A TV as big as a bed? With the holidays approaching, stores stock more supersize sets

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A TV as big as a bed? With the holidays approaching, stores stock more supersize sets

2024-11-06 04:19 Last Updated At：04:20

NEW YORK (AP) — For some television viewers, size apparently does matter.

Forget the 65-inch TVs that were considered bigger than average a decade ago. In time for the holidays, manufacturers and retailers are rolling out more XXL screens measuring more than 8 feet diagonally. That's wider than a standard three-seat sofa or a king-size bed.

Supersize televisions only accounted for 1.7% of revenue from all TV set sales in the U.S. during the first nine months of the year, according to market research firm Circana. But companies preparing for shoppers to go big for Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa have reason to think the growing ultra category will be a bright spot in an otherwise tepid television market, according to analysts.

The 38,100 televisions of at least 97 inches sold between January and September represented a tenfold increase from the same period last year, Circana said. Best Buy, the nation’s largest consumer electronics chain, doubled the assortment of hefty TVs — the 19 models range in price from $2,000 to $25,000 — and introduced displays in roughly 70% of its stores.

“It’s really taken off this year," Blake Hampton, Best Buy's senior vice president of merchandising, said.

Analysts credit the emerging demand to improved technology and much lower prices. So far this year, the average price for TVs spanning at least 97 inches was $3,113 compared to $6,662 last year, according to Circana. South Korean electronics manufacturer Samsung introduced its first 98-inch TV in 2019 with a hefty price tag of $99,000; it now has four versions starting at $4,000, the company said.

Anthony Ash, a 42-year-old owner of a wood pallet and recycling business, recently bought a 98-inch Sony for his 14,000-square-foot house in Bristol, Wisconsin. The device, which cost about $5,000 excluding installation fees, replaced an 85-inch TV in the great room off his kitchen. Ash now has 17 televisions at home and uses some to display digital art.

“We just saw that the price was affordable for what we were looking for and thought, ‘Why not?’” he said of deciding to upsize to the Sony. “You get a better TV experience with a bigger TV. You’re sitting watching TV with a person on TV that is the same size as you. You can put yourself in the scene.”

The amount of time that many people spend staring at their cellphones and tablets, including to stream movies and TV shows, is another factor driving the growth of widescreen TV screens. Overall TV sales revenue fell 4%, while the number of units sold rose 1% from the January through September period, Circana said.

Most people only invest in a television every seven years, but when they do, they typically choose bigger ones, according to Rick Kowalski, the senior director of business intelligence at the Consumer Technology Association. In the past 15 years, the size of flat-panel TVs that were shipped to U.S. retailers and dealers grew an average of one inch a year, Kowalski said.

The coronavirus pandemic accelerated the elongation trend as people spent more time at home. In fact, screen sizes increased an average of two inches in both 2021 and 2022, and 85-inch TVs began gaining traction with consumers, Kowalski said. Shipments of 98-inch TVs to the U.S. are picking up pace this year, and models as huge as 110-115 inches are on the market right now, he said.

“You get better resolution over time," Kowalski said. "You get better picture quality. And so just over time, it’s easier to produce those sets and improve the technology."

Best Buy's Hampton said a benefit of a colossal TV is the viewer can watch multiple shows at once, an experience he described as “incredible.”

“If you’re watching YouTube TV content or ‘ NFL Sunday Ticket,’ you can actually get four screens up, and that’s four 48-inch screens on it,” he said.

Manufacturers are also adding new features. Samsung said it designed its 98-inch lineup with a component that analyzes what the viewer is watching to increase sharpness and reduce visible noise across every scene.

James Fishler, senior vice president of the home entertainment division of Samsung's U.S. division, said the way people watch TV and experience content is shifting.

“It's even more so about watching TV as a shared experience,” Fishler said. “They want to host a watch party and gather around their TV to watch the big game, or set up a cinematic movie experience right at home. ”

Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, its Sam’s Club division, and Chicago retailer Abt Electronics, also say they are expanding their TV ranges to meet customer demand for supersize screens.

TV industry experts say these monster TVs are beginning to encroach on home theater projectors, which create a 100- to 120-inch image that is less sharp and require rooms with blackout curtains or without windows.

“A dedicated viewing room for watching movies was exclusively the purview of projectors,” Andrew Sivori, vice president in the entertainment division of LG Electronics, another Korean manufacturer. "But you can get a much better viewing experience with direct TV."

Retailers and TV makers said the buyers trading up range from millennials and members of Generation X to the tech-native Gen Z crowd. But as Jon Abt, co-president of Abt Electronics said, “It’s still a niche business.”

“A lot of people just don’t have the space to put one of those in,” he added.

Before dreaming big for the holidays, shoppers therefore should make sure a 98-inch TV will fit. Best Buy said its Geek Squad team asks if stairwells and entry halls are large enough to accommodate delivery and installation. An augmented reality feature on the Best Buy app that allows customers to see if products are the right size has been especially helpful for XXL TVs, the retailer said.

