Higher-end can mean a lot of things, especially when talking consumer grade. I generally translate consumer grade high-end as being more aesthetically pleasing vs operationally. My expertise are more aligned with industrial grade equipment where size is typically not the limit. I've deployed a 16ft x 9ft high-res LED display for a customer in the past. That's something you don't normally find at BestBuy or even at their Magnolia outlets.
They're not more expensive _just_ because of the lack of ads subsidization.
They also generally are just better built. The expected hours of operation and MTBF of the components is generally much higher than consumer displays. Many of the ones I dealt with had metal cases and stronger glass.
They're expected to stand up to much more abuse or often be installed in places where they're inconvenient to service.
If you wanted to build a non-smart panel with the expected lifespan of a typical consumer TV a significant portion of the current cost could likely be cut if it were done at scale.
Is the "smart features" actually making money for the TV manufacturers?
A good question to think about. How can we, as consumers, incentivize the TV manufactures to focus on building good product that actually liked by users, and still making good money.
It is quite well know ( mentioned multiples times in this thread and in every other TV discussions for he past years ) the smart features collect data and shows you ads which earn the manufactures a continuous stream of revenue.
approx $75k with control system for a 5mm pixel pitch. The control system is required for source input mapping/transformation onto the display. Here's footage from 4ft away https://bit.ly/3y5AuhW running at 30fps 60hz.
