Need To Upgrade TV

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RustyRatRod

RustyRatRod

I was born on a Monday. Not last Monday.
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All you audio video guys, hep me out. lol I need to upgrade our TV. It's always had a very dark presentation, no matter how I set the picture. But that's kinda irrelevant here. Ours still has RCA inputs. lol I have a small DVD player plug into it, as some of you know Kitty and I have an extensive dvd collection. I do plan on converting them to flash drive files "one day", but that day is not here. What are my options here? I am more than willing to also upgrade the dvd player too, but with as much new things as are out there, I am lost. As usual with us being on a limited, fixed income, price is important, but I've done some preliminary looking and I see I'll probably at least have to spend "around" 500 give or take, unless I don't know what I'm looking at......which is entirely possible. What we have now is a 32" flat screen.
 
We need more information, do you have cable, do you have satellite TV, do you have a streaming service or are you using rabbit ears?
:lol:

Get a smart TV.
 
Car Nut said:
We need more information, do you have cable, do you have satellite TV, do you have a streaming service or are you using rabbit ears?
:lol:

Get a smart TV.
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I'm sorry, I should have included that. Although the TV I have now has many capabilities as it's a Roku tv, I do not use them and I will not. So there'll be no streaming, no online. We have no cable and no satellite and will not. All we have is an antenna on the roof for over the air channels, so that's important. If there are any tvs with a high performance tuner, that might interest me.
 
Tvs tend to be priced best around black Friday in my experience.

There's lots of good panels these days, but brightness is one of those things that's a "get what you pay for" proposition.

Smart Tvs are a waste IMO, within a few years the softwares running on them get slow or outdated. Especially LG in my experience. I wish I could get just a display, no smart junk, and then use my roku or Google TV for everything else. They're cheap enough that it doesn't break the bank to replace them if they fail.

Best bet is probably to go and check out a bunch of Tvs in person and pick the most you can afford. The things that seem to fail most at either power supplies, or the sound. Having any type of external sound system is necessary, IMO, and gets around the internal sound failure issue in many cases. Power supply issues are tougher, but online reviews tend to highlight models with issues.
 
RustyRatRod said:
I'm sorry, I should have included that. Although the TV I have now has many capabilities as it's a Roku tv, I do not use them and I will not. So there'll be no streaming, no online. We have no cable and no satellite and will not. All we have is an antenna on the roof for over the air channels, so that's important. If there are any tvs with a high performance tuner, that might interest me.
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Hmmm... That's different. I looked before without luck, but a "monitor" rather than a TV might be more what you need. Used to be once upon a time they were cheaper than tvs - it's just a display with an input.

I have no experience with tuners. Are they external now a days?
 
Phreakish said:
Hmmm... That's different. I looked before without luck, but a "monitor" rather than a TV might be more what you need. Used to be once upon a time they were cheaper than tvs - it's just a display with an input.

I have no experience with tuners. Are they external now a days?
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No, tuners are internal. The biggest failures I've experienced on the last few we've had have been with the electrical panels where all of the plugs and jacks are. They always seem to get loose and make bad connections. Even the one I have now does it, but I have it in a position where it works and I leave it alone. lol
 
I've got 10 years on my Samsung 55" led that I paid around $800.00 cad for. It sees a fair amount of use, especially in the last few years since my wife has been on disability. Excellent picture quality IMHO, have never had any problems with it.
 
missing linc said:
I've got 10 years on my Samsung 55" led that I paid around $800.00 cad for. It sees a fair amount of use, especially in the last few years since my wife has been on disability. Excellent picture quality IMHO, have never had any problems with it.
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We don't have enough room for "all that". lol
 
RustyRatRod said:
We don't have enough room for "all that". lol
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They come smaller, LOL.
Samsung does offer some non smart commercial displays. Found one on best buy for like $350 that's 40 some inches. Says it has a digital tuner, not sure what kind of hookups (connections) it has.

Samsung displays are top tier, but their devices tend to cost more. Sometimes the software on them is intrusive, but a non smart version shouldn't suffer that.
 
My take.

Don't discount the thrift stores. Just get one new enough that it's LED and not plasma. Most have a date coded into the label. If an otherwise good candidate does not have a remote, don't sweat it. You can often get original remotes off ebay. Around here you still see descent TV's for less than a hundred, often 40-50 or so. A cheap external antenna should allow you to be able to test them, if there are local channels

Sound, for me, is the problem. It does not take much of a TV nowadays to have a great picture, but many of these the sound just sucks

On mine, a 48" Samsung, the volume controlled audio had no output jack. It had "digital IR" and you either need a compatible soundbar or an adapter to convert to electrical RCA. It also has line audio out. But both of those ARE NOT volume controlled. They are both fixed "line" output. Very unhandy.