But for those worried about having the space for viewing, the good news is that the recommended distance for a 98-inch TV is actually just 6-12 feet from the seating area. The rule of thumb is to multiple the diagonal length of the TV by 1.2 to determine the ideal viewing distance, Samsung's Fishler said.

If bigger is better in the TV department, how big can they go?

“I think we'll have to wait and see,” Fishler said.

This story was first published on Nov. 3, 2024. It was updated on Nov. 5, 2024 to correct that TV sizes are measured on the diagonal, not by width.

Stock market today: Wall Street rallies on Election Day as economy remains solid

2024-11-06 04:18 Last Updated At：04:20

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are rallying Tuesday as voters head to the polls on the last day of the presidential election and as more data piles up showing the economy remains solid.

The S&P 500 was up 1% in late trading and rising closer to its record set last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 345 points, or 0.8%, with a little less than an hour remaining in trading, while the Nasdaq composite was 1.2% higher.

The market got a lift from a report showing growth accelerated last month for retailers, transportation companies and other businesses in the U.S. services industries. That was despite economists’ expectations for a slowdown, and the Institute for Supply Management said it was the strongest growth in more than two years.

The strong data offered more hope that the U.S. economy will remain solid and avoid a long-feared recession following the worst inflation in generations.

Excitement about the artificial-intelligence boom also helped lift the stock market, as it has for much of the last year. Software company Palantir Technologies jumped 23.2% after delivering bigger profit and revenue than analysts expected for the latest quarter. It’s an industry known for thinking and talking big, and CEO Alexander Karp said, “We absolutely eviscerated this quarter, driven by unrelenting AI demand that won’t slow down.”

It helped offset a 6% drop for NXP Semiconductors. The Dutch company fell to one of the largest losses in the S&P 500 after warning that weakness it saw in the industrial and other markets during the latest quarter is spreading to Europe and the Americas.

The market's main event, though, is the election, even if the result may not be known for days or weeks as officials count all the votes. Such uncertainty could upset markets, along with an upcoming meeting by the Federal Reserve on interest rates later this week. The widespread expectation is for it to cut its main interest rate for a second straight time.

Despite all the uncertainty heading into the final day of voting, many professional investors suggest keeping the focus on the long term. The broad U.S. stock market has historically tended to rise regardless of which party wins the White House, even if each party's policies can help and hurt different industries' profits underneath the surface.

Since 1945, the S&P 500 has risen in 73% of the years where a Democrat was president and 70% of the years when a Republican was the nation’s chief executive, according to Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA.

The U.S. stock market has tended to rise more in magnitude when Democrats have been president, in part because a loss under George W. Bush’s term hurt the Republican’s average. Bush took over as the dot-com bubble was deflating and exited office when the 2008 global financial crisis and Great Recession were devastating markets.

Besides who will be president, other questions hanging over the market include whether the White House will be working with a unified Congress or one split by political parties, as well as whether the results will be contested.

The general hope among investors is often for split control of the U.S. government because that’s more likely to keep the status quo and avoid big changes that could drive the nation’s debt much, much higher.

As for a contested election, Wall Street has some precedent to look back to. In 2000, the S&P 500 dropped 5% in about five weeks after Election Day before Al Gore conceded to George W. Bush. That, though, also happened during the near-halving of the S&P 500 from March 2000 to October 2002 as the dot-com bubble deflated.

Four years ago, the S&P 500 rose the day after polls closed, even though a winner wasn’t clear yet. And it kept going higher even after former President Donald Trump refused to concede and challenged the results, creating plenty of uncertainty. A large part of that rally was due to excitement about the potential for a vaccine for COVID-19, which had just shut down the global economy.

The S&P 500 ended up rising 69.6% from Election Day 2020 through Monday, following President Joe Biden's win. It set its latest all-time high on Oct. 18, as the U.S. economy bounced back from the COVID-19 pandemic and managed to avoid a recession despite a jump in inflation.

In the four years before that, the S&P 500 rose 57.5% from Election Day 2016 through Election Day 2020, in part because of cuts to tax rates signed by Trump.

Investors have already made moves in anticipation of a win by either Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris. The value of the Mexican peso might fall if Trump's tariffs on Mexico come to fruition, for example, and it's already weakened against the U.S. dollar.

But Paul Christopher, head of global investment strategy at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, suggests not getting caught up in such pre-election moves, or even those immediately after the polls close, “which we believe will face inevitable tempering, if not outright reversals, either before or after Inauguration Day.”

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury initially scrambled higher following Tuesday morning's strong report on U.S services businesses, but it pared the gain later in the afternoon. It was most recently at 4.28%, down from 4.29% late Monday.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe and Asia. The moves were mostly modest outside of jumps of 2.3% in Shanghai and 2.1% in Hong Kong.

AP Business Writers Matt Ott, Alex Veiga and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.

A TV as big as a bed? With the holidays approaching, stores stock more supersize sets

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A TV as big as a bed? With the holidays approaching, stores stock more supersize sets

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