Deal of the Day - 8/5/08

Hello All,

I just bought a refurbished 32" LCD TV for the bedroom, you know for the Olympics, NFL football and sponge bob. It is a Westinghouse HDTV. Although not the best TV in the world, for a dark room it will work great. The reason we picked it up is because with the coupon below, it was a whopping $415, free shipping.

The best part of this tv is it has all of the tuners built in (NTSC, ATSC, QAM), 2 HDMI jacks, a VGA (computer input), and s-video, component and all of the rest. You can hook an antenna up to it and watch broadcast HD for free, or hook charter up to it, and watch all of the HD channels they offer for free, without using a box. This does not include ESPN, but all of the broadcast ones are in there, and some other ones I cannot recall off the top of my head.

Here is the $15 off coupon, (You need to open a new buy.com account to use it):
http://www.retailmenot.com/view/buy.com

Here is the TV:
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=208115572&loc=111

Here is the wall mount I bought. I really do not know anything about them, but this TV fits on it, and it got good reviews so I rolled the dice:
http://www.buy.com/prod/levelmount-el31-03-swivel-tilt-wall-mount-for-lcd-tvs-up-to-32-black/q/loc/111/204222741.html

If the TV deal goes away, it will be back in a couple of days, when they get more stock.

As an FYI, I looked back for over a year, and there has not been a 32" TV that I would buy for this cheap. Usually the cheapest 32" TV you can find one is for around $525 or $550. There is a little tweaking required to get this TV to display the picture in the optimal manner, but if you buy one I will email you the settings if you care.

Two more things.

1. If you are upgrading from a square TV to an HD, you need to go one size up to retain the same size TV. So if you buy this TV, it is the same size as an old 27". If you have a 32" now, you need to go to a 37" to retain the same screen size. This will matter less next year when everything is HD, but I am all about full disclosure. You can read about what I am describing here: http://www.screenmath.com/
   
   
2. To figure out what size TV you need you can do all sorts of complex things, but basically it comes down to this. Take the measurement from where your head is to where the TV will be. Divide that number by 2 and then by 3. Your TV size should fall in between those two numbers.
   
   For example, in our bedroom our heads are 96" from the TV location. 96/2 = 48" 96/3 = 32", so we are at the smallest end of the spectrum with regard to what we can see comfortably. Anything bigger than this rule and it will look bad, i.e. you might need to move you head to see the whole picture, and smaller, you might not be able to see things on the screen.

Later,

John