Televisions

[myrdale]

My TV was a 42" 720p which I purchased with Bush's tax refunds sometime around 2007 or so. It had been limping along for the past month, I went ahead and put it out of it's misery.

Shopping for a new set has been an interesting experience.

At Walmart, I narrowed my selection down to Samsung, for no other reason than name recognition. They had two options. 43" for $360, or a 55" for $400. The difference in price is negligible, but I've been satisfied with a 42" this long, jumping up to a 55" seemed unnecessary, and the 43" is bigger than what I already had. So I pieced up the 43" and went to pay out.

At checkout, it rung up $300 instead of $360, so that put a smile on my face.

When I arrived home and unboxed it I thought I had made a mistake. It looks like it's half the size of my old TV. The old TV had about 3" of plastic frame that encompassed the screen, the new TV has no edge at all.

Now I kind of regret not getting the larger screen, but I know I will get use to it. I wonder if buying the 43" instead of the 55" was a rational decision or not?

[kork13]

TVs are sized by their diagonal viewing area (measure from top-left corner of viewable screen to the bottom right corner). Is it actually 43"? (Note that ½ to 1 inch of viewable screen is generally lost under the screen's border). Losing the thick border would certainly make it look significantly smaller, but it shouldn't be half the size.

I know there's supposedly a "right size" of TV based on your sitting distance... You might do some Google research to see what size of screen works best for your home. Worst case, you should be able to return the TV to Walmart & exchange it for the larger one, if you can't tolerate the current size. Though I think for electronics, that return period is very short... Like maybe a week. So you do need to decide quickly.

FWIW, I find our 40" TV to be just fine. We do have a smaller living room area, so we're only sitting about 8 feet away from the TV. We also don't use the TV alot (maybe 5-6 hours a week), so our needs are low.


ETA: I found one of those size/distance calculators ... Yikes!!! For my smallish living room, it says I should have a 57" TV .... And for our 40" screen, we "should" be sitting just 5½ feet away!

[bjl584]

The tv in my living room is a 60". It's served me well the past 8 years, but I have been thinking about upgrading to a 85". I have a large enough room to support it.

Side story, I just got a free 50" for our cabin a few weeks ago from a friend.

[disneysteve]

I know there's supposedly a "right size" of TV based on your sitting distance.

I'm sure they've elevated those numbers as larger TVs became available and affordable. Years ago, 25" or maybe 32" was pretty standard in everyone's home and we were all just fine with that. Now people are out buying 70" TVs or even larger and putting them in rooms not much bigger than where a 25" screen would have been a generation ago.

Our sitting room (where we watch the most) and our bedroom are both 32". Our family room is smaller, maybe 25", because that's the largest that would fit in the wall unit. We are planning to renovate that room and get rid of the wall unit at which point we'll be able to buy a bigger TV. The room isn't that big so something like the 43" is probably about right.

[Drake3287]

Not only should you return it and get a bigger television, you should have purchased it at Costco. Even the cost of the a Costco membership would have made it a good deal still simply because Costco automatically gives you a double warranty period not to mention an easy return policy. I remember years ago a salesman at Best Buy telling me that no one has ever returned a TV for being to large but they get them everyday from people that bought them to small.

[ua_guy]

TV's are one of those "buy it once" things for us too, and they typically last 15 years or more. On the last round, we went with a 65" because of the sitting distance and also right-size for where it's hung above the mantle on our fireplace. Went with a Sony Bravia 4K OLED. Should look good for years to come. Same as OP - we were replacing a 46" that we bought a long time ago for a much smaller room. 55" looked almost the same size because of the old TV's large frame. So we said nah, get the 65, fits better anyhow.

I started out with a 13" tube TV in my bedroom, way back when. Then, after getting together with my husband, we upgraded to a 27" flat panel, state of the art for the time back in 2005-ish. We decided to upgrade that not too long ago. For one, the guide/channel listing contains much more information on-screen than it used to using higher resolution and smaller fonts. Same with everything on TV, really, since emerging from 320p resolution. Two, uncorrected eyesight seems to get worse over time. So we went from a 27" to a 43" and can read the channel listing from bed again

[Fishindude77]

TV's are such a deal anymore, why not go with a big one?
We've been very pleased with the Visio TV's.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

return and get the bigger. you keep it forever. i mean most people do. I still have one in our bedroom from 2005 when we moved cross country. Our first flat screen that is very thick. The next two TVs we bought in 2017 when we moved to our home and bought it. I guess until it breaks we are keeping them as is. I wish our 55" we had bought above the fireplace to be 65". But whatever.

I agree you never return a too big tv. You do return a smaller tv

But also i mean most people and NOT just on this board keep tvs until they break. Granted people buy tvs but a lot of it is because they "need" it in every room or something. not because it breaks.

[myrdale]

I am about settled into the current size, but I've come up with another bizarre issue I've never head before. Ads.

I was going to say "it's not too intrusive" but as I was typing that it occurs to me the banner ad on the home screen takes up 25% of the viewable area. It's just the home screen, you're just there for a few seconds. But all the same, is it too much to buy a device with out it advertising how much more you need to buy? It seems there are settings to disable "Interest Based Advertising". I turned one of the options off last night. I'll have more digging to figure out the others. At least I was able to remove the long list of applications that I don't have subscriptions for, aka Hulu, Disney+, Amazon....

[Frugal Bugler]

My wife and I have an older LG 4K 55" OLED television that continues to blow us away! I very rarely watch it as I feel
my spare time is better spent finding new ways to increase income or reduce expenses. The lady of the house however
seems to have unlimited time for watching... well, whatever. And I am really fine with that. The television was an open
box / store demo, $1300 plus $375 LG sound bar with wireless speaker. We financed on a 0% Best Buy credit card,
paid well within the 18 months terms. I would rebuy the exact configuration in a heartbeat (now significantly less in
price). We came from the 80s and 90s analog television of heavy old 32" sets with built in VHS players so the drastic
leap to HDMI and high resolution took us from a $185/month cable "bill us all you can package" to under $85 with our
current subscriptions for wifi and a few apps, and a VOIP phone. Our budgets are as different as any of our personal
finance save, splurge and share objectives. Home entertainment, if a priority, demands the priority of getting the right
product at the right price at the right time. The ones who "settle" for less than they want will only subject themselves to
an emotional splurge buy in a few months or years. I suggest getting what you want and what you can afford. If you
can't have the best of everything, make the best of everything that you have.