How To Waste $300 In 2 Years

26 Replies to “How To Waste $300 In 2 Years”

• first you might want to have a look at zattoo, but i think you are more caring about the screen not of the programm itself…

  i recently bought a panasonic th37pv7 and i really love it! it has a brilliant picture and just rocks!

• Hi,

  You can use your PC monitor as a TV and as a screen for the PS3.
  If it’s a DVI screen, a HDMI>DVI adaptor and it’s ok for the PS3.
  If it’s a VGA, a VGABox will do the job well. (Neoya X2VGA2)

• Hey guys! =:)

  @prego: Yeah, I really don’t watch like… hardly any TV, so I don’t care about what’s on the TV as much as being able to watch movies and play PS3 on it. That is cool tho!

  @Loacoon: Yeah, I thought of that too, but going from a 32″ TV to a 22″ monitor wouldn’t sit too well with the fam, I don’t think. =:/

• if you really want to burn money, dell have a 32″ monitor i think. and i could have sworn that samsung have something similar.

  the latest dell even have displayport iirc.

• I would absolutely recommend a Samsung LCD.

  I have an LN-S3251D, which is a couple of years old at this point, but it’s still gorgeous and it’s been working great over time. I have it on for several hours every day, and the picture still looks as good as it did the day I got it.

  (The PS3 works great on it, too.)

  Samsung has more recent LCDs (like the LN32A450C) and you can find one for under $800 – even less if you wait for a sale during a holiday.

• I agree about the Samsung displays. I bought a 19″ SyncMaster four years ago and it is still awesome. It’s slightly less bright than it used to be now but frankly it used to be blinding!

  Maybe you can get the TV repaired?

• @clee: Hey Chris!!! Thanks for the recommendation!! Like, so I don’t even know whether I should be looking for 720p, 1080p, etc. Also, what about the rear-projection screens? Are they better than the LCDs?

  @Tim: Cool, I’ll look into some Samsungs. And as far as getting it repaired… There have been lots of people that have this same problem with the RCA 32″ TVS… They start beeping and it means that there’s a fuse or something broken. I called a repair shop and they said it’s like $150 for labor plus however much the parts cost. =:/ And from what I’ve read, the people who have elected to repair this model have it end up breaking on them again pretty soon. I’m thinking I might as well bite the bullet and put the money towards something better. =:/

• @vanRijn: Hey dude 🙂

  So, if I had unlimited amounts of money? I’d go for a 40″ (or 46″) 1080p Samsung LCD like the LN40A550P. But that’ll run you at least $1200, probably more like $1300 or $1400 which is a lot of money for a TV.

  720p is a pretty good compromise; you can spend a lot less than a grand on the TV, the picture quality is still much better than standard-def, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the PS3 played games smoother at 720p than 1080p.

  And really, the Samsung LCDs have the best picture quality for the money, in my opinion. Sharp is a close second. Sony makes some impressive LCDs as well, but there’s usually a $500-$1000 price premium for the Sony sets; when I was making my decision, the 32″ Sony LCD competing for my affection was a full $900 more expensive and the picture was not noticeably better, so I went with the Samsung.

  I would definitely avoid DLP and rear-projection in general. The rear-projection sets are much bigger for the same amount of money, it’s true, but you can’t see the picture nearly as clearly if you’re not directly in front of the set. Also, the bulbs in the DLP sets are really expensive, so when they burn out it costs almost as much as buying a new TV again to replace the bulb.

• The snarky side of me would say that you should just cut out the TV all together and encourage more books, outdoor activities, learning how to code, etc. But seriously, if you are looking for reliability along the lines of old CRT reliability (10+ years), you are going to be disappointed. The new generations of TV’s are almost designed to die on a fairly regular basis, so you might just want to plan for that by only spending as much as you are willing to spend again in 3-5 years (or less). The whole situation in my opinion brings me back to my snarky suggestion at the beginning….

• Were actually in the same position as you. All our televisions don’t work properly (2 29′ CRT Sonys and 1 29′ CRT RCA which we bought about 10 yrs ago). The Sony TVs don’t have picture and the RCA loses its sound after about 30mins of being turned on.

  We don’t watch that much TV anymore so we haven’t been in much of a rush to replace them. But we need something to play our Nintendo Wii.

