Beware of going cheap on your HDTV purchase: A personal account

It's that wonderful time of year where my wife and I participate in our annual tradition of purchasing a new TV. It's not that we want to buy a new TV every year but for the last 3 years our almost 1 year old TV set has died. Thankfully we purchased the TVs at a small chain in the Midwest, Rex Electronics, which offers an incredibly cheap extended warranty. Normally I would caution against wasting your money on an extended warranty but I've found cheap extended warranties to be invaluable when it comes to off brand TVs.

If we hadn't opted for the 2 year warranty, which only cost $20, we would have easily spent over $2,000 on no name HDTVs over the past few years. Alternately, we could have spent the money on one name brand 1080P HDTV and had money left over for surround sound! Thankfully when our last TV died on Friday, we were able to pay a little extra and get a Samsung with excellent reviews, something I wish we had done from the start. As an added bonus, the picture is 10 times better than the Soyo it replaced.