One of my past times is looking at real estate online -- with an eye for homes that I could realistically afford in the not all that distant future. But what I find really fascinating in the homes that are not so artfully staged is just how many TVs people have. Bear in mind none of these homes are huge... talking about 3-4 bedroom houses with no more than 2000 sq feet. There was one home I looked at the other day, smaller 3 bedroom ranch -- 1 large TV in the living room, 1 TV in what looked to be family room, and another in a sunroom -- plus I don't recall if any of the bedrooms had one in the photos.


ThereforeI think the correct number is 1, because we have 1 TV in our smallish 2 bedroom townhouse -- in the living room. Conversely 0 is the most incorrect number because the no TV people are insufferable.

I vehemently oppose televisions in the bedroom. However my wife likes to have the ability to fall asleep with the TV when I'm on business or away (she has trouble falling asleep otherwise, and for some reason the television will keep away the bad guys I guess).

I have 5 televisions. One in the living room (main floor), one in the bar area in my basement, one in the family room of the basement (this is where we watch movies), one in my bedroom (which I would just assume be tossed for the previous noted reasons) and one outside under my pool cabana/bar.

Each one has it's purpose and does in fact get used. The one receiving the least use being the one in the bedroom.

trpmb6 wrote:

I vehemently oppose televisions in the bedroom. However my wife likes to have

I'm in that exact boat. I don't want a TV in the bedroom.... but I do want to stay married so.... happy wife, happy life!

We have two TV's: one in the family room and one in the bedroom.

Of course the concept of "a TV" is a little out dated as the kids watch "TV" on their phone or tablet as (probably more) often than any TV we have.

Tugg

Tugger wrote:

I'm in that exact boat.
Tugg

It's a relief I'm not the only one. Fortunately it does not get watched when I'm home. Which to me would be a sort of waste if it weren't for the fact that this tv was replaced by one of the others in the house and was either going to be donated/sold/trashed.

I'll go out on a limb and say the correct number of tvs is > 0 but < number of rooms in the house.

I always laugh when you see a TV in someone's bathroom on HGTV.

Tugger wrote:

trpmb6 wrote:

I vehemently oppose televisions in the bedroom. However my wife likes to have

I'm in that exact boat. I don't want a TV in the bedroom.... but I do want to stay married so.... happy wife, happy life!

We have two TV's: one in the family room and one in the bedroom.

Of course the concept of "a TV" is a little out dated as the kids watch "TV" on their phone or tablet as (probably more) often than any TV we have.

Tugg

'Feel the same way, but I have a TV in the bonus room as well to kick said kids up there to play video games with their friends while i watch football.

Two... one for each eye.

It's as if you people have never heard of laptops.

DocLightning wrote:

It's as if you people have never heard of laptops.

It's as if you've never heard of tablets.

The correct number is indeed zero. Tossed out my TV a long time ago. If I want to watch TV a laptop or beamer is the way to go

Dutchy wrote:

The correct number is indeed zero. Tossed out my TV a long time ago. If I want to watch TV a laptop or beamer is the way to go

Beamer?

2122M wrote:

Dutchy wrote:

The correct number is indeed zero. Tossed out my TV a long time ago. If I want to watch TV a laptop or beamer is the way to go

Beamer?

Projector?

My GF needs TV to fall asleep, but she just puts her laptop on the nightstand and watches random stuff on Netflix. But I am generally in agreement that bedroom should equal no TV.

trpmb6 wrote:

I'll go out on a limb and say the correct number of tvs is > 0 but < number of rooms in the house.

We'd probably need to modify the equation to reflect square footage of the home, number of adults and older children in the home etc... with a variable or two tossed in for a home theater set up and/or gaming room.

Dutchy wrote:

2122M wrote:

Dutchy wrote:

The correct number is indeed zero. Tossed out my TV a long time ago. If I want to watch TV a laptop or beamer is the way to go

Beamer?

Projector?

ahhhh.. Gotcha.

We had a TV in our bedroom when we lived in STS but we do not have one in the bedroom here. It is much better. There are times when I turn on the SiriusXM if I need to fall asleep or keep the dog calm.

We do still have two TVs. They are both set up in the living room. One is for cable, DVD player, and Roku. The other is for gaming. We also have a "beamer" but it is a cheap one and we can not figure out how it works. The instructions are literally four pictograms and no FAQ section.

Probably for the best anyways seb, "beamers" (seriously I've never heard anyone call a projector this and I'm quite fascinated by it - almost makes me want to start a new thread about alternative words for what we call things) usually have poor video quality and are best viewed in extremely dark rooms. Unless you opt for one of those $5,000 units that is. (I'm exaggerating as I don't really know the state of the projector market since I haven't purchased a new TV in the last 5 years - the last time I considered a projector as a replacement)

This is the correct beamer.

desertjets wrote:

This is the correct beamer.

Damn it, Jim! I am doctor! Not a video technician!

desertjets wrote:

This is the correct beamer

THIS is the objectively correct beamer:

When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite each of you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there for a day without a book, without a magazine, without a newspaper, without a profit and loss sheet or a rating book to distract you. Keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that what you will observe is a vast wasteland.

