My 14 yo 60" Panasonic TV went kaput yesterday

[Smokin Okie]

My first large screen tv was a 25" RCA consol, loved that TV, got glasses and walked into the house and we set down to watch tv and wow it had a great picture ,

I did the same, after years with an RCA 15" portable, I bought an RCA console in 1984. I paid $800 for the 25" cathode ray TV . In today's money according to an inflation calculator, that is $2,419.

I got into a twitter argument with a young guy several years ago. He was quoting income statistics that said the average guy made a lot more money in the 1970's. Said we lived a lot better financially back then, even though he wasn't around to see it.

But what I could not get through his head, was that our money did not buy much. He could not comprehend 15% mortgage interest rate. He could not appreciate people having flat screen TV's in every room of the house, today. He probably never watched a 25" console TV.

I gave up, ya had to be there.

 

[bigfurmn]

I have helped turn a few burnt out consul tvs into very cool tropical fish tanks. Sadly it's usually hipster yuppie f**ks who want them but they are fun.

 

[forktender]

I went with the Samsung. And my old Panasonic was a smart tv in its day, but it was nothing like this. Gonna be an adjustment.

My only problem making the transition, this tv does not have an optical audio input. I used that on my old tv to connect my 1990 Kenwood receiver. The only ports I have open now is an HDMI and a USB.

Amazon.com : hdmi to optical audio adapter

 

[chef k-dude]

I did the same, after years with an RCA 15" portable, I bought an RCA console in 1984. I paid $800 for the 25" cathode ray TV . In today's money according to an inflation calculator, that is $2,419.

I got into a twitter argument with a young guy several years ago. He was quoting income statistics that said the average guy made a lot more money in the 1970's. Said we lived a lot better financially back then, even though he wasn't around to see it.

But what I could not get through his head, was that our money did not buy much. He could not comprehend 15% mortgage interest rate. He could not appreciate people having flat screen TV's in every room of the house, today. He probably never watched a 25" console TV.

I gave up, ya had to be there.

The young people are hating on the "boomers" these days. Idiots. Few of them are willing to live in a stripped down apartment with hand-me-down furniture and boxes for end tables eating the cheapest hot dogs for dinner like I did. All I wanted was my own place, a job and a girl. I GTFO of my parents place at 18 years old even though I didn't have to. My girlfriend and I thought we had made a big purchase of a $40 K-Mart coffee table and sat on bean bags in front of that eating "dinner".

The kids cant make it partially because of the lifestyle they demand, usually a precedent given to them by their boomer parents or grandparents...that great cushy life we worked for to give them. They ARE burdened by high rent and inflation, but they also purport to "value life-work balance". Cry me a river, I worked all the overtime I could, sometimes 80 hour weeks. I was born right on the cusp of Boomer/X. I worked my ass off and lost a marriage over it, then continued to pay for that freaking marriage while STILL paying for a new life. THAT'S what bieng a "boomer" is like.

Most young people dont know what a callous is these days, unless they got it from a game controller. Never thought I would be the old guy saying that! But, most young people have zero clue the work that was put in to their inheritance. They have no idea they have one until you're dead, and even then they will likely not appreciate it fully. My parents helped along the way, but I never asked for anything, except advice from my dad on big decisions, like "should I leave my job and start a business".

It's partly our fault, I'll admit that. We were too soft on them and our marriages were too disposable. Had we disciplined the kids properly and honored the institution of marriage, our kids and grandkids might not have ended up so fubarred. And apparently we forgot to teach them to think for themselves rather than let social media think for them. My mom literally "beat" the independence in to me.

 

[Smokin Okie]

Well, the kid was looking at pure income analytics.

I graduated college in 1975. I walked into a local economy that was in an oil boom that collapsed by 1981, but a national economy that was doing a triple double. There was double digit inflation, double digit unemployment, and eventually double digit interest rates.

As much complaining as I hear now about inflation, ya outta live with double digit inflation that persisted for almost a decade.

I rented a one bedroom apartment for $160 a month, bills paid, that was 1976. By 1978, my rent was $210 a month and I had to pay a $50 per month electric bill. I was getting 5% pay raises at my job.

And all that led me to think at that time, that all the opportunity was gone. All the good business ideas were taken. It was pretty depressing for a young fella. The wealth was already divided up, as the song goes ...
"
All the gold in California is in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills
In somebody else's name

"

But there were other fellas my age named Bill Gates, Michael Dell, and Steve Jobs and they saw a world of opportunity.

Its out there now, but its hard to see.

