Dear Fellow BusNuts,
My experience with Polaroid TV is beyond doubt, the worst in my seventy years as a
consumer.
Not only is the product inferior, the warranty and service is equally bad.
We bought two flat screens with DVD players built in. Never again!
I guess that bears repeating!
I deleted the double post.
That usually happens if the web browser hangs at just the wrong moment and you have to hit refresh to get it to come back up.
I have a Paranoid ( Polaroid )19 inch in the bedroom and what you say is true.
good luck
Well, this thread might be useful. I'll probably be in the market for a flat screen or 3 in the near future.
I bought two of those cheap-assed APEX converter boxes from Best Buy last summer with the government giveaway coupon. Both of them blew up the same capacitor inside within 2 months of each other. Each lasted about 5 months. Obvious design flaw in them. Both companies should be sued.
So we have been without a TV since early September, and quite honestly, I haven't missed it, but the family is getting a little cranky about it, so I've kind of been looking for a decent
deal on a couple 32" LCD or LED tvs (won't be buying them from Best Buy and definitely won't buy another APEX product as long as I live!!)
I'm thinking the LED might be a better solution for the bus. I've heard the LCD cannot withstand the cold. Any comments on this?
Most current LED TVs simply replace the flourescent backlighting with LED backlighting. There are true LED TVs with an individual LED behind every pixel on the screen. These cost big bucks and I doubt the technology is even available on 37" or 32" TVs.
The best bang for your buck for a home TV right now seems to be a brand name 42" LCD TV. You can find them for $500 to $600 if you keep your eyes open. 32" and 37" brand name TVs aren't very much less money and sometimes more than 42".
The 19" LCD in my bus has been outside for two winters now, and works perfectly. Temps down to -40 or so. I think they are perfectly suited to our use, they are bright, light, mount easily, throw no heat to speak of and use very little power. I run it from a dead cheap inverter. You can find smaller units that use a power wart and actually run from 12 vdc. You might be able to run them from the bus DC directly, but I was worried about over/under voltage during charging cycles. My personal decision was to have a stand-alone cd player, only because they are getting throw-away cheap and I distrust the longevity of the built in ones in a high vibration environment.
I just did the boxing day shopping thing, half dozen stores, talk to all the salesmen, and bought an LG 32LF11, mostly because it was a decent price, cheapest 1080 I could find, and I had a good experience with a couple of other LG things I bought recently. Oddly it was assembled in Mexico. It's in the living room, but it has an Energy Star, which presumably means it uses less electricity that something else does, which could bode well for a bus use.
edit. I just checked in the manual, storage temps from -20 C to 60 c. A review is here: http://cleverreviews.com/reviews/lcd-tv-reviews/lg-32lf11-review-32-inch-lcd-hdtv/ (http://cleverreviews.com/reviews/lcd-tv-reviews/lg-32lf11-review-32-inch-lcd-hdtv/) I bought it at Costco.
edit again: another reason I bought LG was they actually make the LCD displays! http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/12/news/international/pricefixing/?postversion=2008111216 (http://money.cnn.com/2008/11/12/news/international/pricefixing/?postversion=2008111216)
:)
Brian
My kids were given a Polaroid portable DVD player to use on car rides. It is one of those units that kinda look like a laptop PC and has a 10 inch screen. It worked for watching about 8-10 DVDs and then the screen died. You can still hook it to an external monitor, and it will play a DVD, however.
The polaroid name much like the old bell & howell names are simply licensing deals for a 3rd or 4th party manufacturer.
I had an early Apple-II computer that was grey and named Bell & Howell back in the day
if that's not wierd.
Needless to say, Anything that Polaroid has their name on is crap. From their digital cameras to TV's and about anything else.
It's a ploy to sell stuff based on a name Recognition and it sucks. Most of us grew up and went to schools that had loads of equipment that said Bell & Howell, But the crap they have had their name on since the late 70's & 80's should be an embarassment to the name owners. No Service and poor reliability.
You know things are bad when the Bell & Howell name is on a $2.00 electric shaver that might work for 5 minutes.
Even the BIG names are sliding into that same category lately. ie; Panasonic, ILO and a host of others. Crappy manufacturing and even worse service.
