For the Surly 99% (the poors):
Our 2009 Phillips 42" 1080 LCD Eco TV had been having some problems turning on the last few weeks. I would fart around with it and unplug a few things to get it going, but the problem just seemed to be getting worse. I finally got serious about getting to the bottom of the issue and worked on several recommended fixes which just seemed to make the problem worse.
Sunday early afternoon, the condition finally got critical and I could not get the dammed thing to turn on.
Went out yesterday and got a new TV. As you can probably tell from our previous purchase, high end TV picture and audio is just not a huge thing in our lives. We only have one TV in the house. However, it does get used a lot for kids gaming, streaming, terrestrial viewing, and breaking down of climbing video shot at competitions and on real rock.
I can only say that the array of options is dizzying with almost every middle of the road to high end TV having reviews in the 4.2 -4.7 stars range with some truly deal breaking type of 1 star reviews for pretty much every model in that range. The reviews are often mixed and matched across sizes and model years and suffixes within the same model.
To make matters even more confusing, it seems every TV maker has a bunch of minor differences within each type of picture and even more confusion when comparing with '20, '21, and '22 models being available.
We went to Costco and I was just glad to get out of there by the time it was all over with.
Ended up with a 65" LG Nano Cell (65NANO85 APA) with additional 3 year warranty included. Set up was a breeze and this thing kicks the crap out of the the old TV in every way imaginable. Got it set up in time to catch the end of the Bills/Chiefs game and I was entertained.
I don't have the chops to get too technical with this stuff, but one of the main selling points for us was the picture quality in bright rooms. Our living room has two 30' long solid walls of floor to ceiling glass, so we thought that would be important. One of the supposed downsides is the edge lit LEDs, but I didn't really notice anything with the game or any of the streaming programs we watched, so whatever.
In the end, I think we would have been just as happy with a lesser TV purchased as a "members only" deal. I think it is pretty hard to be disappointed with an upgrade these days unless you run into a problem right out of the box or have some kind of massive failure pretty early on.