Black Friday - My Wife and I Indulged [View all]

[MineralMan]

Last edited Sun Nov 29, 2020, 03:05 PM - Edit history (1)

We have an anniversary coming up. Both of us are at a "certain age," so our vision without glasses is not quite as good as it once was. I have a cataract that is not too bad in my right eye, and my wife has early stage macular degeneration. So, we decided that it was time to update our living room TV. Our old one was a 32 inch flat screen we bought many years ago for $250. It came complete with a built-in DVD player, which gets used maybe once a year.

We still have cable, but we also used wi-fi and a Chromecast HDMI dongle to access, well, just about anything we wish.

It's our anniversary present. A Visio 50" 4K smart TV. We don't need the dongle, so it goes into the little TV in the bedroom, which we almost never watch at all. On sale at Target for $299. Given the COVID-19 pandemic, we chose curbside delivery, and picked it up this morning. Surprisingly, it fit into the back of our little KIA Soul, after I folded down the rear seats. I thought I would have had to fold down the front passenger seat, as well.

I installed in in about 15 minutes, went through an update of its software, put in my wife's passwords for all of the streaming channels she watches, which are all available from an Android-looking Home screen on the TV. Change the input source, and we have 29 broadcast channels we can also watch, during cable outages, along with being able to cast anything from either of our phones to the device. I have not told my wife about that feature, for fear of watching funny dog and cat videos ad nauseum.

But, best of all, we will be able to watch Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20 on a much larger screen than we had before. I think that's the best part of this anniversary present to each other. I could also cast DU to the TV from my phone in the evening, but probably won't. I have good reading glasses.

My wife said, regarding our anniversary gift, "I can read the small print on MSNBC on that thing. Yay!" Just wait until I add it to Alexa's list of things she can control. "Alexa! Show {movie name} in the Living Room." If it's on Amazon Prime, it will pop right up. My wife will say, "I didn't know Alexa could do that..."

Happy Anniversary, Love!