Despite my technophilia, until this year we still did not own any flat-panel televisions. Using some clever logic (combined with a Christmas bonus), I talked Amanda into getting one for our bedroom. It worked out pretty well… getting the existing TV / stand out of the doorway, and saving our shins from countless bruises. Being a well-informed consumer, I was concious of some of the pitfalls to avoid when buying something like this, but I was amazed at how much I was influenced, or at least tempted by crazy marketing strategies, even after the purchase!

For starters, this was going to be a bedroom TV, not a living room media powerhouse. I didn’t care about 3D. I knew ‘smart TVs’ were really dumb, and besides, we have a Roku that works better than anythng on a Smart TV anyway. And I hate the motion-smoothing that I’ve seen on the ‘higher end’ TVs, so I didn’t need that. Honestly, I just wanted a TV that would work, be wall-mountable, and not cost a ton of money.

When I walked in, the first TV I saw seemed to fit the bill. It was a great price, had 3 HDMI inputs (a rarity on cheap models) and was clearly wall-mountable. It was in the aisle where they usually put the clearance models, so I thought that the two I saw were perhaps the last two in the store (and the reason the price was so good). It’s only drawback was it wasn’t quite the 42″ size I was comparing to on Woot (okay, so I’m a bit of a technophile… if I’m going to get a TV, it’s not going to be a tiny one…. 42 was going to fit perfectly on the wall where a flower poster sits now… obviously it’d be an improvement!).

Thinking I could settle for a measly 40 inches, I nevertheless proceeded to take stock of some of the other models. The newer version of this TV was on the shelf at 42″ and over $100 more, but there were no different features, and the size upgrade didn’t seem worth it. Another TV of a brand I recognized was also more expensive, but didn’t have the same number of inputs (and after reading up online; I realized it wasn’t actually any better of a brand).

And then I saw it. An LED TV. The newest technology. It was so thin! That’s cool, right? And it said something about “energy savings” due to the LED vs the LCD in my el-cheapo TV I was considering. Why buy such “old” technology when I could get the latest and greatest for only $150 more? I mean, I’d probably save something like $10 a year in energy costs alone!

I was on the fence when I saw someone opening up one of the 2 remaining boxes of the cheap TV I was considering. That did it. I wouldn’t want to miss out on such a great deal. So I grabbed the last one, feeling so proud of myself that I had talked myself out of spending more money than I had originally planned. And obviously, I was lucky that I was grabbing the last TV of a great deal.

Of course, as the employee who helped me carry it out to my car remarked, “yeah, we’ve been selling a lot of this model lately.” D’oh. Not a clearance. Just a normal price. But still, I hadn’t been upsold on newer technology or gimmicky features. The TV has worked fine for over 2 months, and who notices how thick it is when it’s just sitting on your wall, above a dresser, with froofy candle sconces on either side?

The really sad part, though, was how a couple weeks later, I saw that they really had replaced the TV with a different model. It was ONLY $20 more expensive than the one I bought, but it advertised some new “SharpPix 2.0” technology. I really did consider looking up what this term meant and thought about trading in my TV because I “needed” this feature. Then I smacked myself in the head, recognizing the term for the marketing hype it was.

I think I’ll go watch some TV now.