1y ago

Why do all the new TVs expect me to have a platform AS WIDE as the fucking thing?? Fucking shit!! God awful absolutely dumb thoughtless design choice

luckily this is just a 32; i had a 70 from the same brand with the same INSANELY FUCKING STUPID STAND DESIGN that i had to find something for....literally at the most extreme edges of the thing, what the fuck is this? this is so fucking stupid, it cannot be meaningfully cheaper than a proper design and it looks fucking dumb as hell and surely this has pissed off 90% of people that wanted a TV and want to put it on a little stand like a normal fucking person right??

377 comments

Centre stands need to be way more sturdy to hold it up. You can buy aftermarket VESA centre stands though if you can't wall mount it.
- This right here.
  The TV comes with the cheapest removable feet, because VESA mounts exist.
  
  And considering the cost and relative light weight, are more or less a requirement
- Exactly. I think an aftermarket VESA mount is pretty much required these days for modern TVs, that's the bad news. The good news is that there are plenty of options (center base, wall, swivel, etc), some very affordable, and they should last for multiple TV generations (check VESA pattern, weight limits).
  But I get that these tiny, wide feet can be mind boggling at first, since TVs all used to have center stands for decades. Finally, TVs got too large, the cost savings and stability from two tiny feet won out over the alternative of the large, heavy single center base.
- Yep OP went with a cheap brand, what did he expect.
  
  Samsung and everyone else does it too.

The wider the TV gets, the more stable a two-feet-at-the-ends design becomes compared to a single central foot.
Plus if you need anything else, VESA mounts are super-standard and you just get whatever you need then use it on every Tv you buy.
- For those that live in apartments, there are VESA stands that mount to the back of your furniture, and others that use a clamp for tables, so you don’t have to put holes in your walls. I use one on my desk for a fairly wide monitor.
  If you’re unfamiliar with VESA mounts, just take note of which of the two standards your device uses. These are going to be either 75x75mm or 100x100mm. Verify with a ruler, don’t rely on the literature to be accurate.
  If you wanna be mega-bougie about it, you can get just the mounting plate, and there is couple hardware available to pair it with aluminum extrusion, if you really like that 2040/2080 extrusion.
- Have my tv mounted on a VESA monitor arm.
  The sloped design made it a bit hard to attach the plate but it worked well enough.
  
  Curved monitors don't have flat mounts? Seriously? That's stupid af.
- I wish higher end TVs had the option to buy without the stand. They always have beefy center stands in the box even though everyone mounts high end TVs.
  Now I'm just stuck with a 50lbs stand that I have no use for.

Op didn't check the specs on the item he bought and is upset it's not perfectly tailored to his individual tastes.
You love to see it.
- Show me the affordable TV made in the last 5 years that doesn't require a stand at least 90% as wide as the TV is
  Don't say it's for stability, you could move the feet to be 1/3 of the way in and it'll be exactly as stable because it isn't tipping over sideways. Don't say it's for a sound bar, this is a TCL, that's the cheapest "I'm looking for a new TV but make minimum wage" brand you can find
  
  Was my 3rd amazon result when searching for a TV...
  Or if you want something a little bigger, this is the 5th result.
  
  If you can't afford all of the responsibilities of owning a TV you shouldn't take on that commitment.
- Probably the dumbest take, Congrats. Go check the garbage for your cake.
  
  Username checks out.
  People like you are the reason why everything has a warning label now.

Putting a giant TV on a tiny stand is not normal.. Be mildly infuriated at yourself, not the manufacturer
- Yep, the included feet are just something you might be able to use until you get a real mount.
  If you really want the TV to stand on furniture, buy a proper vesa mounted stand (they can be very cheap) and maybe even a proper TV table.
- That stand doesn't seem tiny to me
  
  That's just an end table by the looks of it. OP said it's only a 32 inch TV. Hell they even provided a cat for scale.
  
  It's too small for that tv

OP blaming their shitty decisions on others. Why are you buying something without knowing its dimensions?
Fuck I hate people like this. The answer btw is pretty obvious. From a weight distribution perspective it's easiest to have two feet as wide apart as possible.
- Most TV's don't list the width on the feet on the packaging do they?
  
  I looked up the shittiest TV brand available at my local electronics store and yeah, they do list the width with and without stands.
  And if you plan on putting your TV on a table that is way too small, then I'd double check where the stands sit exactly, because it's not a design problem but a you problem.
  People need to stop blaming their shitty planning on "bad design". It's the most common sense design that will work in most cases.
  Next you'll have the guy who puts their TV on two separate chairs complain about the bad design of TV's that only have a single stand in the middle ffs.
- People are allowed to complain about annoying widespread design standards
  
  This is not bad design, it's just common sense.
  People are way too entitled is the problem and assume that their bad planning/thinking automatically means something is badly designed. Blame anyone but themselves.
- "weight distribution"... They weight practically nothing, and even old heavy ass CRTs sat on narrow platform mounts
  
  Well I guess they just so it to annoy people then. There's no other reasons why they'd do this right?
- I have the same TV and built a custom stand for it. Doesn't change the fact that the included stand is a bad design.
  