  After a lot of research we’ve decided on a 37′ Samsung 720P LCD for the following reasons:

  -the price: its only $799 here in Canada

  -Samsung is a reliable brand

  -720P because HDTV is almost entirely broadcast in 720P with a few channels in 1080i. The fact is there is likely never going to be native 1080P TV broadcasts because of insufficient bandwidth to support it. The only way to get 1080P content are video game consoles (PS3/X360) and blu-ray movies but the picture quality is negated by the screen size and the viewing distance. Take a look at : http://www.carltonbale.com/2006/11/1080p-does-matter/ . We plan on putting the TV about 6.5ft away so we wouldn’t even be able to tell the difference between 720P/1080P. Also, I’m going to be honest, we download all our movies off of bittorrent and 1080P movies come in at a whopping 35GB while the 720P movies are more reasonable at about 7GB. More reasonable but still not as convenient as 750MB DVD quality movies lol.

  I’d take a look at that link I posted and decide for yourself.

• @clee: Definitely appreciate the insight!! I think I’ll aim for a Samsung 720p then. =:)

  @Joe: Heh. Like I said, I do not watch television except for family movie nights and playing our Xbox and PS3. And I TOTALLY identify with you on the “designed to fail” thing. That totally chaps my hide! But I don’t see an alternative. Speaking of rip offs… $150 to just install a part on a TV sounds to me like highway robbery. =:(

  @jb: Awesome! Thanks for the advice!! Now I’m even more sure of going with a Samsung 720p!! =:D

• Maybe you should try checking out Newegg.com for TVs: http://www.newegg.com/Store/Category.aspx?Category=264&name=Plasma-LCD-DLP-TV
  Try sorting by rating. 😉 And when you read reviews, sort them by “helpfulness”. 🙂

  It’s a great site for just about anything.

• Hey Aaron! Actually, I’m already looking there now! =:) I just got an e-mail from newegg saying they’re offering free shipping… =:)

• You should probably invest in a computer LCD display instead of a TV set considering you don’t watch TV. An integrated tuner is wasted anyways in the time of digital set top boxes and media center PC’s.

  At the office we have 4 21″ Samsung SyncMaster 215TW that support PS3 output at 1080p, but crop some pixels to show it on the screen.
  Over a year ago I bought a Dell 27″ monster, the 2704WFP. It has a cheaper successor now the 2707WFP. All imaginable input options and 1:1 Full HD, you won’t notice the 60 pixel bar at the top and bottom, I promise.
  If you by a computer screen for the PS3 you need to make sure it supports High Definition Content Protection (HDCP) over DVI. The only downside is that the sound has to be connected using either the analog stereo connection or the SPDIF optical.

• Got myself a 40″ Samsung last year and I really like it except for two things:

  1. a way to turn it off…. now I can hear you thing that I must be daft if I can’t even figure out how to turn off the telly hehe but there’s something weird with this (all?) Samsung TV that it only seems to turn off but actually goes into some kind of stand-by (in some circumstances with the right light you can still see a moving picture, as if only the backlight has been turned off!). But then if I try to turn it on the next day it turns itself off instead and I have to push twice to make it wake up. But sometimes it wakes up immediately. I’ve not yet figured out how that works, the manual doesn’t refer to this “feature” at least.

  2. Mine does not adjust itself automatically to 4:3 or 16:9 transmissions which sucks. I always have to go into the menu to tell it which aspect ratio to use. I just can’t understand that it can’t figure it out for itself (the source being digital).

• Why don’t you bring your old TV to a TV technician? Maybe it’s just a cheap capacitor that broke and can be easily replaced. When my CRT TV stopped working I did the same and the repair was far less expensive than buying a new one.

  Just throwing it away without at least getting it checked really seems premature to me.

• Forget rear-projection, why they ever became popular in some parts of the world is beyond me, but today that gotta be considered a dead technology.

  Samsung LCD’s as many others have noted is a good buy, you get a decent image quality without spending a fortune, and if your prefered size is 32″ then that is almost a no competition.

  If you however want a slightly larger screen, say 37″ or 42″, then you really should check out a plasma panel, the contrast is MUCH better than the LCD panels (as in, they can display something close to real black, not just a slightly dark grey, the difference is really striking if watched side by side) and they don’t have problems with motion blur with fast moving action. IMO a plasma panel is currently the only thing close in quality to a high quality CRT screen.

