RCA's CT-100 was the first color-TV set for consumers. It offered low quality at a high price. The RCA set had a 15-inch screen and sold for $1,000, which has the buying power of $7,850 today. Few families wanted to clutter their living rooms with one box for color and another for black-and-white. But compatible color required packing two sets of circuits into one TV console. That complexity not only explained some of the cost, it also contributed to an image that was often blurry and ridden with ghosts. So RCA rolled out its 21-inch 21CT55 in November 1954 at 'just' $895 (over $7,000 today). Nonetheless, the company was apparently losing money on every set it sold. It would take years of price drops and technical improvement before color TV was no longer a plaything of the rich.

Source: Wired