Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Best Buy Co. and Amazon.com Inc. are touting deals ahead of Black Friday to clear out older and cheaper sets before an anticipated flood of deeper price cuts in coming weeks.

“We expect a lot of aggressive pricing” by Black Friday, says television analyst Riddhi Patel of market-research firm iSuppli. “You will see 32-inch value-brand televisions for $199, and regular name brands will be more like $249 and $299.” She forecasts that 42-inch higher-end models will fall to $500, and some 55-inch sets with LED backlighting will retail for less than $1,000, half what many cost just last year.

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B.K. Yoon, Samsung Electronics’ visual-display president, said at a forum that while 3D without glasses is possible on cellphones and other small mobile devices, there are still challenges for 3D TVs.

However, rival Toshiba Corp. of Japan earlier this month unveiled the world’s first glasses-free 3D liquid-crystal-display television sets, less than a year after most set makers launched 3D television sets that require the cumbersome eyewear. The company has said it plans to start selling the glasses-free TVs in December.

The cutthroat nature of the television-set industry is marked by precipitous price declines every year and innovations that threaten to cannibalize promising technologies even before companies can cash in on years of research and development.

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Analysts base their predictions on the prices of liquid crystal displays — which are the most expensive component of a flat screen TV.

Prices of LCDs, used in everything from cellphones to flat-screen TVs, have started to fall after months of stable or rising prices. That’s because with the market in an upswing thanks to a recovery in the global economy, LCD makers, especially those in Taiwan, have started to ramp up capacity, running their factories at full utilization. With additional capacity coming on line from new production lines at Sharp, Samsung Electronics and LG Display, supply growth for LCDs is now outstripping demand.

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Yup, more of the same: Holiday sales from Nov. 1 through Dec. 19 are down one percent compared to the same period in 2007. Which is right in line with comScore’s (SCOR) prediction of flat online sales for the holiday.

If you’d like a rosier glow to these numbers, comScore tries to oblige, by noting that average online spending between Thanksgiving and Dec. 19 is actually up five percent per day. But since there are fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year compared to previous years, that won’t help retailers’ top or bottom lines.

What are people buying on Amazon (AMZN) and other electronic storefronts? Fewer flat screen TVs, ComScore says, either because promotional discounts have tapered off or because those who need a 42-inch LCD on their walls have already got one.

Meanwhile, I’m not sure what constitutes an online “Sports and Fitness” purchase, but ComScore says people have been making many more of them this year, because the category is up 31 percent. Music, movies and videos are much more familiar, and much less popular. Sales are down 24 percent, which mirrors what Best Buy (BBY) said about its brick and mortar sales for the same goods earlier this month.