Help buying new TV

Ok, being the frugal gal I am, I've been fighting the need to replace our TV. I thought I would wait until it just dies but now, I think it's getting close. I bought this TV in 1988, 32" Sharp, it weighs a ton. It has "built in" candle holders in the top as once I was burning candles in glass jars and the suckers melted right into the top!

So, now, when I turn it on, it's a 4" bar of the picture. If I whack it on the top right side (with my box of stove matches) the picture fills the screen again,purple blotches on the right, green on the left for about 5 minutes until it warms up.

I just went on line for a big box chain and there are SOOOO many choices, it's a foreign language.

Granted, I'm sure asking you guys for the best TV is like asking for the best stove, everyone has their opinion, but I need a starting point.

This is for a small living room, where the stove is. The walls are 24” thick stone, can't be wall mounted. We have an old "hifi" cabinet that has the cable box, dvd, surround system in it but the TV needs to be 32"-36" wide so the stove has it's clearances. The furniture is 8-10 feet too so we aren't looking for a monster TV, the room isn't that big but we spend a lot of time in it.

What features are worth paying for? Is it better to get a "smart" tv or a separate wifi device? What about resolution? We aren't watching sports or playing games on it either. Is LCD better than LED or visa versa?

Please, help me sort this out so I can try to be proactive for once in my life

 

I bought mine at a BJ's up rt 202 north of you. My purchase parameters were to get one that was under 500 bucks, made by Phillips or Sharp. From what I hear now, I would add Samsung to the list. All will be HD or 1080p rated by now. Not sure about smart tv's vs a separate wifi. For the sake of cleanliness, I would opt to have the wifi built in. Your stone walls would do fine to hold the set too. It would only require some 1/4 inch holes to mount the bracket. Best thing about these flat tv's is the space they don't occupy. They are also very light. We have a 42 inch in a 12 x 15 room. Although it may look large, the screens are wide screen format, so the hieght is not the same as the old tubes in comparison. I would not have changed the size we ended up with if I was doing it again. You can get pretty innovative in how you mount these things. If you were really bent on not drilling the wall, you could always get a rustic looking rough sawn board from Tinnsmans and mount that floor to ceiling like a post, then mount the tv to that. You could hide the wires behind the board too.

 

In reality it sounds like your looking for a 32-40" LED. You can still find older 720p models for sub $300 Like this one from bestbuy or your could spend $300 plus for a newer 1080p model (which with a 32" you will NOT notice the difference) like this. As for smart TV's that's up to you and your need, I have laptops, smart phones and media streamers so using the "smart" end of my tv isn't very useful. Personally I wouldn't buy any off brands when it comes to electronics so you are looking at Samsung, Sony, LG, Vizio in no specific order. The best idea is to go into a box store (sams, bj's, bestbut) and check them out for yourself. As stated above me these things aren't too heavy and can be mounted just about, anywhere I have a 47" over my stove and its mounted to plastic wall anchors into cinder block and it holds just fine. So if you decide to go bigger (40" and up) definitely go with 1080p. Good luck!

 

The TV doesn't get hot being that close to the stove? Last season when my stove was cranking I would worry about the side of the TV facing the stove as it would get pretty hot to the touch.

Great idea about the board, I'm always looking for a reason to go to Tinnsmans . My neighbor calks them "the river pirates" because they are FAR from cheap but have amazing lumber and weird stuff for old houses, a niche market needed greatly in this area.

As far as wifi, I would only want it to stream movies and stuff on demand. I'm a dork, love old movies and think it would be awesome to have complete catalogs on demand, when I want to watch something. My hubby still has Netflix via mail but he forgets to return them a lot. I think the one here has been on top of the TV going on 4 months now, I don't even know what it is or if he watched it.

My hubby had to run to work but I think we will head out this afternoon to just look. He isn't a techy guy but LOVES to go look at big TVs, must be a guy think as I'm dreading this purchase, just want my best bang for the buck.

 

When I was shopping for new TVs 6 years or so ago I used CNET. They have great reviews and a very comprehensive buyers guide that explains a lot of the jargon.

http://reviews.cnet.com/tv-buying-guide/

A large flat screen purchase is a big investment. I would research carefully and buy the best you can afford. Be wary of what the sets look like in the store as they are all deliberately calibrated to look artificially bright.