I actually had to tap into the internal speakers, add RCA jacks with blocking caps and then connect them to a pair of matching transformers to provide remote/ volume controlled audio, which I then hooked to a small stereo amp. It works OK but not the best

On mine, has HDMI inputs and they are not particularly exciting, because, EG my external ROKU box hooks to them and for some reason the audio is marginal. I have to use much more volume with the external amp to compensate.

Considering the century we have entered, and the alleged technology advances, "it sucks"
 
Yep, available room definitely has an effect.
In my ca bedroom, a 46 is the biggest I could go. A Samsung, with inputs for a dvd/vcr recorder. On an antenna.
In AZ, on cable, biggest that fit well where I wanted it in the master bedro
om is a 50" Samsung. Got a 75" Samsung in the living room, got a deal on a closeout at wally world, under a grand.
Best deal is in the spare bedroom, TCL 65". Not the best TV by a long shot.... (smart, will do streaming, but it ain't getting my email, so no streaming for us, lol). Black Friday deal, $219. Haven't hooked up the DVD yet, but I'm pretty sure I can ( cable dvr getting it done).
I would consider the largest Samsung that will fit in the alloted space.
 
I've had or have Samsung, sony, lg, vizio, sharp, Phillips, tcl roku TV.

1.Sony TV usually have great pictures.
2. Vizio tvs seem to be great value and last
3. Samsung good picture
4. LG, meh, it works
5.sharp some leds burned out
6. 15 year old Phillips flat screen still chugging along
7. TCL, look elsewhere

I'd factor in a 100$ vizio soundboard for any TV you buy. The sound on most all flat-screen suck
 
Rusty, I don't know if you shop on Amazon, or what size you want, but there are screaming deals on there. Tv's have come down so much in the last decade its ridiculous. Since you don't need fancy features or super high resolutions, there are 32 inch models for $179 and 50 inch ones for 250. My wife found a 32 inch around Christmas for literally $43 on a lightning deal. Sometimes "last years" model with a little less resolution goes for much less. Most models have a coax or vga cables If you DVD player doesn't have hdmi. Or I have a box full of adapters for vga to coax if you need one, I will ship ya one. What size tv are you looking for? Does the current DVD player only have vga (red white yellow) cables?
 
1 you need a tv with a qam tuner to get over the air channels with no cable etc service
2 they are all built the same you get 5yrs out of it you are doing good
3 buy the biggest cheapest led unit for your area that you can
4 no extended warranty
5 consider it a throw away
 
Johnny Mac said:
Rusty, I don't know if you shop on Amazon, or what size you want, but there are screaming deals on there. Tv's have come down so much in the last decade its ridiculous. Since you don't need fancy features or super high resolutions, there are 32 inch models for $179 and 50 inch ones for 250. My wife found a 32 inch around Christmas for literally $43 on a lightning deal. Sometimes "last years" model with a little less resolution goes for much less. Most models have a coax or vga cables If you DVD player doesn't have hdmi. Or I have a box full of adapters for vga to coax if you need one, I will ship ya one. What size tv are you looking for? Does the current DVD player only have vga (red white yellow) cables?
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Yes. Only RCA cables. I know. Archaic.
 
I wish you were closer Rob, I have a 40 inch non-smart Sony TV I would give you.
 
Car Nut said:
I wish you were closer Rob, I have a 40 inch non-smart Sony TV I would give you.
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That would probably fit in there. It's between two doorways in our bedroom so it's a limited space.
 
I was at Sam's Club the other day, and they had some smoking deals on TVs. Try a Sam's.
 
a-bodyguy said:
1 you need a tv with a qam tuner to get over the air channels with no cable etc service
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I do not believe this is true. All TVs that I'm aware of will receive standard current tech OTA TV signals. They are actually ATSC, and it might even be required by law that they are capable
 
harrisonm said:
I was at Sam's Club the other day, and they had some smoking deals on TVs. Try a Sam's.
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We just don't buy in bulk enough to justify the membership. Even if we did, our local Sams club is a ghetto market.
 
You should be able to get a 40-55" TV for under $300.

Your issue is gong to be finding one with RCA inputs.
Almost everything now is HDMI.

You might be able to "upgrade" your DVD player to Blue-ray, that should be backwards compatible to "standard" DVD and also have HDMI output.

Curious what the above member experienced with TCL.
I've heard nothing but good about them and what a good value they are, including from our son who works on servers (like me) and builds high end gaming systems (unlike me for the past 20 years) sometimes using multiple TCL 4K TVs for monitors.
 
You can buy RCA to HDMI adapters but I don't know how well they work
 
barbee6043 said:
I'm like RRR, we need a more update TV but reading all this tech TV stuff here has given me a HUGE headache. Good luck RRR!!!!!!
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Me too. I'm zero further ahead than before I asked. But I do appreciate the help.
 
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