Monday, October 05, 2015

Dilemma (of the TV sort)

We have a venerable 55" Panasonic VT50, which is beautifully calibrated and has an unbelievable picture.

Well, venerable in an electronics sense. It's about three and a half years old.

Panasonic doesn't make plasma televisions anymore. Neither does anyone else.

It's currently at a local repair shop, and repairing it isn't going to be cheap--at the low end, probably $600, and at the high end, over $1200.

What I really want, though, is to not get it repaired.

LG recently dropped the price on the 55" 4K Flatscreen OLED from $4,999 to $2,999. That's too much to pay for a television, but the picture is drop-dead gorgeous. And my local retailer is willing to waive sales tax AND throw in a three-year service warranty.

That's about $800 in free stuff, roughly, even though the television is still too expensive. That doesn't mean I don't want it, though.

I was managing this okay until I actually took the Panasonic to the repair shop today. There's this curious effect when there's no television on the stand in the living room. When the Panasonic was still there, even when it was broken, it seemed like a gigantic hassle to replace it with another screen instead of getting it repaired. Now that it's off for repair, though, there's just this big gaping hole in the living room that would be so easily to fill with an OLED.

If it was under $2,000, I don't think I'd be hesitating. Instead, though, I'll probably get the Panasonic repaired and hope it hangs on for another year or two.

I can still hope for the repair shop to give me a ridiculous estimate. Then I'd have no choice, right?



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