There are a few things to consider:

1 - Screen technology.
LED is not a screen type, its a backlight type for LCDs. The big choice used to be LCD vs. Plasma, but these days there is not a lot of reason to consider plasma unless you are hardcore movie nut and have a dark theater room. Go with an LCD, and yes if at all possible and LED backlit LCD. The LED back light uses less electricity and produces better contrast and deep black than old fluorescent backlit LCDs (because the LED can be turned off completely just in the black parts of hte image and left on in the lit parts)

2 - Screen size.
Go bigger than you think you will want. The number one complaint folks have is that they wished they went bigger. LCD are all 16:9 aspect widescreen, so for the same diagonal size will be shorter vertically than an old tube. To "feel" as big as your 32" tube you will need to go up to at least a 40" LCD. I have a 46" in a 12x12 den and it doesn't feel overwhelming at all.

3 - Resolution.
Unless you are buying a really small set (26 and under) get a 1080p/1080i set. Its actually hard to find sets that only do 720 anymore except in the really small sizes.

4 - Frequency.
Broadcast television is transmitted at 60Hz. The early LCD sets also where 60Hz, which should be fine, but for technical reasons that are hard to explain you will see some blur in fast paced movies and sports on many 60Hz sets. So they introduced 120Hz sets. and then later 240 (overkill). Unless you have a good reason not to get at least a 120Hz set.

Another benefit of 120Hz. Film based movies are recorded at 24FPS. If you get a blue ray player the movies are actually encoded in 1080p resolution at the real film speed of 24 fps. 24 does not divide into 60 evenly, so the player has to do some conversion and add extra skip frames on a 60Hz set, which adds a noticeable flicker to the image. 120 does evenly divide by 24.


Once you have decided those basics, read reviews of individual models to find the ones with the best image quality and features you want.

When you install the set, you will want to learn about picture calibration. LCDs have many more controls for image than tube TVs and come factory calibrated overly bluish and bright (looks better in a showroom). Usually getting the best image quality is achieved by setting the color temeperature control to a setting called "warm" or "movie" and doing a lot of custom tweaking to color, tint, brightness, contrast, sharpness, backlight strength, etc. There are actually calibration DVDs to help you set this up wight if you want a perfect image. It makes a big difference watching movies. HOw to do that is the subject for an entire thread if you are interested.

 

Wow. Thanks, that's a mouthful! I get the resolution rate as it use to drive me nuts on my old work computer, my boss told me it wasn't flickering, I just needed glasses. That's when I learned about refresh rates.

I am on the Best buy site now. I just got some dimensions and am cutting up some cardboard now to see how big these really are. And you guys are right, 40 inches because it's a different ration, is smaller than I thought! We measured our furniture for this room and fell in love with it but it looks way bigger in my little room than it did their big show room.

You guys are awesome - THANK YOU!

 

Quite welcome.

One last thought. If you do the picture calibration I mention, the "correct" settings will look wrong at first. This is because 90% of people have their sets too bright.

You will get used to it quickly and soon realize it looks a lot more real and more like a theater movie than the out of the box settings. Then you will start hating your friends TVs and want to reset them

 

If I were looking to buy, Panasonic would be at the top of my list.

 

Panasonic is a great brand, especially known for their excellent plasma's. A well known secret of the LCD world is that only a couple firms make the panels, everyone else just rebadges. Even Sony stopped making their own LCDs.

The biggest maker of panels if I recall correctly is actually Samsung. That's what I have in the den. We have a small Toshiba in the bedroom.

 

Oh, they'd be bored. Watching dogs sleep on the couch and me drinking pots of coffee all day. My brother just recommended not getting a smart TV it might be cheaper to buy a Roku thingy (technical term) we have Wifi in the house already and connect 2 ipads and my work laptop with it but it's upstairs on our desktop computer. Being in a house built like a castle, with all these stone walls, it has it's moments where we lose connection downstairs but there is a hard wire feed from the pole into my living room so I think a wifi unit downstairs next to TV may be another option to consider.

I have a piece of cardboard 38" x 24” close enough to what a 42” TV viewing screen would be shoved behind the old TV now up against the wall and I'm SOOO glad I did as you guys were right, I would have bought a TV that was too small!

 

I'd buy a Vizio again. Bought a 43" for the living room and a 32" for the bedroom, both smart. They are both fine, but TV is not of great importance to me. I'm sure there are better TV's, but the price was good. Seems like it was $380 or so for the 43" smart.

