Fiasco de Vizio

The 32" CRT TV in my daughters room started acting up about a year ago. When trying to play movies from the DVD player, the picture would flicker badly, and finally it just went out. My thought was that it was the DVD player finally crapping out. I swapped in the one from the living room, and it still didn't work. Next thought was a bad component cable, but when I bought one it still didn't work and I returned it. Sound was fine, just no picture. Obviously this left only one possibility--the video input on the TV was bad. It was kind of a bummer because my girls like to watch movies, and it's nice to let them watch in another room, allowing us to watch what we'd like to watch. It's also nice to put on a movie in the other room to entertain the kids when we host small group at our house. But the TV worked with the satellite, so we just lived with it for awhile.

Well, we got a stupid big tax return this year and I thought that one of the things we'd replace would be the TV's. Walmart had a 32" Vizio LCD on sale for about $450, so I thought now was the time. Vizio is known as a bargain brand, but quality rivals much more expensive TV's. Clearly not the absolute best, but far and away better than comparably priced units. A good value in other words. Apparently I'm not the only one who thought so, because they are sold out online, and none of the 10 nearest stores had them in stock. I managed to locate one in the next town over so I immediately (830 pm) drove over and bought it.

I lugged it home and set it up, first removing our other 32" CRT TV from our entertainment center and putting it on the floor in the living room. Those CRT TV's weigh about twice what the LCD does. I'd put them at 55-60lbs. Anyway I hooked up the new TV and it was beautiful. We happily watched for the rest of the evening, awed by it's bright colors and sharp picture.

This morning I decide to complete the TV shift, and lug the CRT from the living room into my daughters room, and the CRT from my daughters room to the garage. Writing that blessedly lightweight compound sentence in no way approaches describing the effort it took to do that seemingly simple task.

Anyway, I got everything plugged in and setup. Satellite worked fine, and then I popped in a DVD to test...

...and it didn't work.

After much cursing, and plugging and unplugging, it turns out that the cable AND the DVD player were bad. What are the odds of that?

So then I had the treat of packing the pretty Vizio back into it's box to be returned (mostly because I relish being treated like a criminal at customer counters.) Then the TV in my daughter's room had to be moved back to the living room, and the TV in the garage had to be moved back into my daughter's room... Ugh.

So a new DVD player and cable later, we have movies in both rooms. All it took was a late night trip to Walmart and then a morning of moving TVs around, capped off by another trip to Walmart.

Did I mention I hate Walmart?