But about 5 months later, we noticed a small blue streak along the lower left-hand corner. The manufacturer's warranty was only 90 days, so we were pretty worried that there was some very expensive going wrong with our gorgeous TV.
After a bit of Googling, it turns out we were right to worry - the light engines were defective in this model. Reviews were scathing by this time as most owners were seeing the problem, and since they paid retail, I can understand their wrath. By then Zenith was well aware of the defect, but since it was outside of their warranty period, they were only too happy to replace the part after you gave them quite a lot of money first. Money which we didn't really want to spend, not knowing if the new part was also defective.
In the meantime, our TV screen turned more and more blue. For a while, it held steady at about half the screen. But eventually, it went ALL blue. This is a picture of the Monday Night Football game, to show you what we've been watching:
Fun, huh? It means every team plays on Boise State's blue field. It means having conversations like "Who's in the dark uniforms? Georgia? Okay, got it."
We got a quote to repair it, but the estimate was a bit shocking. Not willing to spend more to fix the TV than we bought it for, we hemmed & hawed for months. Finally, we decided to cut our losses and go for a new TV. Brian shopped and read reviews and talked to the guys at Circuit City and Best Buy. Then he'd come home and tell me all about it.
Plasma. LCD. DLP. Rear-projection. Warranties. Surround sound. Receivers. HDMI cables. Satellite dishes. My head spun.
But after 8 months (!), Brian finally settled on one model. He took me to look at it, I loved it, and he proceeded to swing a fantastic deal, along with a 5-year warranty. Plus (you'll have to take my word for it), it's really pretty.
But it's going to take a lot of work to put that thing on the wall.
(to be continued)
3 comments:
Remember the TV we had at our apartment? It *just* broke in August! We decided to upgrade - with a 20" instead of 19" :-)
Wish I could talk Paula into one of those. Actually I probably could rather easily which scares me even more.
I love the "red neck" TV stand in the picture. It reminds me of our Sony Plasma. Here we were on the first night of our expensive new TV watching the TV while it stood in the styrofoam "stand". To see the titles at the bottom, you had to stand up and look over the edge of the styrofoam. too funny! Looks like you are duplicating our funny night until it can be hung on the wall.
Post a Comment