Sales of televisions were about 90 million. The low power requirements of the LCD have historically driven its acceptance in the market, from watches and calculators in the 70's to the laptop of the 90's. Combined with its flat thin form factor and low weight, the LCD has been an enabling technology for portable electronics. Over the past decade commercialization of the a-Si active matrix technology has resulted in phenomenal improvements in the quality of the LCD image, measured in terms of resolution, color, video rate, and contrast ratio. The current generation of a-Si displays produce excellent text, graphics, and video images.
Many users prefer flat panels to CRTs because of their clear flicker free color imaging capability.
In fact, the only optical performance parameters where the CRT maintains a clear advantage are viewing angle and brightness. While these characteristics are not critical for computer monitor performance, they become very critical for television and will be discussed in more detail below. Anyone who still feels that an a-Si flat panel doesn't look as good as a CRT hasn't seen one lately. A very clear limitation of a-Si technology is panel size. The typical laptop panel today requires nearly one million transistors.