Newton N. Minow, former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission as part of a speech given to the National Association of Broadcasters on May 9 ,1961.

I have one TV, a small one with a built-in VCR. I use this strictly to watch old VHS cassettes. Remember those?

I have a laptop at home, and I only watch Netflix (for rewatching all the Star Trek series and some other old TV series I remember from youth) as well as YouTube. When Star Trek: Discovery is in season, I watch that on CBS All Access. When The Orville is in season, I watch that on FOX streaming. For my birthday this year, a local friend gave me a USB DVD reader/writer that she taught me how to use (she set up the driver on my laptop that the drive needs to use), so I can watch whatever DVDs I have. (I'm no techie, and my technology at home other than my mobile phone is decades behind--I use VHS and a 1958 GE portable record player).

I have no TV service or equipment otherwise. I gave up on cable years ago, when I was paying too much for what amounts to a thimbleful of TV that I really ever watched.

SmithAir747

I have 4 TV's in the house but regularly watch only 2 of them- one outside on the deck and one in the living room. They're all hooked up to DirecTV and Apple TV.

I've stopped watching TV in the bedroom and the other is in a rarely used entertaining room downstairs.

vikkyvik wrote:

DocLightning wrote:

It's as if you people have never heard of laptops.

It's as if you've never heard of tablets.

Tablets are also an excellent alternative.

DocLightning wrote:

It's as if you people have never heard of laptops.

Dutchy wrote:

The correct number is indeed zero. Tossed out my TV a long time ago. If I want to watch TV a laptop or beamer is the way to go

Watching movies and reasonable TV shows on a laptop?? Nah...

Our household is one of the weird ones where you can find a TV in the living room and each bedroom but no cable service or antenna.

We have 5. The big one is in the living room. We have 1 in the sun room, 1 in our bedroom, 1 in the room with treadmill, and one in the basement (used mostly for x-box'ing by my son).

I refuse to allow TV's in the kids' bedrooms, but with Netflix, that ship has pretty much sailed. Though, I control the password, and it gets changed every Sunday night and returned to the "normal" on Friday afternoons, while school is in session. But, of course, there is YouTube and others, so every now and again, the wi-fi password gets a tweak, though that's a pain in the ass.

Big one in the living room, big one in the master bedroom, and not-so-big one in the kids' play area. But that's a downgauge from what I had as a kid at my parents' house; there, we had TVs of various sizes (all tubes, no flat screens back then) in:

o Each of the 5 bedrooms
o The kitchen
o The laundry room
o One in each of the two full bathrooms

So yeah, we were definitely a TV family. And when you add multiple laptops plus multiple iPads (even for my kids), we have a ton of screens available.

fr8mech wrote:

it gets changed every Sunday night and returned to the "normal" on Friday afternoons, while school is in session.

That's a damn smart idea!

EA CO AS wrote:

Big one in the living room, big one in the master bedroom, and not-so-big one in the kids' play area. But that's a downgauge from what I had as a kid at my parents' house; there, we had TVs of various sizes (all tubes, no flat screens back then) in:

o Each of the 5 bedrooms
o The kitchen
o The laundry room
o One in each of the two full bathrooms

So yeah, we were definitely a TV family. And when you add multiple laptops plus multiple iPads (even for my kids), we have a ton of screens available.

Gross.

I have a 60'' Samsung in the living room.
Plus, a 5.1 Technics SE-CA10 Midi for surround (aim is SU-HT1000), BD player, sat connection, Amazon Fire Stick TV (TV is Smart but 2012 Smart so no Netflix support in my Country), SNES Mini and an xbox 360 that didn't see any power since 2014.
But that's because I really like to watch movies. I buy them in BD or DVD and every once in a while I sit in my sofa with my surround and enjoy some piece of art like "Trading Places", "Spaceballs", "Airplane!", etc.
In my bedroom I have a small 22'' Philips, with DVD player, VCR, original SNES, but I watch it very rarely.
So imho the correct number of TVs is one.

EA CO AS wrote:

That's a damn smart idea!

In addition, during the school week, there is no TV allowed in the house, except in our bedroom. To tell you the truth, that's probably just the news at night, for the wife and the news in the AM when I get home.

We just give them a little hand-held screen time after school, when homework is done, and the crap around the house is dealt with, and if there are no practices or other activities. Getting a little tough with the daughter, a lot of her homework is on her school-issued, parent-bought iPad, but we monitor as well as we can...and her grades are excellent. Devices are charged at a central location in the house, not in their rooms.

We do not have a TV in the bedroom., never have had one there. I never turn a TV on before noon and even that is very seldom. Late night and early morning TV is terrible in my opinion. I may watch an hour a day on average, mostly news and history.

The wife has one in the kitchen/breakfast room (which we sorta watch when we are eating) and one in her bedroom. There is one in the living room that is my main one and one in my bedroom that is normally only watched when the grandson visits or spends the night.