 

[schlotz]

Very similar here! Though times graduating in '75 without question. Decent jobs were hard to come by. Regardless, got married that June and we're still together! She's an absolute winner! Finally moved into a decent job late in '79 with Carrier Corp. Stayed there until I retired in 2013. Kids in general today expect to be spoon fed and have little to no idea, or drive to work hard for what that want.

 

[babydocsmoke]

Its difficult being hard on your kids. Sometimes its hard not to spoil them. It was easy for my parents, since we we're so freaking broke all the time. I learned if I wanted money for anything (new clothes, a car, even high school classes with an extra fee) I had to pay for it myself. Got my first paper route when I was 11, and have had some kind of work from then on.

Its a good thing to learn that kind of grit. But its hard being that poor. Luckily this is America (or at least it was at that time) and I had the opportunity to improve my status regardless of how I grew up. My kids are pretty spoiled...the way lots of kids are these days, with instant gratification and a disinclination to do anything that requires a lot of effort.

It takes a lot to break kids out of that now, given how easy some things are. Had a little gal in my office "studying," writing a senior high school essay paper. Of course....chatGPT was writing the paper and she was copying it over.

Makes me worried for the future.

 

[sandyut]

Ive been buying Vizio TV’s for years/decades and never had one fail. survived a cross country move and everything. Walmart delivered the last one for free in a day or two.

 

[Inscrutable]

I really have to wonder just how much better the picture quality can get. Just what little shopping I've done, it appears I can step up to the $1500 range, but is the picture a thousand dollars better ?

Well, they certainly have gotten a LOT better. To me digital - whether projector or LCD/LED - had an Achilles heel of black
Level. Until recently, it could never get to the deep blacks and shadow highlights/detail of a CRT (plasmas actually were pretty decent in that regard). That’s why I had half a VW bolted to my ceiling (aka big-a$$ CRT front projector). I finally succumbed to the convenience of a digital FP in about 2010.

The PQ of my 75” Sony XBR-x950h is about as good as it gets right now short of an OLED. My eyesight now just doesn’t warrant the cost.

I'm one of the broadcast geeks that asks for the remote when looking at TV's. I want to see what the display settings are. I do mine by eye, but I sell broadcast monitors for a living.

Me too. Stems from my days of of having CRT and HTPC … hard to unsee the problems with poor adjustments/settings.

 

[Inscrutable]

Just an anecdote … the best picture I have ever seen, and by a very wide margin ..
We had a videofool meet in NoVa at the home of a guy that worked for NASA. He had dual sync’d Barco 9-inch CRT front projectors and had his theater lined with the stuff they line telescopes with to absorb light. You literally could not see your hand in front of your face if no lights turned on. The image just seemed to float in utter dark space. Incredible. This was 20 years ago and I still remember like yesterday.

 

[Inscrutable]

ok QLED is the screen type. typically better for contrast and blacks, but you pay for it.
UHD says it will play Hi-res (4K) . Most all Qled's will be UHD. if you watch a shit ton of blu=ray UHD, you'll see the Difference. A step back from QLED is plane old LED. Not bad pictures especially for OTA. for foosball (Waterboy reference) you might check the refresh rate.
120Hz is typically fine for fast action sports. I watch a lot of Nascar and Dolphins football.
My TV's are all 120hz refresh rates and I'm good with it.
QLED is the latest marketing gimmick from the dudes that make the screens and want the main brands to use them. Remember, the pictures you see on TV's at Sam's and elsewhere are typically being played back over a network and are optimized to make you go "Damn"
I won't spend th extra money for QLED.

Not exactly. LED and QLED both use an LCD panel lit by LED. QLED adds a quantum dot layer which enables it to display better and more saturated colors. OLED provides for dimming of individual LEDS, and turn completely off, so enables displaying pure blacks. No other panel can do that.

Just IMO ..
You need a big display, really good eyesight, and a discerning visual palate (aka picky ) to warrant the added cost for OLED. At his age/point it’s not me or most people, but it will get cheaper, and bless the early-adopters that help dive that.

 

[Chris_in_SoCal]

It took about a week to get the 55" TCL to work the way I wanted it to but now it is amazing. I had also upgraded my video card in my computer to a Nvidia 4070 OC and bought an 8K high data speed HDMI cable so it took a few days to get it all together. I had to turn off all of the picture advanced settings on the TV since they actually made it worse.

I then installed everything and luckily it all worked without a hitch. The new video card matches my PC case pretty well.

A little more tuning on Windows 10 itself and the game is running smoother than ever. I was able to up it all the way to 4K ultra settings for everything. I am getting a solid 60 FPS but could potentially double that if I decide to upgrade to Windows 11. I took a bunch of pics with my phone but all of them came out blurry. This is the best one so far.

The graphics on ultra are so impressive I started Red Dead Redemption again from the start just to amaze myself once again.