It is the season of inflation. Lately we have been hearing a lot about inflation and I have been writing a lot about it too. Still if you thought that wasn’t enough, here is one more for you :). Normally I don’t calculate inflation of anything unless I have at least 10 years worth of data. As I look back, I have as much data on my TVs, so why not calculate the inflation of a TV? Remember that inflation should be looked at holistically. Knowing inflation of one device like TV or laptop does not really makes sense, but all these inflations add up to your final inflation number. It is just a fun exercise and lets keep it that way.


If you are interested in reading about my other inflation numbers check these articles out


The first TV I purchased was way back in 2006 when I was in the US. Actually, my first one was a used TV which I purchased in 2003 when I was doing my MS. But I will not count that in. The next one that I purchased was in 2010, still when I was in the US. So those two numbers are in US dollars which I converted to Indian rupees using the conversion rate at the time. The last TV purchase happened in 2016.

TV Year Price
32” LCD TV 2006 29513
55” LCD TV 2010 73929
65” LCD TV 2016 99790


The inflation comes to around 13%! So what happened? Materialism - that’s what happened at least for the second TV. I purchased the first TV a couple of years after my first job. LCD TVs were just starting to become popular around that time and I thought it was a good idea to upgrade my used CRT TV. The TV programming has also started to come in HD during that time in the US. So I was all excited to checkout the quality of a digital signal.


By 2010, LCD TVs are ubiquitous, but a new TV technology has just started emerging. It is the LED LCD TVs. Instead of a using fluorescent backlights, the LED TVs were using LEDs for backlight. If you don’t understand LCD TV tech, don’t worry. The advantage of LED backlight is that it uses less power for the same brightness. But that was not what I was looking for at the time. The advantage of LED backlighting is that the brightness can be changed dynamically in different sections of the TV giving a more vibrant and contrasty picture. The colors pop out more. So I got myself that expensive TV. The inflation from my previous TV was a whopping 25%.


In 2016, while the old TV (which I shipped from the US to India) was working fine, the main board conked out twice because of power fluctuations. I felt that the sensitive TV is unable to cope up with the harsh electricity conditions of Indian electricity in a rural area. So I decided to sell it and buy a local TV. By this time I became a minimalist, but I decided to buy the best one I can afford and a large screen was quite important to me. The inflation from my previous TV was around 5%. Which is more reasonable.


In future too, I would like to keep the inflation at around 5%. But what is amazing is that the technology has changed so much in the short 10 years. I went from 32” to 65” TV without breaking the bank while the image quality increased manifold. In the future I want to buy an OLED TV when the prices are more affordable. We have to wait and see. This is the materialistic side of me that you rarely get to hear. I am not really a true minimalist in that sense :).