These days I generally keep the one I'm closest to turned on to MSNBC or CNN for both background noise and to catch breaking news - which is frequent with Terrible Trump in office. Hopefully football seasons will cure me of the pain of politics !

After moving to Minneapolis in 2010 I was without television; the set I had owned didn't quite survive the move

Then in late December of 2012, I was taking out my recyclables and saw an old-ish 27" Philips tube-type TV sitting there with a Post-It® on it, saying it works and it's free.

I schlepped it up to my place, went over its plastic casing with a Clorox® disinfecting wipe and commenced owning a TV.

That was in my old apartment. On Black Friday of 2016 I went to Target and bought a 50" Westinghouse 4k HDTV 1080p SmartTV for $281 (there was Black Friday pricing plus I had amassed a stack of $5 and $10 Target gift cards like you get some weeks when you spend $50 on groceries or buy 4 bottles of TRESemmé.

However, the Westinghouse sat in its packaging in the foyer of my apartment for 16 months. (Mmmmmmmmmmm, severe depression... )

WildcatYXU wrote:

DocLightning wrote:

It's as if you people have never heard of laptops.

Dutchy wrote:

The correct number is indeed zero. Tossed out my TV a long time ago. If I want to watch TV a laptop or beamer is the way to go

Watching movies and reasonable TV shows on a laptop?? Nah...

^This.

I don't want to watch a decent film or TV show with high production values on a tablet/laptop (it's just about acceptable if away from home) or even worse a phone. I want to watch that stuff on a big 4K TV with a kick-ass sound system.

As to the correct number of TVs - clearly, the correct number is one per person in the house. That's why we have two.

fr8mech wrote:

Though, I control the password, and it gets changed every Sunday night and returned to the "normal" on Friday afternoons, while school is in session. But, of course, there is YouTube and others, so every now and again, the wi-fi password gets a tweak, though that's a pain in the ass.

You know you can schedule access per device right? Easily done with either the router's own settings or 3rd party software.

ChrisKen wrote:

You know you can schedule access per device right? Easily done with either the router's own settings or 3rd party software.

Yeah, I vague;y know that, but it's still a pain in the ass. My daughter routinely uses her iPad for homework, and the boy's homework is quickly moving to his school-issued Chromebook. I can shutdown the wifi to their phones, but that's not a real help.

This is where some good old-fashioned, "I'm not your friend, I'm you're father" parenting comes in. I spot-check them when they're working on their devices and, quite simply, look over their shoulders as the opportunity presents itself.

And, no, I'm not naive. I know they're getting some illicit screen time in, but so long as their grades are where they need to be, I let it slip.

scbriml wrote:

As to the correct number of TVs - clearly, the correct number is one per person in the house. That's why we have two.

I don't know. I'd argue that the correct number of TV's depends on how many people are watching, and in how many places those people are likely to watch TV.

I've gone years without even owning a TV - streaming on the second/third screen is more convenient.

Now we have a single flat screen in the lounge, in both our homes, for a total of two. I'll be renovating a new place for us shortly and will probably buy a large new flat screen for the lounge, as it's such a big room, and will then downgrade our current TV to the bedroom, although it will probably only get used on the rare occasions when one of us is ill and wants something to pass the time.

fr8mech wrote:

I don't know. I'd argue that the correct number of TV's depends on how many people are watching, and in how many places those people are likely to watch TV.

Of course. I was only being moderately serious given my own personal circumstances. With just two of us left in the house (kids have long flown the nest) two TVs is our correct number for when sport clashes with Poldark!

I'm a single man living in a family sized house that happens to have two living rooms ( go figure... ).

Each living room has a plasma HDTV in it, and that's probably one more TV than I need.

Yet it's good to know if one fails I have a "hot spare" ready to go till I decide what to replace the other with.

It's the same kind of reasoning behind never living in a house with just one toilet: if it fails you're sh*t out of luck.

Also the smartphone doubles as a YouTube player, and both TVs have streaming media players (one Roku box, one Fire stick).

I was against a TV in the bedroom but now the phone has its own stand at the bedside and I often fall asleep to YouTube aviation videos.

Strange but true.

Am currently working my way through this unexpectedly strong series of talks: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChYBaJ ... 9Ejz7nf6uw

My previous sleep aid was talk radio, but that has gotten so toxic that I can't fall asleep to it any more.

trpmb6 wrote:

I vehemently oppose televisions in the bedroom. However my wife likes to have the ability to fall asleep with the TV when I'm on business or away (she has trouble falling asleep otherwise, and for some reason the television will keep away the bad guys I guess).

I have 5 televisions. One in the living room (main floor), one in the bar area in my basement, one in the family room of the basement (this is where we watch movies), one in my bedroom (which I would just assume be tossed for the previous noted reasons) and one outside under my pool cabana/bar.

Each one has it's purpose and does in fact get used. The one receiving the least use being the one in the bedroom.

The correct idiom here is "just as soon", not "just assume"