As a long-time TV reviewer, I firmly imagine that nobody wants to undergo by way of a grainy display or gradual, laggy video high quality. There are actually dozens of TVs on the market now, at every price point, that may immeasurably enhance your movie-watching or gaming expertise.
But even I have to admit that there’s one main hurdle to shopping for a brand new TV, and no, it’s not the bizarre, misplaced emotional attachment you could have to your 15-year-old Panasonic. I’m the proud proprietor of an 850-square-foot home in Portland, Oregon, and it’s actually my job to mount and watch TVs. But I nonetheless have a pathological concern of drilling into partitions, and I don’t need to borrow my spouse to raise and mount a brand new TV each few weeks.
I would a lot quite watch TVs on their very own stands. You know, those that come within the field with them. But I can’t, for the dumbest attainable cause—they don’t match on my media console. I want to name out TV producers, large and small, for a critical and customary error in design: For the love of God, cease making TVs with legs to date aside.
The Big Problem
We have been utilizing media consoles to comprise gamers and discs and maintain screens since Monica and Chandler had been first courting in prime time. The consoles haven’t modified a lot, however TV sizes certain have.
Over the previous decade, we’ve settled on mannequin requirements of 55, 65, and 75+ inches, which is considerably larger than all however the wealthiest of us had been rocking within the ’90s. Back then, a big TV was round 40 inches. You can barely discover TVs in that measurement now, a lot to the chagrin of my father and his built-in cupboards.
But firms are nonetheless putting angled legs on the fringe of the TV, as if media consoles have gone by way of an analogous development spurt. It has to cease. When I constructed myself a TV reviewing house, I had to buy a really costly (but in some way nonetheless poorly made) stand to match this very real 75-inch TCL on prime of.
If I wished to mount a TV this huge to the wall, I’d want to purchase a mount and discover at the least three folks to assist me raise it. I’d additionally want to measure the house and accumulate a stud finder, affect driver, and various other tools that don’t come with said TV earlier than spending an honest period of time truly putting in the factor. If you actually need to get slick and have retailers and in-wall wiring, the labor alone can find yourself costing greater than the brand new display.
Be the Solution
There are a few options for these of us who refuse to exchange our treasured mid-century console. The first, and least straightforward for renters, is to simply mount the factor on the wall. Most TVs do have VESA mount holes, however this requires rounding up a few folks to raise the machine. And some TVs are fairly rattling skinny, which makes them terrifying to mount. I just lately broken a evaluate unit simply attempting to get it onto my TV stand—think about attempting to mount it to a wall.
A less expensive resolution that I have settled on? Buy a pedestal mount adapter for VESA mount holes ($44). This permits you to hold utilizing your present furnishings whereas avoiding the distant legs downside.
But I argue that the best choice can be for all producers to design a easy, flat pedestal mount, like these that include the LG C1 OLED. It’s a easy design change that will make so many lives simpler. Some TV producers, like Hisense, have made it attainable to transfer the legs barely inward so their TVs will match on extra stands. But as screens proceed to develop, that’s nonetheless not the perfect resolution.
You shouldn’t want to shell out for a bit of furnishings to place your new TV on, particularly when the costs for uncooked supplies are larger than ever. For my very own sake, I’m glad I purchased the largest wooden TV stand I could find on Amazon for my testing room.
That mentioned, there could also be hope but: At least a few of this 12 months’s new Samsung fashions have pedestal mounts, as do the higher-end OLED choices from LG. Hopefully, this improvement will trickle down to different makers, as these of us with restricted house (and particularly renters) don’t need to completely scar our residing rooms simply so we are able to watch Netflix.
