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June 9, 2005
Time to buy a Television
I may have mentioned previously, but the movers managed to break our TV. It was a Sony Trinitron - nothing fancy, a decent 27" TV that was almost 10 years old.
Turns out, the way they dropped it (at least, that what I figure they did) broke it in the most expensive way possible - they would have literally had to disassemble the entire set to repair it. Not cost effective.
So they wrote us a check for the claimed replacement value.
They broke another couple items as well, but nothing major. And they paid for all of them.
The only mildly annoying bit (aside from having the stuff broken in the first place) is that they didn't pay the labor claim I made for the turn-signal they broke on the Trophy. They paid for the part, but apparently since I did the repair, my time was worth nothing - had I taken it to a shop, they'd have paid the $60+/hour labor rate.
I'd have been out an hour either way - fixing it or taking it somewhere, so I'm not that annoyed, but struck me as disrespectful.
Anyway - the TV...
I've been looking at upgrading the visual bits of the home theater for a while. Looked at DLP - both rear projection and projectors - and wasn't impressed. Actually, projectors wouldn't be a bad idea, but I'm in the portion of the population who sees color-flash, so that makes them less interesting. I've also looked at LCD - and I love everything about it save the price.
So that leaves plasma. I like plasma - I'm not terribly worried about burn-in (we don't watch static images, and don't play video games on the TV), and the half-life of the sets are to the point where it's not an issue (>10 years if you watch 8 hours every day).
So, I'm watching prices on 42"+ plasma screens, and when we find the right one, we'll likely buy it.
One of the tests to determine the "right one" is how it looks displaying a wide range of inputs - so I'm opening this up to you (whoever the you are that are reading this) - if you've got any suggestions for good tests, drop me a note (or post feedback).
Posted by dberger at June 9, 2005 5:33 PM
Comments
I've become a Consumer Reports junkie for stuff that I'm not particularly passionate about but still want to make sure I don't get crap. (TV falls into this category.) Consumer Reports just did an article on this about two months ago. If you can't get your hands on it, drop me a line and I'll see if it's still in the 'recycle this' queue that hasn't left the house yet.
Posted by: Steve S. at June 11, 2005 3:07 PM