I have an old Polaroid digital camera that is still working after almost 10 years, The bad part is that to take 10 pictures it eats up 8 AA batteries. If you leave the batteries in it they will be drained in about 3 hours. Same for several of the name brand bargain cameras that I bought a while back. Keeps the battery companies in business selling their crap too.
Sorry.. Guys~n~Gals.. My road is iced up and I am trapped here in the valley with all the other goofy people today ( Including my wife!!! accchkkkkk )...
Dave...
FYI-they did a piece on Polaroid just this morning on the CNBC stock news, the company is dying and to save themselves, they are bringing back the instant camera that prints the picture internally when you shoot it. No surprise they're dying!
We upgraded our TVs to the new HD Digital not that long ago and got a 32" LCD Emerson for the lounge at a cost of $298. They just advertised them last week for $249.at Wally's. It was the largest we could fit in the lounge. We managed a 22" in the BR with built in DVD and that one was $398. (Wife wanted the DVD built in so it didn't take up anymore of her valuable shelf space-The TV is wall mounted in the BR) I custom built a stand for the lounge so the TV is directly behind the driver's seat facing toward the rear. It takes up no room this way and is permanent-nothing to put away before moving the coach! ;D That's a good thing. ;D
Good luck, Will
My son has a 42" poeroid lcd and it failed. he got on the internet and foud instructions on how to repair it. seems they used parts that were not properly rated for the service. I have a small one in the bedroom of the bus and has been working ok. Jerry
Quote from: WEC4104 on January 07, 2010, 12:23:21 PM
My kids were given a Polaroid portable DVD player to use on car rides. It is one of those units that kinda look like a laptop PC and has a 10 inch screen. It worked for watching about 8-10 DVDs and then the screen died. You can still hook it to an external monitor, and it will play a DVD, however.
Hey, I have a polaroid portable DVD player that was given to me to fix. It's brand new. Won't play a DVD, but the screen works fine. It's yours if you want to make one good one out of two.
Model BT-6025.
For jamies house last year I bought a 47 inch Philips LCD, it's got the 1080P picture and was about 1300, I also got a sony blueray player, we have direct tv here and it is a razer crisp picture, I'd buy another philips in a heart beat for the bus, I've heard bad things about the poloroids tho. That was all before libby got sick and the sun still shined and the birds still were singing lol.
poloroid is what i bought for the livingroom in the coach. tuner went out, called them and they sent me a new one. but the remote was a bastard the directv couldn't figure and we finally banished it to a computer screen which it was ok since it didn't require the governments new money wasting tv tuner that works for crap.
bottom line, i got no real complaint against poloroid's service, but i won't replace the 15" old tuner poloroid tv in the bedroom with another poloroid. my new tv is a 22" samsung and i like it. good picture, light, and mounts on the wall just fine.
47" TV; BluRay?, DirectV? Do you guys print money in the yooper?
Tom it was back in the good old days before libby got sick, but those days will come around again, the sun can't stay hidden forever.
did a pretty thorough, for me anyway, market search before buying the Panasonic. My problem was that I wanted a flat screen that would accept inputs from my hi res lap top CD and??? I needed 1080i or p or whatever. My max size was determined by me to be 32 inches and most brands don't have the res I needed in any set smaller than 37 or so. LCD was not a choice cause it needs the ambient light to be low to function so LED was my only choice. Pioneer has brought out a new line that beats last years Panasonic but the reviews say that Panasonic last year is still better than the others. I went with the 32 inch LED 1080 for another reason and that is that this series, Avaneda or some such has a "system" approach and every component from that series is overly compatible with each other. Read up on it...makes sense as a way to go. If you start getting your requirements down and compare these things among their correct competition models you will end up where I did. Carefull with the model..mine is a 510-8042, as an example I made up. It seems that all the retail house's have a signature model in this thing and they are not all the same. I bought the model sold by Best Buy and it can be driven by almost any source but won't step down to the old tech like the White Red Yellow and such. Panasonic has a great rep for cust support and reliability.
Phillips was in second place and is the benchmark for anything associated with Europe(?). It was way more expensive in some model comparisons but out performed. It wasn't chosen often because it was so spendy but performance wise it was a safe buy in any case.
My Pan is semi portable and goes back in the house when we are home.
Read, compare...get a hunch. LG has not been good to me but isn't terrible and any like it.
John