John Siracusa

And the reasons behind why they might want this partnership are complex and have to do with manufacturing stuff.

And we'll get to some of TCL's announcements from CES in a little bit.

But I'm actually not too broken up about this.

It just seems like a sort of a business reality for Sony.

And it's probably a good deal for them because TCL has...

uh lots of manufacturing capacity and some interesting new technology they're coming out with uh and that's what sony needs apparently uh i mean sony has been contracting out this assembly of its televisions for a long time now they're just changing the arrangement i believe sony's also part also as part of this deal like sony's receivers and stuff are going to be part of this as well uh and the final thing i'll say before i uh do an aside on tv tech is that um

This is like a memorandum of understanding or whatever.

Like many things can go wrong that will make this deal not happen sometime between now and 2027 when they're supposed to start doing business.

So maybe you won't get regulatory approval.

Maybe the deal will fall apart.

So stay tuned.

This is not a thing that has happened yet, but this is just a thing that these two companies say that they want to happen.

And I think this is a good time to take a couple steps back and look at where we are in the television technology market to see how this deal might fit into it.

And this is from the perspective of like...

I don't know, technology enthusiasts, right?

There's the TV market is huge.

Most people buy inexpensive televisions and like the, the sort of enthusiast level of the market does trickle down to that lower end of the market where the action is happening is on the high end, right?

So that's what I'm interested in.

That's what most TV nerds are interested in.

And on the high end for the past many, many years,