I haven’t bought a TV in 10 years and now I need one. I’m pretty much lost.

4K adequate? LED? Basic cable and streaming services or full cable service with channels? Hard wired cable or just use WiFi? Do I need a box? Several boxes? Rent the box from Cox or get my own?

TCL has the price to beat but I’ve never heard of them. Reviews are good.

Yikes!

I have a TCL in the exercise room. Perfectly fine.

Your first decision should be whether you are going to cut the cord. We gave up cable a while back. We use YouTubeTV instead, which used to be a much better deal, but it's still cheaper than cable. No cable box required, because you just use WiFi.

Most TVs these days come with Roku or something similar built in. (The TCL has built-in Roku.) Everything we want to watch, we stream.

We stream netflix and Amazon prime via WiFi, no cable, we get all the stations we need with a digital antenna. I bought a Samsung through Costco. Get as big a one as you can fit. You’ll never go to the movies again.

Also, there are "smart"TVs. We use one we got as a holiday gift. We do get Roku on it via wifi, but it is not connected to our computer. I am never sure whether it is spying on us or not.

About once a year I go through the exercise of re-evaluating our TV-related equipment and services. I'm kind of in middle of doing that right now.

We have Comcast/Xfinity. We have 200 Mbps internet service, their top tier of channels, and two cable boxes. The internet/TV package is $100/month (price locked till August), the boxes are another $15, and the fees/taxes are a ridiculously high total of another $35. Total bill: $150/month.

We also have Amazon Prime (so $10 a month and I get the free fast shipping when I need it) and I occasionally sign up for Netflix or HBOMax for a month or two to watch stuff on those services. I also use Peacock (comes free with Comcast) and occasionally Pluto TV (free streaming).

One thing comcast does pretty well is pull everything together in an easy-to-use package for those that aren't real tech-oriented. I also like their streaming app that I use on my iPad. Mr wtg still watches TV the old fashioned way: He looks at what is on rather than looking for something to stream. Old habits die hard. Their voice remote is nice and it only listens when you push the button (I think); if you are looking for a movie, it will list many options for viewing it, whether it's via Comast, Amazon Prime, HBOMax, Netflix, etc.

If we wanted to dump Comcast....

YouTube TV (probably the best choice among streaming services) is $65 right now and we would lose a bunch of channels we like. We'd still have to pay at least $65 a month for internet, so we get up to $130 right off the bat.

An antenna is an option for local channels that we would be losing but around here service even with an amplified rooftop antenna is not consistent. That and it is kind of a pain to have to switch between the tuner and whatever device or app you use for streaming.


I found out recently that you can cast what you stream via Xfinity on a tablet or phone to your TV if you have Chromecast. That basically replaces a cable box; I can buy a Chromecast with Google TV for about 7 months' worth of renting the cable box. And they have a beta version of their streaming app on Roku, though that isn't full function right now.

They get you cost-wise on equipment and fees. They just raised the cost of a cable box from $5 a month to $7.50. And there was a big increase in the broadcast fee and some sports network fee. Your package price (internet and TV in our case) is locked for the two year agreement we signed up for, but those fees can, and do, go up every year. I ditched their gateway a few years ago because the price kept shooting up. I bought my own modem and router; my speed went up a lot. I wonder if they throttle the speeds via their gateways. I paid for my equipment in about a year by not leasing theirs.

All of that kind of adds up to: It's worth $20 a month for us. We're very frugal in other regards.

For instance, we have cell service through Xfinity. We have a basic package that's totally fine for us for under $15 a month. And my cell is through Tracfone, which costs me around $10 a month (that cost includes buying a new cheapo Motorola or Samsung phone every year). both Xfinity and Tracfone use Verizon's network.

As for the TV....I go to Costco and look at the TVs. We have a four or five year old Samsung 4K TV and the picture is great, but there's still not that much 4K programming. Plus it eats up your data like crazy. If you watch a lot of TV, you could exceed your monthly data caps if you end up streaming everything.

With Comcast, it's an extra $30 a month for unlimited data. I don't remember what the allowed amount is for my plan, but I use maybe a quarter or at most a third of it. But that's in part because what you watch on cable doesn't count against that cap.

YouTube TV has a two week free trial thing going that I signed up for just to play with it. Gotta say, the picture is better than what we get via Comcast cable. But their channel offerings aren't what we want, so I'll cancel it after the trial.

edit: I do everything wifi for streaming. Haven't had any problems, but I'm watching HD rather than 4K.

Here's the TCL we bought in June 2019:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/prod..._title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

At the time we paid around $320 I think, there's some crazy price showing right now, but I think that's because this earlier model isn't made. This one below might be the newer version of what we bought??
https://www.amazon.com/TCL-4K-...tronics%2C192&sr=1-3

Anyway we like it a lot, but then again we are not "tv connoisseurs." We do have cable (because otherwise we can't get the Japanese channel) so we haven't streamed much or used the Roku option, but we have used it for Prime video, zero problems.

I check the Wirecutter for reviews a lot, here are some that might be helpful:

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-tv/

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecu...sts/recommended-tvs/

https://www.nytimes.com/wirecu...ews/best-lcd-led-tv/

Get a flat screen smart TVs, forget cable, add Netflix, Prime and YouTube as needed.

