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So one of my three year old kids smashed my 65" LED flatscreen with a die-cast model of the Atlantis shuttle. I was fine with this and was not planning on buying a replacement in any haste but my wife keeps complaining. Would prefer at least 65"+ and absolutely not a smart tv. What suggestions do you have, companies to avoid, etc. Help me SN, you are probably my only hope of not just buying another spysung.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Saturday January 20 2018, @09:56PM (1 child)
What's your definition of small? You may be right if you're talking one of those portable sorts of tube TVs with a tiny 7" or 5" screen. But that's not true of 15" to 19" tubes, which is pretty small by today's standards.
In the early 2000s I measured the power usage of several 15" to 19" CRT monitors and TVs, and a few flat screens. The 19" flat screen was relatively simple, always used 32W when on. This was before LED backlighting. Power usage of the smaller (24") modern flat screens with LEDs tends to be around 20W. The brightness setting could change its power usage a little bit, but the image being displayed didn't affect power usage at all. In contrast, the tubes were much more variable. The range was 50W to 120W. It depended greatly how high the brightness was set, the resolution, and the image being displayed. Every step up in display resolution from 640x480 to 1200x1080 raised the power requirement another 5W to 10W. At maximum brightness and resolution, displaying an all white image could take as much as 50W more power than an all black image. What mattered the least was whether the tube was 15" or 17" or 19". TV took a bit less power thanks to the lower resolution, but I still never saw less than 48W.
> Besides, power bills are peanuts compared to modern cable bills
True, that. Don't overlook Ye Olde Public Library and broadcast TV. The best bang for the buck is to wean yourself and your family off this desire to see the latest episode of shows available only on cable. All people need is a little patience. After a year or 2 just about everything is released for streaming download or DVD. Or if you just can't wait, cultivate a willingness to use sources that might be pirate (wink, wink). No one has to pay hundreds of $ per year for a cable subscription. It continues to astonish and sadden me that so many of the public still won't cut the cord. They complain about the price gouging, but they won't quit their addiction.
As for a monster 65" display size, what's the point? To watch from the next room, 30 feet away? Is it that someone in the family has an eye condition, needs print in large sizes? Or to impress visitors to your home, the whole Keeping Up With The Joneses bit? It doesn't have greater resolution. It's not going to look sharper than a more humble 40" screen of good quality. If it is an 8K display, then I could see 65" being useful, but at 4K or less, nah.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Saturday January 20 2018, @10:31PM
And on that note, watch out for displays in a big box electronics store's TV department that lack a tuner. These aren't TVs; they're monitors. Some don't even have composite in, meaning you might not be able to easily plug a VHS player, 8-bit home computer, or pre-Xbox 360 game console into one of these.