  Also if you have kids (as you seem to have, looking at the picture in the upper right corner) you might appreciate that the plasma panels are protected by a layer of glass at the front, not just a thin layer of plastic like the LCDs.

  With plasmas i would probably avoid the 1080i ones unless you go 50″ or above, and go with a 720p one.

  -Troels, owner of a Panasonic TH42PX60

• @Stecchino: Hey there! =:) Yeah, I was thinking of getting a Samsung LCD thingey that the wifey can watch TV on and I can watch movies on and play games. It does need to be big enough to sit in the corner of the room, though, and watch from a distance. Thanks for the tip on the PS3!! =:)

  @Quintesse: LOL! So… Hm. I’ll keep that in mind as I’m looking at the models in Circuit City this weekend. =:)

  @Stefan: Yeah, like I said, I called a TV repair shop and they said that they’ll charge me $150 for labor and then however much the parts cost. That’ll end up being as much as I paid for the thing 2 years ago. Plus, I’ve read other people saying that with RCA TVs, even if you do get them repaired, they’ll break again and do this beeping thing again in short order. I figure that it’s time to invest in a better set that will also let me enjoy the PS3 properly (PS3 on a CRT _sucks_).

  @Troels: Yeah, I was wondering about the difference between plasma and LCD. I think the goal I’ll have is to get as good a TV as we can get for under $1000. I don’t have a preference for a 32″ TV… that’s just where we ended up with the $300 RCA CRT that just died. So you’re saying plasma is better quality than LCD? So it’s sounding like a 720p plasma might be the way to go?

• Hey vanRijn,

  I left a comment yesterday, but it got flagged as spam (I linked a couple of LCD options).

• You could opt to spend an extra $500 for this Panasonic Plasma 1080p TV: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16889187048

  Or you could spend just an extra $200 and opt for this 42 inch Panasonic Plasma 720p TV: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16889187079

  Either way, read the comments about cons for that brand of Plasma TV.

• Hey Chip! Hm. I can’t find your comment in my spam bucket. Could you repost it?

  @Aaron: Yeah, I think both of those are out of my price range. =:/

• Hmm… perhaps without the links this time!

  I think my basic point was that I recommend Vizio LCDs. We got one (42″) and love it. The picture quality easily stands up to my parents’ Sharp Aquos 46″.

  You can get a 42″ for around $1,000 or a 32″ for around $600.

  Whichever ones you look into, just compare specs/reviews at sites such as cnet or pcworld, then determine your optimal cost/value point, and buy accordingly.

• Hey Chip!! Thanks!!! =:) Cool!! Where did you get yours from?

• we got ours at Home Depot – though, you may be able to find slightly better prices elsewhere…

• Hm. So, we ended up getting a Samsung 37″ LN37A450 720p LCD. It was an open box model at Circuit city and we got it for $889. I added on the 5-year protection plan for an extra $319. It seems like a pretty nice model. PS3 looks gorgeous on it, of course.

  They also had a Panasonic 42″ 1080p plasma (model TH42PZ77u) for $959, iirc… open box, but with full warranty, etc. other than that. And I’m wondering if we shouldn’t have got that one. Any thoughts?

  In the store, it seemed to me that the Samsung 37″ 720p actually looked better with the coax high-def video feed than the Panasonic 42″ 1080p. Like the Samsung was better blended or something? The Panasonic seemed to show pixelation or something (like lossy JPEG compression artifacts)??

  I think I’m noticing a weird high-pitched whining with the Samsung when the volume is turned up. But I only notice it when it’s using the composite audio input (hey, that’s all we have right now). I don’t hear it when it’s using the HDMI input from the PS3.

  Also, $60 for a 3-foot Monster HDMI cable?!?!?!? WTF?? I’m looking on Newegg and they have a bunch of much-cheaper cables. Any advice on cable quality? I read something that said that at < 6 feet, the cheaper cables work just fine and that the Monster cables are aiming for not-even-available-yet HDMI resolutions...

• Not sure if you purchased a new set yet, but if you are in the market for something a bit cheaper then your typical LCD or Plasma, check out: http://www.geeks.com/products.asp?cat=TVS

  Alternatively, you can find a slew of refurbished items there.

  You can get a 42″ Vizio Refurb for under $700 which is unheard of:

  http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=VX42LHDTV10A-R&cat=TVS

  Check it out and see what you think.

  -mb

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