Only me…
On Thursday, my wife was talking about picking up a small LCD TV for the bedroom. Something in the 17″ range, just so the kids can watch cartoons when mom’s too tired to move at 7am when they get up. She’s due with our 3rd child in 6 week, so you can’t really blame her for being tired. 
Anyway, my response was “Honey, I don’t think we have the money right now to splurge on that.” Well….of course, just because I said that, our Living Room TV went on the fritz. If I had said “sure, go ahead and get it, we’re fine”, the Living Room TV would still be working fine. I guarantee it. It’s a Dell 17″ LCD TV that my father-in-law got for free when he bought a car back in 2004. Worked fine for our purposes, and has served us well. Now, when I turn it on, the video comes on for about a half-second, and then goes away. Audio stays on the entire time. It’s the weirdest thing.
Dell’s Tech Support was less than helpful in this case, which is odd, as I’ve called them numerous times and have never had a problem with them. Anyway, they told me to turn on the TV, press the “Menu” button on the remote control, and reset the setting to the default TV settings. I’m just curious if they completely missed my stating that the video is not working. Tough to scroll through menu items when you cant’ see them. If that didn’t work, then they said that the TV will have to be replaced. Which brings me to the point of this post:
What do people recommend for a small (17″ or less) LCD TV for a bedroom, and a small (17″-21″) LCD for the Living Room? I’m not looking for top-of-the-line equipment here, as we don’t watch movies on these or anything. It’s mostly when Mom needs a break and puts the kids in front of Dora for a half-hour, just to get some peace and quiet. Doesn’t need to be feature packed, or even HDTV. Would love to hear suggestions from our readers.
Thanks in advance.
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We just bought a Vizio for the den and love it. But, I don’t think they make anything smaller than 20″ and it still might be too much if you don’t want/need HD. I’d like to hear what others have to say because I’m guessing you’ll have to buy another computer monitor for that size.