15 October 2007

A lesson in budgeting - or not

I’ve never owned a TV. Ed inherited his family’s TV, which they bought in the early 90’s. It’s served us well until last year when the top part of the screen started to show lines. And then the bottom part joined in too. If you bang the TV repeatedly, the lines went away. But sometimes, it would ignore the banging and keep showing the lines. Since we can still see 90% of the picture, we just let it be.

Then a few months ago, instead of the lines showing up, the picture disappeared, the screen turned black and a white horizontal line appeared in the middle of the TV. We banged on it; nothing happened. We figured out that we had to turn off the TV for 5 to 10 minutes and try again. Sometimes doing that once did the trick. Sometimes we had to do that several times.

We started shopping for a new TV. A friend of ours bought a 37“ LCD TV for $1,200. So that set our budget. I thought a 32” would be fine (and we can spend less than $1,000) but Ed said that in order to have a picture that’s the same height as our dying TV, we needed to get at least 37“. Fine. Then Ed said we shouldn’t get anything below 1080p because blah, blah, blah. Whatever. Fine. Budget is now $1700. As we compared different brands, Samsung and Sony became the top two choices. I said I prefer Sony. Budget is now $1900. Aiya! Where is this going to end?

Last Friday, I saw a flyer that advertized a 40” Sony TV for $1688 at The Brick. The same TV at Future Shop was selling for $1,900. Wow, it’s a great deal! So off we went to The Brick. Get there, buy the TV, and get out, right? Nope. There’s this Sony home theatre system that’s HDMI blah blah blah that if you buy it with the TV, the package will cost $1,998. $300 for a $1,000 home theatre? How can we not buy it? So we did.

So much for having a budget! We suck.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Lot's of blah blah blahs. I think that's the most I've ever heard you use blah blah blah. Is that what I sound like? :D

Derek said...

You'll probably enjoy that system for many years, so I think it will be worth it. It'll last a lot longer than a computer for that price, or a vehicle. So don't feel too sad, especially if you've never bought a TV before! (We have four in our house, though they're all inexpensive CRTs.)

bockman said...

Did Ed mention HDMI cables? oh, and now you'll have to get High Def satellite or cable...no point in having in having an HD tv with no content!

LL said...

Darren was right... http://llorico.blogspot.com/2008/08/and-it-continues.html