snow

smart tv, so glad I have one. so much more choices to watch.

irishrose

I could have purchased the Roku box, but that wouldn't haven't given me a larger TV and it would have disappointed the person I promised my 32" one. The 32" will work well in my son's travel trailer as he lives in it on jobsites. I now have a 40" Samsung Smart TV in the play room waiting for him to come hang it up.

Thank you, everyone, for your input.

Prism99

One of the things that can happen with an unsmart tv is that you can run out of plugs to connect everything together. It also can get much more complicated to get everything working together. If something happens to my dh, I will be in trouble in terms of troubleshooting our unit. Plus we have about 6 different remotes to keep track of!

wraez

well I'm lost just reading the question and replies, not a techie and out of the loop

NJ Quilter

I'm with you...still trying to figure out the DVR! (Not really, but have never even heard of smart TV's till this thread)

quiltinglady

My birthday present to myself last year was a Smart-TV. My friends husband connected it but did not know how to make the connection for Netflix and other things. So when I find someone to do this I will then feel I have complete benefit of my purchase. It still is larger and shows a better picture then my bedroom one, so I am still pleased.

gale

How much is a smart tv compared to a regular one? We've been pricing regular tvs and they are about $600 or so for the size we want. We looked at one smart tv at sears and it was $1800. We haven't looked at them anywhere else so far.

Prism99

This thread got me to thinking. Dh and I went to Best Buy and ended up buying a new smart TV and a new (very smart) laptop to control it, plus a wireless keyboard. Here's how it's going to work. The TV will have an HDMI cord attached to it. When we want to stream from the computer, we will plug the laptop into this cord to connect it to the tv. The wireless keyboard will be kept next to the couch, and we will use that to control what we see on the tv. Basically we will be using the tv as a huge computer monitor to stream things such as Amazon prime movies (and anything else we sign up for). My understanding is that this eliminates the need for extra boxes such as Roku, etc. One caveat for this -- be sure the laptop has a separate graphics chip (which makes the streaming seamless).

There is a ***lot*** to know before you make a decision. We were very impressed with the quality of the people who helped us at Best Buy. My dh has worked 40+ years on mainframe computers and thought he knew enough, but even he admitted that he got a lot of additional information that helped make our decision easier.

The laptop/smart TV route is not the only way to go; it was just what we decided was the best for us.

I think that you can buy a regular tv and, as long as you have a wireless internet setup within your house (or an ethernet cable connection to the internet), you can buy add a Roku unit to stream internet to your tv. With Roku, for example, you can subscribe to Netflix and get Netflix movies streaming. Roku offers quite a few others channels too. This could be considerably less expensive than the route we went. Here is a link to Roku info:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/in...4203847AAbMFuo
There are media streamers other than Roku that are possibilities as well:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-th...rsus-apple-tv/

If you are near a Best Buy, I think it is well worth carving out a couple of hours of time to go there and start asking questions. Have a good idea of your budget and what you want to watch. (For example, some of the stuff we get for free on Amazon Prime is much more attractive to us than Netflix offerings.) Just be prepared to spend at least twice the amount of time you think you will need, and plan more than one trip if necessary. We didn't learn all there is to know about smart TVs, but did learn enough to know what we wanted to get.

irishrose

Price?? $468 for a 40" Samsung smart TV. I could have bought a 40" non smart TV for $80-$100 less. I only wanted a Samsung, LG or Sony. There were some less expensive ones, but I like these three brands in electronics. Mine is still in the box because my son hasn't been home put it up.

Prism99

Price depends a lot on size too. I agree with irishrose to stick with Samsung, LG or Sony. We ended up with the Sony because the picture seemed so much better. (With our aging eyes, I try to get things that are super easy to look at.) It was pricey, though. We probably wouldn't have chosen that one had it not been on sale at end-of-season for quite a bit off. It was about 50% more than what we thought we would be paying, and that was on sale. One of the younger, just-married salesman in the laptop area said he ended up buying a Vizio (much less $$$) and that he and his wife are very happy with it. A lot depends on what you are looking for in terms of size and picture quality.

I asked about sound, as our ears are going the way of our eyes. Was told none of the tv's have great sound on their own because of the small speakers located in the back of the tv. However, what we plan to do is buy a "sound bar", which is a long narrow speaker that you can place at the base of the tv (our tv will stand on its legs rather than be mounted legless on the wall) and hook into the tv so you get better sound facing you.