Get a 55-inch Insignia LED HDTV for $899.99
That's an awful lot of screen estate for under a grand. And it comes with something extremely rare: a two-year warranty.
When shopping for a replacement for my recently departed Toshiba TV, which died after just a few years of service, I paid a lot more attention to warranty. Sadly, few of the models I looked at offered more than the standard one year.
Too bad I missed out on this one: Best Buy has the Insignia NS-55E560A11 55-inch LED HDTV for $899.99 shipped, plus sales tax in most states. The only thing more amazing than that price is the warranty, which covers parts and labor for a full two years.
And if I'm not mistaken, you can stretch that an additional year by paying with an American Express card.
Insignia is Best Buy's house brand, so it's a good bet the company will still be around in two years. That's a bit more iffy when you buy from a small and/or unknown brand. (I'm looking at you, Haier, Seiki, UpStar, et al.)
The NS-55E560A11 features a 55-inch LED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate, four HDMI inputs, and, um, a remote. So, yeah, it's pretty basic on the feature front, with no Internet capabilities or the like -- but that's what Apple TVs and Roku boxes are for, right?
The key spec here is size. While shopping for my own 55-incher, I found very few non-refurbished models priced under $1,000. (A TV is one of the very few products I won't buy refurbished, in part due to a bad experience, and in part because of their too-short warranties.)
CNET hasn't reviewed the NS-55E560A11, and the user reviews on Best Buy's product page are mixed. Some owners complained about the "too real" picture, which I've seen on other newer TVs. It's called the "soap opera effect," and it's horrendous. Fortunately, by disabling motion-blur/motion-enhancement settings, you can usually get rid of it.
With that done, you've got yourself a mammoth LED HDTV for $900, plus two years' worth of warranty coverage to boot. Much as I like the Sigmac model I ended up with, I might just have chosen this instead if it had been available.
Bonus deal: Like indie games? Through tomorrow, Steam offers the Indie Adventure Bundle for $9.99. It includes five games (four of which are Windows/Mac-compatible, the fifth just for Windows), all of them puzzles, adventures, or puzzle-adventures. My top pick: Machinarium, which usually sells for $9.99 all by itself.