As I’ve said in the past, when a television dies I just see it as an excuse to upgrade. That’s the “glass is half full” view, anyway.

Over the weekend, Susan and I were watching a YouTube video on the television in our living room when we noticed some dark spots on the video. It seemed odd to me that the spots remained stationary no matter where the camera was pointed. A few minutes later while watching a different video I noticed the spots were still there in the same place and it dawned on me that the problem wasn’t the videos, it was my television.

I take a lot of pictures and those pictures have dates associated with them, which is how I know I bought this 70″ Vizio television on November 15, 2014. At our previous house we had a formal living room that, for the longest time, was populated with a couch and loveseat we had bought from a garage sale for the sole purpose of filling the room. In November of 2014 Susan purchased the largest and most expensive couch we have ever owned to go in that room. My joke at the time was if she got to buy that, I got to purchase the largest and most expensive TV I had ever owned.

This 70″ Vizio TV came from Sam’s Club, where I buy most of my TVs. I like buying TVs from Sam’s because it requires the same amount of effort and hassle as if I were purchasing a hot dog, except technically it’s even easier because the TVs are closer to the front of the store and the checkout lanes than the hot dogs. If I remember correctly, it was the first television I paid more than a thousand dollars for; I believe it was $999, and tax pushed it over into four digits.

We moved into our current home in the fall of 2018 and brought this TV with us. (Fortunately, this television didn’t also mysteriously disappear during the move.) One of the first things we did after moving into the new house was mount the television on the wall in the living room, where I, and sometimes the cat, enjoy looking at it.

For the record, when mounting this TV to the wall I read multiple online sources that said the way to determine the best height was to sit in front of the TV and put the center of the TV screen at eye level. That’s exactly what I did and it has always felt too low. When it comes time to mount the next one I’m going to have to move the TV mount up a bit higher.

Like all electronics, TVs continue to improve in almost every way. Each year they get a little lighter, a little bigger, and a little cheaper. This Vizio TV is 70″, 1080p resolution, and cost $1,000. I checked Sam’s Club and they have a 75″ TV that is 4K (that’s 4x the resolution of my current TV) for $499. Actually, they have several. There’s a 4K 75″ Phillips for $469 and a 4K 75″ TCL for $499. An extra $200 will get you a 4K 86″ Vizio ($699). They don’t even carry TVs this large that only do 1080p anymore, and all of these are smart TVs which means built-in wifi and apps.

(The one way they haven’t improved is longevity. I have computer monitors from the early 80s that still work fine. This TV lasted almost 11 years.)

To be honest I haven’t been thrilled with Vizio. Several years ago they got caught spying on their own customers by taking screenshots of their television screen, sending that data back to Vizio, and selling it. After getting caught they were forced to add an option deep in the TV’s menu to turn it off, but for years it was on by default. Vizio isn’t the only company collecting data from its users; in fact, every TV manufacturer does it now. It’s why you can get a 75″ TV for $500. The Vizio TV forces you to log in before you can unlock all its free streaming features, which I don’t like. But don’t kid yourself, every manufacturer is doing something similar.

The technical issue with my current television is that some of the LED backlights have gone out, which makes some parts of the screen more dim than others. 95% of the time you can’t even notice it — it’s only when the whole screen fills with a single color (the brighter the worse it is) does the issue really stand out. If the price of TVs had gone up it’s a problem I would live with for the time being, and maybe years. Fortunately, we live in a world where TVs have gotten bigger and less expensive, and in that world, I’ll most likely be making a trip to Sam’s this week.