[throwaway32]

Something similar has occurred with LCD monitors, all companies advertise stats that are grossly misleading like "dynamic contrast ratio" and "grey to grey response times", but sound similar to the legitimate measurements like contrast and response times.

These fake numbers are much more impressive sounding than the "real" ones (1:100000 dynamic contrast ratio (DCR), vs something like 1:10000 regular contrast ratio (CR), when infact the monitor with a 1:10000 CR could be greatly superior to the 1:1000000 DCR monitor, which may easily only have a 1:1000 CR), so companies that provide the real numbers are penalized in the marketplace, so instead start to only publish the misleading numbers. This has made it all but impossible to meaningfully compare screens on manufacturer provided stats.

Information asymmetry plays a powerful role in marketing, and can result in a race to the bottom where consumers cannot compare things in real terms before purchase, so providers have no incentive to deliver anything of quality (extra costs, no meaningful way to market the extra quality as an option). This sort of behavior is also extremely common in residential ISPs ("unlimited" internet always sounds better to the average consumer than some kind of published limit).

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/The_Market_fo...

[marshray]

Yeah, at one time the US FTC cared enough to enforce honest reporting of CRT sizes back in the old days. Apparently they don't care about LCD stats though.