As I mentioned yesterday, the new TV went up on the wall. This was a replacement for our current bedroom TV, a nice one but a bit small (19”) so that while it was great to watch the news in the morning while we got dressed, it didn’t work for watching shows from the bed.
I never wear my distance glasses in the house; I leave them in the car. In our family room we have the 50”TV and it’s easy to see, and in the playroom we have our old style 36”, but the seating is close, plus I seldom am in there so it doesn't matter.
However, once in a while I enjoy watching a show from bed and can’t do it now. So, my Christmas present to us was a 42” TV which was a large as I could get to fit into the allowable space. My wife thinks I got it planning a terminal illness and the need to be bed ridden.
This meant we needed another digital cable box and a wall hanging unit to complete the picture. I had a cable already in the room and hooked up to the old one, but if I was going the whole way, I needed to add digital to the room.
I tried to do all this for as little money as possible, and in this quest there is the hunt!
We start with the TV. If I wanted plasma, I wanted 1080p and not 720p, because if I wanted HD, it had to be able to get there. If I went LCD, I really wanted a refresh rate of 120 HZ, not 60HZ, but I wasn’t sure what I could get and do it cheap.
I really start to sound like an engineer and it scares me!
I check all the web sites looking for a deal and was not finding anything I liked. Then, there was this Canadian Tire ad which included a 42” LCD TV. It was 1080p and probably 60 HZ, but I needed to look it up. Unfortunately, at first glance, it was a brand I’d never heard of. The small one I was replacing was also from there and was a brand unknown to me, and it has been fine.
With a bit of internet knowhow I was able to determine a model number (not actually listed in the ad), it was a Hisence LCD42V68PAM. This is of course unheard of in Canada, and in the US, but turns out to be a common brand in Australia, as well as Asia, Europe, Africa and South America. There was not much to go on however, as the web site left much to be desired.
I went out to Canadian Tire to look at this thing, and it was not working due to an electrical problem the store was having. I waited a bit and a guy came by to reset everything and the TV’s started working again and I could see the set in action. It looked really great, although it was not in comparison to anything else because it sat there alone.
After a bit if fiddling around, I knew it was good, had a one year warranty, was now (for a while we hope) imported into Canada and was sold by Canadian Tire, a company I trust to stand by their merchandise. I decided to buy it.
The price was (they said) $649.99 reduced by 1/3 to $429.99, an unheard of price. The closest I had gotten by now was $489.99 at Wal-Mart for a 40” set.
I took it home (it was pretty big in the car) and had to get it into the house and up the stairs which was doable, thankfully.
Next, I had to assemble it, which only means adding the base so it could sit on my dresser so I could try it out and make sure it was working and looking good before I start to throw away boxes, etc. I needed help in doing this so I reluctantly asked my daughter for help. She did, even though we had a shouting match and some bad blood as always before we finally got it together and I could attach the cable wire and remove the old one and try it out. Everything seemed good except the cable by itself just gets me the basic cable and I needed to see if it all worked.
Off to the basement to get my upconverting DVD player to try out the 1080p stuff, and when installed I could look at Avatar and see if it was beautiful. The next challenge was, of course, if I really wanted to do this right I needed an HDMI cable. Nothing comes with one and I went on line to see if one was available for my price, the low one. Basically there were crazy prices, and I knew that if I went to eBay I could get one for $2 or so, but it could take two weeks and I would not wait that long. After looking through the big boys and finding $40-$50 price tags, I went to factorydirect.com and found one for $15 or so and went there to buy one. Having now secured the HDMI cable, I discovered it was beautiful and watched Avatar for a while.
A friend told me at a party the next day that the cable provider was offering a new HD box for free for the first year. That price was right and I arranged for one to be sent.
When that box arrived, it came with about $25-30 worth of cables and stuff, but no HDMI cable, so off I went the next day to Canada Computers which was closer to where I was going for some other stuff and got the HDMI for $16.
Now home to make the set up.
After installing all the wires I called the set up number provided and answered a few questions. They needed serial numbers, about three of them to get my box aligned and the first one they needed was not what I had. It turns out that while they said where the number could be found and what letter it could start with, perhaps in some of the models it was different. So armed with a flash light, my reading glasses, a pen and paper I went into a search mode to get what they needed. After several false starts even more boring than this story, I got downloaded.
Almost done, just program the remote and we were gold.
It did not want to accept my digital code taken from their book and the TV was not programming on the “clicker”. I had, however, looked up problems with this TV on the web, and was armed with information. The tech lady, who had never heard of Hisence, had the same code I had in the book, the same one I was reading. I assured her there was another code, because there was a problem on the net, the same as mine, but with a different service provider and they had used the wrong codes. After a bit of research, she found the correct code and I was able to program the remote.
Now there was just the programming code for the DVD player (easy) and now, only the problems involved with hanging the TV on the wall.
Searching through TV wall mounts was a challenge. One begins to question logic when the same knid of devise sells for anywhere from $30 to $400, and you have to intuit the differences.
I called Hisence to check if the TV had a standard VESA mount. VESA (Video Electronics Standards Association, is an international standards body for computer graphics founded in 1989 by NEC Home Electronics and eight other video display adapter manufacturers. They told me I was in luck but under no conditions should I use a tilting mount. I assured the people that I was only using a standard fixed wall mount as I guess if you tilt it a big piece of the plastic back could break off.
.Everything was set and my next door neighbor came over and with his help we measured, drilled, screwed and mounted the TV to the wall. In the package with the TV was a large plastic piece that Hisence tech could not explain to me, which turned out to be the finishing piece after we removed the base my daughter had worked on so diligently with me.
And now, all the parts were on, it was all hooked up and was working beautifully, and one does not have to wonder why, when my wife came up at 11:00 p.m. later that day I was dramatically disturbed by her saying to my all but asleep person, “It’s too low, you have to move it up!”
I rest my case!
Might be easier just to take her to the show!!!
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