No cable, no satellite, one channel, plus Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon prime. $270 a year for anything in the world I want to watch. YouTube on the TV without wires is entertaining too. I'd have internet anyway so I didn't factor that into annual cost.

I have heard that Samsung is among the best if you want to pay for it.

The 43" vizio is 24" tall x 39-1/2" wide if that helps at all.

Happy shopping.

 

Navigation with a Roku is much clumsier than a smart TV. Plus the smart TV remotes have dedicated Netflix buttons and others too. Roku means one more link in the connection for signal issues and another remote.

 

Good luck shopping HM. You are lucky that its a great time to buy TVs now... so many options. When we bought our first LCD in 2006, I wouldn't say we were exactly early adopters, but things have definitely come a long way in a short time. Back then we paid $1400 for a 46in Samsung - which was a great deal at the time for what was only a mid range set. Today we still have it, works fine, but would look spartan on features compared to even the lowest end new sets. Its heavy, 3 inches thick, only 60hz. The colors wash out if you view it too far off angle. At that time only about half the channels and shows we got were in HD so we watched a lot of TV with the vertical black bars.


Speaking of which, one other thing I remembered. If you get cable or satellite - check to see if your package includes HD channels. You might have to change. You might also need to exchange your set top box for an HD compatible unit.

Oh and don't let Best buy talk you into paying $50 for a monster cable HDMI cord to hook it up. You can get a generic one just as good online for $5. monoprice.com is my favorite vendor for that stuff.

 

Hubby just got home, laughed at my cardboard TV and is very excited to go LOOK at TVs. I have a funny feeling we will be coming home with one. Best Buy and HH Gregg are close to each other so I think I'll try both places, even though, I'm sure they will pretty much be the same. I'm not loyal but will buy from one over the other solely based on the customer service if it's apple to apples product. Working in the service industry, I can't help that!

 

Thanks, just called Comcast, it's a little more for the HD service and we have to switch out our box. Hubby works next to Comcast so that isn't too much of a pain.

Cables...thanks for the warning. I read that on the CNET link in the earlier post too. When I worked for OfficeMax we would try to up sell the "gold" series printer cables knowing full well the only difference between the $15 cable and the $30 gold cable was the fittings were gold colored, no other difference!

 

Once you decide what you want tech bargains lists current good deals on tech stuff from various websites and box stores -- the really good deals get bought quick (in a few hours)

I found my 46" LED westinghouse a few years ago at bestbuy through the site. I bought it online and when I picked it up locally no one in the store even knew they had any LED's in the store.

http://www.techbargains.com/catsearch.cfm/1_3_0

 

If you decide on a Samsung, I may be able to help you out on the purchase. My dealers have access to their line of tvs. No idea how the price is vs big box, but I would be happy to check for you. Full disclosure, I bought mine at Bjs, as mentioned earlier.

 

You may be done and back with the new TV by now, but wanted to add my two cents. Jeremy was right with the CNET link. In 2011 we wanted to replace our old 52" rear projection TV, so I was on a mission. Took about a month of looking on the Internet, and we settled on the Panasonic Plasma 55" model. The reason I went to plasma was two fold. The TV is located in the living room. In one corner is the woodstove. The TV is on a wall next to the stove, but close to the other corner. The TV sometimes has to be looked at from an angle from some places. The LEDs wash out on angle viewing and the blacks are terrible. We needed the TV to be seen from angles, so we went with the plasma. Also, at the time, our younger son lived home and is a gamer. Plasma is what the gamers like, no blur. Plus, the TV was THX certified. We did have it professionally calibrated, but I think it was a waste to spend the money.

If you are a videophile, and or, have to view from an angle get a plasma. The good ones aren't cheap, but up you like movies, and black and white movies especially, the inky blacks of the plasma can't be beat.

Whichever one you decide, I'm sure it will be the right one. Like Jeremy said, go for the largest you can.

We have a 42" JVC LCD in the bedroom we got at Costco for $329, and it works great, too

BTW. The Panny is a smart TV, but we use a Roku 3 cause it is smarter.

 

I got a 42" RCA at Sears on sale a few months ago. It was on sale originally for $365.00. With club card I got it for $299.00
Has a DVD built in. Not the top of the line mind ya, but my last new purchase was an RCA console back in 1990, and that still works in the living room.
I have the new on in my bedroom, and like it.
As far as the numbers bullcrap, anything looks great coming from a console to an LCD.
Unless your some serious critical theater head, your not really gonna miss much.