TV advice

Oh cool! Glad that worked out for them anyway....!!

I'm trying to figure out if procrastinating is bad -- missed out on the TCL thing -- or good. I'm pretty sure the Samsung I linked to above [edit: now previous page] was one that I looked at originally and dismissed as way too expensive -- now 30% off.

It shows $535 (the Samsung) in my cart. That sounds expensive for a 40", but I'm a bargain-shopper lol.

Also, I think the TCL will go back down in price at some point. I found the exact model for $299 a day after I placed my Amazon order, but since the difference was so small, I didn't apply for price-matching.

Keep an eye on Woot.com and it's various sub-sites (home.woot.com, and deals.woot.com).

They recently had a 42" TV for under $300. Might've been refurbished, but you can get a foursquare warranty along with the TV.

The deal changes at midnight, so you have to check their site every day.

Here's the newer version of the TCL, only $11 more than the deal I found before, not nearly as many reviews though:

http://www.amazon.com/TCL-L40FHDP60-40-Inch-Limited-Warranty/dp/B007BKMFK0/ref=dp_ob_title_ce

I like it.

If I had a home, I'd probably buy one myself.

Love Woot! Check it every day and I saw that TV deal!

Have to get in really early on some of their deals...the good ones go fast.

Bought a second e-reader from them at a fabulously cheap price and the transaction was flawless.

Our first big screen TV was a Samsung and we loved it. The TLC has a Samsung panel, so I don't you can go wrong, plus Amazon's CS is fantastic and they generally have a 30-day return policy.

Aw, sorry about the whole homeless thing. How much longer does that go?

Saw a house we like today; hopefully they'll take our offer. 30 days after that, at least.

Ooh, good luck!!

@all

We got a TV! After all this time. Samsung 40-inch HDTV, very happy with it.

We also got an Apple TV. Awesome. Paired with Netflix, we're starting to catch up with years and years of missed TV. (Ever heard of a show called "Freaks and Geeks?" Not bad at all.)

Our old cable was regular -- we could see some HD broadcast channels (not sure why) but only about 3. (NBC, ABC, CBS. Not Fox.)

So we just switched to WOW (Wide Open West) because we've had DSL and it's pretty slow and we've wanted to switch to cable internet too. The guy came out on Friday and made both switches (cable, internet), all is well. A bunch of HD cable channels, they look great. Internet connection is smokin'. (15 mbps, 10x faster than it had been.)

However, our Appley sensibilities have been grossly offended by the great big silver 80's-looking cable box and associated remote. UG-LY. Plus takes up room we don't really have.

This is not the end of the world. But we're looking for workarounds.

For example: If we get Tivo, we can then get a WOW cable card and put that in and have Tivo as usual plus HD cable. After some research though I'm not sure how reliable the cable cards are, and also it doesn't look like the Tivo box is stupendously better.

I'm really enjoying having HD TV at long last, so I don't really want to give up cable completely. (We could just dispense with it and watch everything via AppleTV or Netflix -- except sports, but there must be a way to do that too.)

One more problem -- our TV has two hdmi ports, and one is taken up by the Apple TV and one is taken up by the Huge Honkin' Box of Ugly. We also have a DVD player to plug in somewhere via hdmi.

Anyway, looking for any ideas to make this whole thing work more elegantly.

Thank you!

AppleTV + Netflix (and Hulu+) is pretty much all I do these days (I really need to get around to canceling the cable connection, only visitors watch cable tv here).



Totally dig this. I used to hack computers into media centers but since the apple tv simplicity they all look super oversized (mainly because they are) and that is pretty much all I have connected to it. I bought a Roku (same thing but different "channels") but the UI was not as simple to get around in and the content not worth it for me (but you can get Amazon Prime videos on that, and they are one of the big digital options out there).



You should check out the NBA app in Apple TV, you can subscribe there (but there are annoying blackout restrictions in the US, I have none of them here). There are probably NFL options as well. They are not cheap (e.g. I am paying like 23 bucks * 5 for the NBA one) but they let you watch every single game (cept for the annoying blackouts and regional issues) and watch archives of them.

Anyway, even if you don't subscribe you can watch daily recaps of the games that are like 3 minutes of the games highlights for free.



What it doing it for me is Airplay. I see Apple TV as a wireless HDMI box and a netflix box. With the latest operating system versions you can stream audio and video to it from your phone, tablet or computer (if Apple, though there are others using the format too).

If you can use that, then you don't need a dvd player attached to the tv (I haven't had one attached for about 5 years now, it is going to die off) and can just stream it from any mac with the latest os and a dvd slot (though these are dying off due to the whole dvd's dying off thing).

Anyway, Airplay works beautifully across your home wifi network, and that is what I use to make AppleTV pretty much the only thing I need to plug into my tv.

Very useful, thanks!

Our iMac is marginally too old for Airplay -- I forget details but it has to be made after (summer of 2011?), and ours is about a year too old. I had hoped to use that but no go. Until I get a new desktop or laptop anyway, which isn't in the offing. But could be a solution ~3 years down the line (if something else hasn't already emerged to solve the problem).

I'll look into the sports options though, I think it's very possible that if we get rid of cable entirely we could watch everything we want -- including stuff that we'd have to pay for on iTunes and such -- and still spend less money.

Odd, I thought it was just an OS issue (needing OSX 10.8 or newer) but it might be another case of Apple hobbling the software on older hardware (probably partly to push for upgrades, ugh).

Yeah, we have the latest OS X (10.8.2), but it still won't work.

I don't think this is where I originally saw it, but one discussion of the issue:



the reason:



http://www.cultofmac.com/178460/the-real-reason-why-macs-before-2011-cant-use-airplay-mirroring-in-mountain-lion-feature/#pLjqL8UfSh34BvgB.99