The summer before I went to college in 2009, I spent about $1000 on a TV to bring with. It was (and by today's standards, still is) pretty darn nice. 1080p LCD, 40", and a few other bells and whistles. I justified it because I am a social person and I like to entertain - people like to watch stuff and play games on a big nice TV, and it's nice to not have to leave the house sometimes.
Fast forward to last week. The colors started swinging from burnt to washed in wilder and wilder swings until I knew that something was definitely wrong. CRAP. We aren't in a terrible financial place, but the wife and I were not looking forward to spending $300 on a replacement. I hate throwing things away, so I ran a Google search on tv repair in my area, and was pleasantly surprised to find a variety of providers. A local, family business was able to revive it for $85 in one business day.
This was enough to make me very happy, but there's more. Per my repair person, the following was presented to me: turns out TVs on the market today have a number of disimprovements from 10-ish year old TVs. The screens are much thinner and thus more fragile. The backlighting is now mostly LED which is more energy efficient but are at a real risk of burning out with high backlighting or "vivid" picture settings. Fluorescent backlights are much more robust and long lasting.
TL;Dr consider tv repair over replacement for cost and quality reasons, especially for moderately aged sets.
June 19, 2018 at 11:02PM
