New TV Quick As a Jiffy

NEW TV

DEAD TV

As I mentioned in a previous post, I discovered my Olevia TV dead when I returned home from work last Tuesday morning. After posting that information on Facebook, I immediately trolled Tigerdirect.com and Amazon.com for deals while sacrificing my sleep time. Even though it was going to create a financial hardship, I needed another TV pronto.  On Tigerdirect, I found a refurbished Vizio LCD TV for $499.00. A similar but brand new LG TV on Amazon was $498, plus they had a one month free offer for a program called Amazon Prime which had 2^nd day free shipping. I immediately ordered the LG TV online expecting it to arrive by Thursday. While tracking my order, I noticed that the courier service that was supposed to deliver the TV was one who had delivered either my treadmill or elliptical machine a couple of years back. That gave me some concern because they said at the time that they only did curbside delivery. I had to beg the driver to please use his dolly to take my treadmill or elliptical to my doorstep on the second floor. Thankfully, his kind heart agreed to do so. We don’t have an elevator so when we reached the stairs, I helped him by lifting from below while he pulled from above. In the process, I scratched my arm on the box but at least we were able to get the machine in my place.

                I went back to work on Tuesday night on just 2 hours of sleep and it was short of miraculous that I managed to stay awake. I kept tracking the delivery on the internet and saw that the product was coming from Amazon’s warehouse in Arizona, and that it was already on its way to California with an expected delivery on Wednesday instead of Thursday. I got home from work on Wednesday morning and tried to get some much needed sleep but because of my excitement, I only managed another couple of hours of sleep. When I awoke from my brief nap, I looked out my door, and voila, here comes the delivery man carrying the new TV to my door without even using a dolly. Someone must have left the security gate open.

                Instead of sleeping, I spent most of the rest of the afternoon assembling and setting up the new LG TV. This consisted of detaching the inputs from the Olevia and moving it from the TV stand to the dining room table, and raising the LG from the floor to the TV stand and reconnecting the aforementioned inputs (two DVD players, amplifier, karaoke machine, and Nintendo WII, plus an HDMI cable from my computer). Let me tell you more about that HDMI cable. When I connected it to the TV, I couldn’t get it to work. My computer wasn’t communicating with the TV at all. After about twenty minutes of trying to troubleshoot the problem I was about to give up, and started looking for a shorter cable that I had because I thought maybe the 10 foot cable was causing the problem. Well whadya know but what I thought was me connecting both ends of the 10 foot cable turned to be one end of the 6 footer and the other end of the 10 footer. No wonder it didn’t work! That’s what happens when you have a jumble of cables behind the TV. Thankfully, the inputs for the LG are more easily accessible than the Olevia and the swiveling base also helped. With this new purchase, I noticed that in less than four years, the prices of LCD TV’s have been halved.  They are not only easier on the pocketbook but also much lighter in weight. In my subjective comparison, the new TV felt at least 30 % lighter when I lifted it.

             So there it is. I didn't have to suffer too much without a TV because I was mostly at work and a new one arrived about 25 hours after I ordered it. Well, let me rephrase. I am going to suffer when the next credit card bill arrives.

 Dead on Tuesday, replaced by Wednesday, thanks to Amazon via Arizona, without me never having to leave the confines of my home. Why, it’s almost like buying it at the nearby Target or Walmart but cheaper because of no taxes and no electronic waste recycling fee!

A final word regarding the Olevia TV: It’s not totally dead yet. It still turns on intermittently after you keep it unplugged for a few hours. According to internet TV repair message boards, you will have to detach the back cover, find the main circuit board and replace either the capacitors or the fuse or both. Since I’m electrically and electronically challenged, I felt that it was not within my capacity to repair it. If I was capable of fixing it myself, the cost would have been about $50.00 for parts. Bringing it to a repair shop would have cost at least half the price of a new TV. Goodwill Industries will be picking up my TV donation in a couple of weeks.

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