So, our TV finally died this week.
It's been an interesting ride with that television. It was a 27", decent picture, reasonable inputs. My parents bought it for us when we got married 6+ years ago for somewhere around $200 at a local grocery store chain. One of the standard ones in our state before Wal-Mart was around.
Shortly after our first child was born (or maybe just before, I forget) the remote stopped working. It was a pain, but we were poor and I'm cheap, so we made do for a while. About a 18 months later the power button imploded, so there was just a hole there. No big deal, it's got a black screen when on and not in use, we'll just pipe everything through the VCR and leave it on all the time. We get a remote back and we're good to go.
Shortly after our oldest learned to walk (another 12-18 months after the power button implosion) she used to hide behind the TV and yank on the wires. The coax connector broke due to this. Easy fix right? We'll just buy a cable and use the AV inputs, then pipe the standard coax cable through the VCR for cable TV.
Monday our volume buttons broke. I suppose we had it coming, though I was hoping the TV would last until Christmas so I could buy a new one as a sort of family present. Oh well.
I did some looking around and picked up a new 27" replacement. Hopefully it will last a long time and the kids won't destroy it in the first 6 months. It's pretty cool, does all the new (well, new to me) HDTV stuff and even supports evil media DRM via HDMI connections. It's no flat screen, but the picture and sound quality is excellent, lots of input types and jacks, it was a reasonable price for an HD TV, about the right size, and... well, because I can. Or something. All in all, so far so good, I'd recommend the model.
The crappy thing is this wasn't in the budget, but at least it comes out of the basement money, so I can't complain too much -- we actually have the money to get a new one instead of going into debt or something for it.
It's a heck of a note, to steal the phrase from my wife, that we don't actually have a VCR or anything with a connection better than S-Video to use the HDTV capabilities of the new TV. I think maybe we can get a box from the city for our cable. And maybe I'll ahve to buy the HD adapter for my xbox.
I'm also borrowing my dad's truck to haul crap to the dump and the goodwill equivalent, hauling broken pieces of cement around the yard ("You want to use those for WHAT?"), doing voulonteer church work, reading some more Raymond E Feist, working on the MAME post a bit, (still) avoiding the basement project, still showing up to work and generally keeping pretty busy. I've neglected my blog a bit but I'm not leaving anytime soon. I don't think.
Until later.
Oh, and apologies to anyone who was expecting boob pictures vis a vis the title.
9 comments:
Nice looking set. They say that Samsung is the "new" Sony. They make good stuff.
If that TV's HD tuner can do QAM then you may not need a convertor box. Or, if you are really lucky, they push the HD channels through in 8VSB format (but I'm guessing not). I know that a lot of Samsung set top HD tuners can do QAM, so give that a try before you get a box from the city. I don't even know how our city cable does it, if it's VSB or QAM, but I know the other cable company here is QAM. (two competing cable providers and I still prefer Dish Network!)
Our TV is going on 10 years old. It's a Sony 27". It only has two set of AV jacks, which really sucks. I have two DVD players, a Dish Network box, and a Gamecube that I want to use with it, but have to go through an extra switchbox to do all that. Ick.
I bought a 20" LCD for the bedroom last year on Black Friday for $299 and I really like it. Wall mounted TV's are really nice!
Debating what to do with the main set, it's time to upgrade, but I'm not sure if I really care about HD or not. If I go rear-projection I will get an HD set, if I go Plasma or LCD I might consider EDTV. I am not going to pay Dish Network for extra HD channels, but I can receive all the locals over the air since I'm only 11 miles from the antenna farm. Probably all depends on what I can find cheap around Christmas time. I just don't watch that much TV that is shown in HD and I rarely even watch movies. I do know that HD looks incredible, but the content of most tv programs is garbage regardless of if it looks good.
Can you believe I wrote all that and didn't once mention boobs? ;)
Yeah, I believe that samsung is the new sony. I got a samsung LCD monitor about 5 years ago and it's still running like a champ -- I love it.
I'm a bit of a n00b when it comes to HD, I'll have to check on QAM and 8VSB, those are unfamiliar terms to me. I've had no money for so long I've stopped keeping up with the technology. =)
I was torn on the HD thing, but for the 27" demographic it was about $150 difference to go for the HD. I'm hoping it will make the TV last longer. We'll see if it works out that way.
And I'm not a huge TV person, so even spending around $600.00 was a stretch for me.
...
Just checked, all I can find is:
Basic
$8/month
21 Channels (includes all local channels)
6 High Definition local channels
HD local channels may require a set top box
I'll have to give them a call about the format details. We hooked up the cable last night and the TV didn't seem to detect any HD channels.
Looks like there is an option for a PVR set top box which would be cool. it's $8 a month more though, so that's double what we're paying. (The set top box is $5 more a month, so I'll probably do the PVR if we decide to do it)
The PVR will change the way you watch TV.
$8 is a bargain, they get about $32 here for basic cable. I really thought when the city launched they were going to cost less than the big guys, but instead they charge the exact same price.
www.sfcn.org. Basic is... well, pretty basic.
For some reason they said they can't block 79-81 from the expanded basic cable, so we get those as well.
I'm kind of excited about the PVR, now I just have to figure out what show I actually want to watch to have it record. Maybe some TV movies or something.
Crap, just double-checked, it's $8 MORE for the PVR. so we'd go from $8 a month to $21 a month. Not sure how excited I'd be to do that.
$13 a month is a lot for a PVR. Not sure what our local guys get, I stopped paying much attention to them a few years back when I got tired of "high speed" internet being 384/128 kbps.
I do love my PVR's though. I have two Dish PVR's, I bought them outright so no monthly fee for the PVR functions.
Wow, your basic is basic.. They should call that "Antenna Basic" since that's about all you get, other than The Weather Channel. (I miss the weather channel, the satelite version of it is useless without local on the 8's.)
We pay $95 a month for TV! It just so happens that some of our favorite channels are in the top tier, plus I pay for 2 extra boxes ($5/mo access fee each even though I own the boxes). We have a couple of premium channels also.
No wonder we are broke!
I'm somewhat n00bish on the end user side of HD myself, I've been mainly involved in the transmission side of it so far.
huh? Yeah, and we have a new TV. It's priddy.
Have you tried to get any HDTV via an antenna? I did some checking and it looks like you should get great over the air HD in your area. A lot of people use a Zenith Silver Sensor antenna, they work good and cost around $25. You can find local HD info for the SLC market on avsforum.com
I read the thread there for our local market even though I'm not an HD user.
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