![](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/consumerist.com\/assets_c\/2010\/05\/432584676_49e263b685_m-thumb-240x180-40634.jpg?w=780\")
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Brendan has a question for the Consumerist hive mind. He wants to buy a large-ish HDTV, but isn’t sure that his usual method of buying technology–buy the cheapest thing he can get his hands on, and count on it not to break for a year or two–will work at these price points. <\/p>\n
I’m currently in the market for a cheap HDTV. Honestly, the real appeal to me is the space-saving feature of the flat screen. My usual practice with electronics is to buy the cheapest thing I can find and hope it lasts for a year or two. In the past, I’ve purchased the cheapest DVD player walmart offered and it turned out to be pretty good. I once bought a $35 Craig DVD player from the grocery store and I had to pause the movies halfway through to let the sound catch up to the video. More recently, I bought a KWorld media player which stopped working via coax output and is prone to overheating. I’m not too upset by pissing away less than $100 on something kind of crappy as long as it lasts for a while – even if that means some modifications or maintenance on my part. However, I’m not prepared to drop $800 on a 50″ plasma that won’t last until Christmas. <\/p>\n
My question to you is this: Should I just go to Walmart or Best Buy or Stop and Shop and pick up the cheapest thing over 32″ that they have or should I spend the extra $100 on something that will outlast the technology with which it was built?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I did exactly the thing Brendan describes–I bought a Vizio on clearance at Walmart, of all places. I’m happy with my decision, but it’s only been a few weeks. Most of you have probably owned large, flat televisions for much longer, though, so share your wisdom with Brendan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brendan has a question for the Consumerist hive mind. He wants to buy a large-ish HDTV, but isn’t sure that his usual method of buying technology–buy the cheapest thing he can get his hands on, and count on it not to break for a year or two–will work at these price points. I’m currently in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2758,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-734067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-34XN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2758"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734067\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}