as Number One”? These days the country’s chief claim to fame is having a gross government debt burden approaching 200% of GDP" (Economist, "An end to the Japanese lesson").

Well, I recently sold my old 23" 720p Samsung LCD to a friend and went into Fry's Electronics thinking I would buy, well, a little larger Samsung LCD HD monitor. I was thinking 32". However, as I was looking around and checking the specifications, I couldn't help, but notice that well, the Toshiba 42", yes, a Toshiba monitor with much better specifications than Samsung's 40" 6B series was actually cheaper and looked much brighter. Specifications are below. I mean I did read -- somewhere -- that in the winter of 2008 Samsung LCDs made up about a quarter of all LCDs sold in the United States (as compared to, say, 8% or so for Sony). Ironic, if you consider that up until recently Sony's LCDs actually were manufactured by Samsung in South Korea (in Asan, I believe).

Here are the main specifications I compared:

	Samsung 40" LN40B650 1080p 120Hz Flat Panel LCD HDTV	Toshiba 42zv650u 42” diagonal 1080p HD LCDTV with ClearScan 240
Screen Size:	40”	42”
Contrast Ratio	100000:1	100000:1
Refresh Rate:	Auto Motion Plus 120Hz™	ClearScan 240
Audio	2x10w	2x10w
MSRP Price: (I paid roughly half this).	$1,499	$1,299

(from Samsung's and Toshiba's respective websites)

Anyways, the connection with this is how I thought it was so crazy that Toshiba had a slightly larger LCD that was technologically superior -- it was newer and larger, yet cheaper. Here was a Japanese company resorting to competing with Samsung by price. Anyways, I did pay a different price for this. I am now deskless as the 42" monitor broke my desk and so I come to the library at school to use the computer. Perhaps, I'll stick with Samsung come four years from now or perhaps even go Taiwanese...