Reduce, reuse, recycle. It’s a mantra we’ve become used to over the past couple of decades, but applying it to electronics is not that easy, particularly for TV sets.
Demand for new television sets remains high, although as my engineer friend Wolfgang Rupprecht in California is fond of pointing out, that industry jumped the shark when it tried convincing us that 4K was an important new frontier — and that following the failed effort to push 3DTV.
Hence, we find people still holding on to now-vintage CRT televisions, the behemoths of yesteryear that took three people to move. A case in point is the one described by a reader couple who prefer to remain anonymous and we’ll refer to as the Smiths.
Dear Peter, I read your B.C. Catholic column with great interest, although I should mention that I’m a senior and not really that computer literate!
Anyway, I hope you would be so kind as to advise me about a situation I have with Shaw Cable, from whom we get our TV and internet.
Shaw has been jacking up our prices every 3 to 6 months until they got up to $197.75 monthly for the past few months. Last week they sent us a new increase to $206.71.
This seems really excessive.
Last week my husband and I called Shaw and they said they would give us a 2-year contract of $159.00 per month, removing some TV channels and adding others.
We said fine, and a technician came with a new cable box but said we would have to get a high definition adapter to connect to our old “tube cell” TV.
He gave us the number — HDMI 2AV. We tried several stores and were told to order it online. We tried that but there are so many types online with that number.
Could you possibly give us any suggestions, as Shaw is not being very helpful.
I knew the Smiths weren’t going to be impressed with my initial reply, but I gave it a go in any case.
Reply 1 to the Smiths
You aren’t going to like this, but it really is time to ditch that tube/CRT TV, if that is what we are talking about. Get a basic LCD TV and you will be so much the happier. If you watch more than an hour of TV a day you really don’t want an old-school TV. The picture is just no comparison to a modern, cheap TV set. Don’t say “it’s still in perfect condition.” It simply isn’t. Don’t go playing around with converters and adapters.
Get Shaw to install BlueCurve TV. You will love the voice-controlled remote.
Before even hearing back I sent along a followup.
Reply 2 to the Smiths
My own in-laws also had long experience with a CRT TV … two of them, in fact. My father-in-law in particular believed his Sears-bought TVs were as good as new, even though the picture tube was fading. However, their vision was fading as well, and I could never convince them despite offering to gladly replace the sets for them.
Particularly with those older sets, which looked like they were part of the furniture, I know it was hard to let them go. It doesn’t feel right to replace something that is still working. However, I regret that I didn’t just do it!
I’m not drawing a parallel with your own situation. These decisions are highly personal. Friends from church who live nearby also have two of the big old TVs. They swear their picture is superb, but I can see the missing lines. They have Telus Optik TV, which surprised me, but Telus installed an adapter for them. You might try telling Shaw this and have them pay for it! Otherwise, say you are moving to Telus!
Just as I was on the verge of submitting this column, I received a note from The Smiths saying they didn’t think their TV was as old as the sets my in-laws had, and that it had not come from Sears but from Future Shop. That brand, and their Toshiba TV brand, have long vanished.
The bottom line is that The Smiths were in fact considering a new TV and hence foregoing the vagaries of an adapter to connect the new box to the old TV set.
Hopefully they won’t be bamboozled with all the jargon and hype surrounding the latest models. For around $400 there are terrific models to be had. Sure, there will be talk of HDR, QLED, 4K, and even 8K, but in fact most of these add next-to-no visible improvement on typical programming viewed at living room distances.
As for reduce, reuse, recycle, hopefully those old TVs are actually recycled. Certainly no one wants to reuse them.
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