<p>Does anyone have any general ideas for this? I know I could get a TV tuner, but I only have a laptop...and my budget is VERY slim at the moment (I'm on heavy student loans, etc.). I am hoping for something that will play most cable channels (my apartment offers free cable, yay!) and is under the $100 mark. Is this even possible? :O</p>
<p>alright heres what you do. go to goodwill and get a tv. You might have to try a few locations but youll end up with a good tv for like 30 bucks. You can get like a 32 inchs projection tube for that much. I got a 55 inch tv for 75 bucks. Its the place to be.</p>
<p>I bought a (32 inch?) TV from a consignment store (goodwill, or other) for $25.</p>
<p>Wait till next Black Friday. I bought a 32 inch flat screen from WalMart for only $99. :)</p>
<p>Just buy a really old tv until next Black Friday.</p>
<p>Craigslist. Some astonishing deals on there, as people get rid of perfectly good (but big, bulky, and heavy) CRT tvs. I’ve seen 4:3 SD RPTVs for a hundred bucks and less there. Nothing wrong with them, they are just A) not HD B) huge and heavy C) not flat and silver-colored, like women want.</p>
<p>CRTs also give a better color fidelity than digital displays like PDP, LCD, DLP, etc. I have a 55" widescreen HDTV, awesome picture, but because it’s huge and not flat and silver I got it for $450, when it was less than three years old.</p>
<p>Basically, women are making home theater more expensive than it has to be by insisting on ultra-slim tvs when the CRT ones gave (and still give) the best picture quality and the lowest price. Shame really.</p>
<p>And don’t tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about, women were <em>always</em> the driving force behind the switch to slim TVs. The technology there is still not fully mature, whereas CRT technology <em>is</em>. Had it not been for wives everywhere complaining about big, bulky CRT RPTVs, we could have skipped over the first few crappy generations of slim tvs and skipped straight to SED or something. Oh well.</p>