Exciting home updating news – new TVs (and new devices) in interesting places

We had a $200 credit from Verizon / Samsung after upgrading our FiOS plan. It had sat around unused for many months because I didn’t know how to use it. We could use it towards a new TV, Chromebook, tablet, or some other Samsung product, but a new 65″ 4K TV was the only item that looked interesting. I decided on a Samsung 65″ n7100 series TV for the family room. It was fairly inexpensive compared to those $2000 or $3000 models, so I wasn’t sure if it was gonna be cheap looking. Old Joel would have turned his nose up and held out for the fancy shmancy model at quadruple the price. But we’ve had an inexpensive Vizio for 4 years now, and seriously, cheap can be good enough.

It took two weeks but it arrived mid January and I set it up in the Family Room. We moved the old 55″ Vizio to the Master Bedroom, where it will be wall mounted. The Samsung n7100 series is a decent low to mid range set. It has some apps (such as CBS All Access so I can watch Star Trek: Discovery) and overall setup was a breeze. UI interface was fine. We’re not using the built-in speakers so I was able to disable them. Josh was the only person to be incredulous about moving to a larger screen, but I think he likes it now.

While it’s a 4K TV, we’re not watching any 4K content yet. We are still using the Tivo Roamio Plus (because we can’t afford or make a strong case to upgrade to a brand new Tivo Bolt Vox at this time), and I don’t want to upgrade our Netflix plan to watch 4K content (would need the Bolt or some other additional streaming device as well.) For now, we will stick to regular HD, which looks good.

With the master bedroom all painted, we had the electricians come in price out installing new outlets, mounting the TV, running new Cat 6 network cables down to the basement, etc.  I also selected and picked up a Tivo Mini Vox (instead of adding another DVR or cable box), and a Samsung HW-MS650 3 channel soundbar. We went with a simple tilting wall mount.

The TV is up, and the network cables allow fast streaming between the main Tivo Roamio Plus in the family room, and streaming other content. We did install a floating shelf, but it doesn’t seem to fit the outlets, so we’re going to move the shelf up higher above the outlets. Unfortunately, while I measured the shelf, I didn’t know and account for the wooden board that the shelf would hang from, which limited the available space for the outlets.

I’ll post the shelf picture after we rehang shelf.

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