[encantotom]

hi,

i am in the process of buying a 37" tv to mount in the bottom bay of my newell. once i am completed i will document how i mounted it.

i am a bargain shopper. and i would rather not pay sales tax. so you have to weigh out the pro's and con's of each way of buying a tv. i also want to be able to look at it before i buy it.

i have a 60" sharp led, 55" samsung led, 42" panasonic plasma, 32" samsung lcd and 19" samsung lcd.

lcd/led and plasma each have different strengths and weaknesses.

so, i will not buy a tv i have not actually viewed. not matter what reviews say, i know what i think looks good.

i have bought from amazon and had no problems. amazon has great prices, has a ton or reviews on tv's (i look at reviews too before i buy).

that said, the last two tv's i have bought in the past year (the 60" and 55") i bought at costco.

the reason is simple.

1. you can look at them
2. they have very good pricing
3. we have a costco amex credit card so we get 1% back on it
4. they have the best return policy in the retail electronics business
5. they take the first year warranty and double it for ANY TV purchase. on a sub $500 tv, the additional 3 years warranty is only $30. and on a tv under $1000 it is $60. for a tv 37" and larger they come to your home and fix it. ZERO deductible. BTW, since our tv's are going to be bouncing around in our coach, to me $30 bucks is nothing to have it covered for FIVE full years.

BTW, i work in semiconductors. most electronics fails early if it is going to at all. but the potential for something else to go bad over years of bouncing is higher than sitting still at home. but, that said, i have had no problems with my lcd tv's so far and seldom do i hear anyone saying anything about failures in their coach with their tv's.

So i will be buying my next 37" for the coach at costco.

as for brands, features, etc, you have to decide for yourself. there are different thicknesses and bezel widths, if you want it to play movies off a usb port, built in wifi, etc. For tv's that are smaller the cheaper ones will be 720P and to be honest on the smaller tv's you will likely not tell the difference between 720p hdtv and 1080p hdtv. Refresh rates are a big thing nowadays too. 60hz, 120hz, 240hz. i could explain it here, but again you just need to look at the tv and see if you like the picture. i am a geek and usually get higher end tv's. i have 2 of my tv's hooked up to the internet for a variety of reasons. Netflix is the most common reason, but there are other reasons as well. you have to have pretty high bandwidth to make it useful for your tv for video. but, the ability to stream from your laptop to your tv is possible on some as well.

the question alot of people have now is on 3D. so that you know, i do not have any 3D tv's. 3D is in its infant stages and though alot of tv's offer it, it is not standardized in any way yet. each manufacturer is doing it differently. it is just a matter of time before it becomes a check off feature on every tv sold, but until then and they have gotten the way you view it better, i will not buy a tv because of it. you will notice that initially 3d glasses for most tv's were "active". that meant they are large, bulky glasses with batteries in them. they have to electronically synch with the tv (and some dont very well) and were very expensive. some brands like LG had passive glasses like you use at the movie theatre.

things will settle in on something easy, cheap and good in the next few years. lots of companies are spending a ton of money trying to figure it out. until then, i will wait. but again, please spend money freely because the economy needs it.

the refresh rates as they go up raise the quality of the picture, but it is not something that most people can actually SEE.

the most important thing about using your TV is the incoming source. if it isnt very good, it doesnt matter how good your tv is. you will hear many people say their HDTV looks like crap viewing standard definition source after they just got this high end HDTV. well, if you take a tv that is super high resolution and put something crappy on it, you should see crappy. the older lower resolution tv hid it and hit it well.

where todays tv's really shine is with a blu-ray player, and good hdtv sources. over the air hdtv looks great too as does satellite.

another bit of advice. dont spend a lot of money on a fancy expensive over the air tv antenna. i have the original tv antenna that came on my coach in 1990 and it works just fine for over the air hdtv. but, the economy needs boosting, so everyone spend as you wish.

another thing you need to pay attention to is the VESA mounting pattern on the TV itself and make sure you match that to the VESA mounting pattern on the mount you are buying.

i bought the mount for the 60" sharp tv i have mounted in my theatre room from monoprice. it was around 75 bucks if i recall. i bought their heavy duty one that scissors out about 2 feet from the wall as that is what i needed to mount in the built in cabinet i have in there. it is rock steady and you could hang something far heavier on it than the tv i have on it.

one of the things that costco and sams club is large enough to do and the TV manufacturers like is that they have models that are specific for those stores. that is no problem at all other than price comparisons become harder. there will be other tv's that are similar but not exactly the same.

vizio is an interesting company and doesnt design or manufacture their own tv's. they specify them and bid them out to ODM's to be made. so they are made and designed by a number of companies. in so doing, they have become the largest TV seller in the USA in the past few years.

consumer ratings vary widely on the vizio tv's and my guess it is because of that. if i found a vizio tv that had reasonable ratings and fit my needs i would not be afraid to buy it.

i bought the tv (a samsung 32") for my overhead in my newell because i liked samsung, had good price at the time, was reviewed highly but mostly because it FIT dimension wise.

nowadays with the very thin TV's (some are around 1.5" thick, they are much easier to mount and have look flush in our rigs.

i suggest DO NOT spend lots of money on brand name HDMI cables. the cables from places like Monoprice you will see the same quality of picture on and you can save 90% from the cost of Monstercables or others that bestbuy wants to sell you.

i had to cut down my overhead cabinet, but it wasnt a big deal. my coach is alot older than yours and the front cabinet more basic.

way more than you asked for, but i felt like typing alot this morning.

later

tom