Jess Weatherbed, at The Verge:

Sony has announced plans to spin off its TV hardware business, shifting it to a new joint venture with TCL. The two companies have signed a non-binding agreement for Sony’s home entertainment business, with TCL set to hold a 51 percent stake in the new venture and Sony holding 49 percent. [...]

The new company is expected to retain “Sony” and “Bravia” branding for its future products and will handle global operations from product development and design to manufacturing, sales, and logistics for TVs and home audio equipment.

I’ve only ever purchased three main TVs in my life. The first was a 32-inch Sony Trinitron CRT, like this one. Might have even been exactly that model — that sure looks like it. I bought it in 1999 at a Best Buy. One of the last curved Trinitrons ever made. For CRTs I always kind of liked a slight curve — flat CRTs never looked quite right to me. It weighed like 150 pounds and came in a very big box. My now-wife and I had just moved into a fourth-floor walk-up. I remember bringing it home. I’d always wanted a Sony TV, and this one confirmed my lifelong desire to own one. It was great. I introduced my son to video games on that TV.

We replaced it in 2008 with a 50-inch plasma from Pioneer that cost about $2,100. It was only 720p but I’d worked out the math for our then-living room viewing distance, and the math said 1080p wouldn’t make a noticeable difference for a 50-inch screen from our sofa distance. That Pioneer is one of the most beloved purchases I’ve ever made in my life. Just remarkable color. We still have that thing in our guest room. Sony wasn’t even in the running for that purchase. They sold Sony-branded plasma TV for a while but never made their own panels, and as I recall, no one with taste recommended them. What made Sony TVs Sony TVs back in the day was that they made their own CRTs, and they were the best. (All of my favorite CRT computer monitors had Trinitron tubes, as I recall.)

In 2020 we bought our current TV, a 77-inch 4K OLED from LG that cost about $5,000 at the time. I’ll go to my grave believing that plasma looks better than OLED when watching movies in a dark room, but overall, LG’s super-bright OLED looks fantastic. And it’s big as hell, which I love. Sony was at least in the running when I shopped for this, but they didn’t have anything that compared to this LG’s size and quality. It wasn’t a hard decision to rule Sony out. (This history also means I’m likely to go to my grave never having owned a 1080p TV, nor an LCD TV.)

So, I’m sad to see Sony selling control of their TV business to TCL. But I think the writing has been on the wall for decades. Sony TVs haven’t been the Sony TVs of yore for a very long time.

Update: John Siracusa tells me I need to run a retraction — he even used an exclamation mark — on the grounds that Sony Bravia models have won “best TV in the world” awards several years running, including 2025 for the Bravia 8 II. I’m happy to retract, and glad Sony has regained its place at or near the top of the industry in recent years. I hope they stay there.

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