I mentioned previously that my TV kept cutting out on me. It made a pop sound and the audio and video went away. A restart brought it back, and it was OK after it was warmed up (it crapped two or three times), but it's probably not a good future. So I decided while I had some cash on hand to replace it.
The criteria was pretty simple. Buy the biggest thing that would fit in the "hole" above the fireplace, but didn't cost more than the old TV. The old 37" was almost two grand, and I was surprised to see that all but the biggest TV's are less than that. I wanted an LED-lit LCD for power and heat reasons, and I generally like the way they look (once you turn off all of the crap they have that messes with the picture). Brand wasn't that critical, because I believe the same two or three companies are actually stamping out the panels these days. The "smart TV" junk they all do wasn't that important to me.
Went to Best Buy first, after researching pricing online. They have deals now and then, but kinda as I expected, they have three model years for each manufacturer and size, and most aren't in stock anyway. But I did get a remote control to "un-loud" the picture to at least try and see what the quality looked like. They pipe that noisy awful MPEG video split a hundred ways into the TV's which is not exactly good source material.
Skated over to Costco where I knew they had a decent selection of just current stuff, all in stock. They don't accept credit cards, so that also forces the issue of paying with cash (well, a debit card, but money "on hand" regardless). They had a 55" Samsung on sale for $1,500, which seemed like a slam dunk. It's the biggest that will fit in the space we have, and I expected we'd end up with something like a 46". Would have liked to stay closer to a grand, but hopefully this will be with us for a long time.
I had to rearrange some stuff, but with some HDMI cables I bought for a few bucks each on Amazon, I managed to reduce the overall cabling significantly. It's remarkable how many "features" are in these TV's that make it look awful. The high contrast and dynamic range squishing, the funny blurring used to make it seem like 120 hz refresh matters, the high color saturation... it's ridiculous. I turned all of that shit off immediately. And the biggest thrill came in that the TV has both color bars and a gray scale chart built-in. Score! Feels like broadcast gear.
For all of my computer gadget lust, TV's are oddly something I've never been that interested in buying. This one is only the third "primary" TV I've ever bought (plus a small one for the bedroom). I never really cared that much about size, even with HD. There comes a point where size is too much for the room size, given the number of pixels you have. We're probably just at that point with this new TV, but I suppose I'm thinking of it in terms of a bigger room, eventually.
So far, I'm pretty happy with it, but I would have been just as happy to have the old TV for a few more years. There's a lot less purchase regret on big stuff once you've dug yourself out of credit card debt, that's for sure. This is part of our living room makeover. Part two is the furniture, and we should be in good shape to do that next month.
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