Jf

Before you ditch the cable, you need to assess the quality of your actual internet service. You'll need something to stream with.

There are some real factors that may influence whether you want to cut the cable--ones that go beyond the $$ issues that wtg brought up.

1. How good/fast (really) is your internet? Go to ookla.net and find out.

2. Does Chez Miller have multiple TVs, and do you tend to have part of the family watching in one room, and part in another? That will degrade your service.

3. How important is a high-quality picture for you? Again, wi-fi streamed quality is not as good as direct cable. I notice it in sports, where you can get a jittery picture even when I'm streaming from the "hot zone" for our wi-fi. If your streaming computer is hardwired (cable-connected) to your internet that will help a lot. But if your computer connects wirelessly and then streams to your wireless TV, that may cause problems.

4. Do you have people in your house who are heavy gamers? That's another huge data requirement, and if you have folks playing games in one room while you're trying to watch the Super Bowl in the other, that's also a potential source for family mediation.

We also do get the dreaded spinning wheel on occasion, where the stream just can't keep up.

We're still using a plasma set which probably sucks out more electricity than a small cyclotron. Like wtg, we're using Comcast - probably paying too much and are locked into a 2 year contract. We probably will do what you're doing when the contract is up. Like wtg, we opt in and out of subscription services as interests change.

If it’s only for TV, “HD” if fine; personally I do not feel it necessary to spring for “4K” if it’s only to watch TV/movies. If you plan on hooking your computer up to the TV and read text off the TV (like you would read text off your computer), then I would spring for “4K” to read text.

Yes, LED is fine ... probably the most efficient with electrical power consumption among mass market TV technologies.

It’s almost impossible to buy a 4K TV that is not also a “smart” TV with various apps built in (e.g., Netflix, YouTube, Roku, etc.). Every “smart TV” is really just a computer with a very big screen. And invariably they run one variant of the Android operating system or another.

What kind of Internet speed do you get from your ISP? (Run a test using SpeedTest.net if you’re not sure.) Conservatively, I would draw a line around the 50 Mbps mark — if you get higher speed than that, you should be OK cutting the cord for traditional TV and go with streaming; below 25 Mbps I’d say keep your traditional TV service. Between 25 and 50 Mbps, it comes down to whether you expect to stream multiple channels to multiple devices simultaneously and whether you insist on streaming a lot of 4K programs, it’s a bit of a grey area.

Oh, check if your ISP imposes a data cap on your Internet service (e.g., you cannot go over so many Gigabytes a month or they start charging you extra by the Gigabytea). For reference, Netflix eats up roughly 3 Gigabytes per hour for “HD” video (it’s roughly 0.7 Gigabytes per hour for “SD” video for Netflix). So if you ISP imposes a data cap, a simple division can tell you how many Netflix “HD” hours you can get with that data cap, thus informing you whether that’s enough for you to “cut the cord” on traditional TV. (Personally, I think the savings from “cutting the cord” on traditional TV will more than likely make up for the extra cost needed to upgrade to a higher data cap to get rid of the data cap entirely, but obviously the specifics depend on what’s offered by your ISP.)

Good luck.

Get Active Matrix LED. People who are not sitting directly in front of the TV will thank you.

ONN brand from Wal-Mart is surprisingly good.

I have a few smart TVs but I like ROKU the best because

1) you can read the buttons on the remote control. they are big and the contrast is good. Not a common thing.

2) they are fast. like changing between apps... Much faster than VIZio for sure.

3) easy to switch over to the "free" antenna.

4) easy to switch over to use as a second computer monitor (albeit low res)

5) they make excellent second monitors on the cheap -- and they have speakers built in -- like a 32" for maybe $110 if you shop around. I'm typing on a Roku right now.

6) Roku has more preloaded free apps -- like CNBC and networks you've heard of plus tons of streaming movie and specialized apps.. old sitcoms.. etc.

7) I have amazon prime which runs great although I may switch to netflix because Bezons is a greedy butthead.

8) you can ditch comcast/DirectTV etc. Just get a halfway decent high-speed internet connection -- I'm on the edge of town with DSL so I get snail's pace 1.7/2.9 mps and it's enough to watch two TVs as long as I use the data on my phone for my phone -- or one TV and two phones burning up YouTube.

This is for the place in Mesa. Cox Cable.

50 Mbps service is $39.99/mo. 150 Mbps service is $59.99/mo. We'll have three streaming TV's plus whatever laptops, phones, laptops, people bring with them. Cox says 50 Bps is plenty.

A WiFi modem is $12/mo. I know I can buy my own but rather like idea of them coming out and fixing it when there is a problem.

What do you think?

I get very good basic cable as part of the HOA dues on my townhome. Fast cable internet plus a sports package is an additional amount under $42.00.
Also have Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney+.

I should spend more time getting my Verizon cell bill down

I don't think they are the best, but Cox seems to be the only game in town. I know LL has been fighting with them for a long time.

I've seen some dishes on roofs in the neighborhood but would rather not go down that road.