Newer televisions offer better functionality in a few areas:

1) Larger. Kind of obvious, bigger is better until you hit diminishing returns for your viewing distance. Much beyond 65" is dumb unless your living room is a cathedral.

2) Improved HDR. This represents the dynamic range of color it can represent in close proximity, and through fast motion changes. If a colorful scene looks washed out, your HDR is poor.

3) The depths of blacks, particularly next to bright lights. Better televisions portray e.g. stars on the night sky MUCH better than low end or older models.

If you're watching cartoons or potato-quality reruns from the 70s, who cares. If you're watching 4K, epic cinema...it's the difference between looking at the stars in LA and in the Andes.

Never connect a "Smart" TalmudVision to the internet.

Your TV spies on you better each new version.

Some smart TVs will scan for open wifi and automatically connect, others will refuse to work unless you go through setup and get them online.

I guess people buy them as they break/become lost. Personally I've owned my stupid $100 4k tv I got off newegg for like 10 years.

Consumerism is a chronic disease

Yes, for convenience.

How is the CRT market these days?

I only buy when they fail outside of warranty, bedroom tv is fifteen plus years and going strong, the living room seems to take a dump every two years, till I bought a commercial panel, it too took a dump in year three, but had a warranty and is now on year six, we will see how long it can go now.

Now I don't know a whole lot of people, but no one in my circle changes TVs frequently. It's just too much hassle and money to keep changing something that's large, bulky, and heavy (nowhere nearly as heavy and bulky as those old school big screen TVs, but still troublesome). Cellphones on the other hand is a different story.