Below average...

I read recently that: The average American home now has more television sets than people - according to Nielsen Media Research. There are 2.73 TV sets in the typical home and 2.55 people, the researchers said. This is from The Associated Press, 09/21/2006.

I was first surprised that there are only 2.55 people in the typical American home, but then, as a nation, we are getting older. In my circle of family, friends & coworkers, though, we have an average of 3.43 people per household.

I wasn't surprised there are almost 3 TV sets per house, though. My Mom & Dad have 5 TV sets, I think. Which turned out to be really nice for us because they let us borrow one of theirs while ours was being repaired.

We have only 2 TV's, one upstairs and one downstairs. We didn't have one down in the basement until the past few years, though. We got that TV mostly so the kids could play video games on it, back when they bought their first Nintendo64. And also so we could watch "R" movies upstairs and send the kiddos downstairs for Shrek or Toy Story... back when Sammy was little.

The one upstairs is pretty large, it's a 36-inch screen. I think that's big. Kev keeps talking about getting a "big screen TV" but I'm not really for that idea... the kids would love it though.

Where we normally sit to watch that 36" TV is roughly 9 feet away from the TV screen. The formula for deciding how large of a TV to get is to divide that by 3, & that's how big of a TV screen you should have. So, basically, our 36" TV is perfect.

When this TV went on the fritz, Kev took it into a TV repair shop to find out how much it would cost to repair it. He then did a little shopping to see what getting a new TV would cost. We've had this 36" Toshiba for about 5 years now. Prices have changed. The new flat screen TV's or plasma TV's are pretty darn pricey... especially if you're shopping for a big one like Kev was looking at. Made the $238 repair bill seem very worthwhile. Also, the repairman told Kev that they are getting in for repair so many new TV's, that it's crazy. He said the new TV's are built so that when 1 little thing goes wrong, some big unit all has to be replaced, so they are very expensive to fix. And they aren't built to last, so people are getting pretty angry. He said we had a good TV, and that it was well worth it to fix it.

The TV we borrowed from my folks was really nice... it's a 19-inch TV. We had to get used to watching a smaller screen, but after a few nights, it seemed normal. Now that we have our TV back, it's made the 36-inch screen seem enormous.



Hopefully that'll take care of Kev's urge for a big screen TV for a while now... because I'm happy with it... and I just priced out a bed this afternoon for when Joycie goes to college... cha-ching!