  I disagree that it is bad design. It's cheap and I also find it ugly, but it does get the job done just fine.
  
  This is not bad design, it's just common sense.
  People are way too entitled is the problem and assume that their bad planning/thinking automatically means something is badly designed. Blame anyone but themselves.
- well good thing they're a professional company with professional engineers, glad they're taking the easy route
  i bought it because i was at the store and thought 'damn a bedroom tv would be nice' and it was black friday. it's only 32" i hope it fits on the table, and if not i can rig something up, but either way, god fucking dammit these new legs are terrible design because now i have to think about this instead of them just having a damn stand in the center like everyone used to
  was sort of what i was thinking
  
  So take it back? If you put it back in the packaging and said "hey, this doesn't fit where I want it", they should take it back. I've never dealt with a store that wouldn't.
  I could see this if you ordered it online, sight unseen. Like, if the website were text-based and had no pictures and the description was "It's a TV". But you were at a physical store...
  
  $18 on Amazon, more adjustable than any stand that could possibly be included in the box:
  https://www.amazon.com/Articulating-Extension-Rotation-200x200mm-Pipishell/dp/B07SHFPD8S
  
  Then you should stop thinking

To be honest they think that people plan ahead for something like this..
- And not have the TV hanging out in space to be knocked over.
  
  cat

How do you not do research on the dimensions of anything before buying something big like a TV?
- Mate I'll have done a 3D reconstruction of the room accurate to the mm to test everything out. I'm only slightly exaggerating, I literally did exactly that when planning my new office/studio, had the room in 3D long before we got the house, built everything myself, custom desk, acoustic treatment, etc.
- A 32" TV is buying something big?
  
  Do you buy a new TV, like, every other week?
  
  Apparently, if it warrants making a post about it

So many people attacking OP and perhaps not remembering there was a time when nearly all flat panel TVs came on a pedestal mount. The designs were largely changed to mitigate claims and liability.
- On the other hand, if you buy something, check what you're buying. Don't complain if you don't even know what you're buying.
  
  Maybe the higher end TVs publish the feet width on the box, but the one I got a few years ago sure didn't. It was actually really frustrating to find that info for any of the TVs I was looking at at the time.
  Even looking at a modern budget TV from Amazon, it doesn't say anything about the width of the legs on the product page. https://www.amazon.com/amazon-fire-tv-50-inch-4-series-4k-smart-tv/dp/B0B3GTSQ9Q/
  I found what I believe to be a very similar (if not the same) TV that OP has, and it also doesn't have the specs listed on the Bestbuy website. https://www.bestbuy.com/site/tcl-43-class-s4-s-class-4k-uhd-hdr-led-smart-tv-with-google-tv/6538141.p?skuId=6538141
- Pedestal mounts suck. Too wobbly.
- One large source of liability also sitting on the desk in that picture, in fact.

Nobody tell him about what TV makers expected of you when they were all CRTs…
- Build a whole wall around it
  
  Build a whole ~~wall~~ house around it

They don't expect you to have a stand at all. They expect you to buy a separate wall mount piece and mount it directly on the wall.
- they expect you to know the lengh of your own table that's why they put the lengh on the site, also, the legs are already short, how OP expext the TV to be stable with it even shorter??
  
  You can make a stable mount without legs as wide as the TV. I have two 27in, 1440p monitors, which both came with stands that were probably 30% as wide as the monitors themselves. However, the stands were weighted and primarily steel (I'm assuming it was steel anyway) with a plastic shell. A TV doesn't need a wide base unless the company that made it is cheaping out and refuses to spend the money to make a weighted base.
  
  If my 75" TV can have a small center stand under it there's no excuse for smaller tvs to have extra wide stands.
  
  ??????
- I will never mount a TV on the wall. That shits annoying.
  
  How is it annoying? I try to wall mount every TV because then I can move it around or angle it easily and it looks 100x better than hanging halfway off a bedside table.
  
  you must not have kids or animals

I think the fucking stupid part of this post is the OP buying a TV oversized for the space they want it on.
- I guarantee you the box and everything else also showed the legs being on the side.
  
  Pretty sure when I got my tv there was info on the box about how large of a surface it needs to stand on. OP made a big purchase without doing any planning or research and now they're whining that something isn't right 🙄
- OP never bothered to research their purchase properly to buy a TV with a centre stand...

The true reason is cost, those stands that are included nowadays are insanely cheap and flimsy. If you're buying a large TV, you should budget $30-$50 for a VESA mount.
- Yep, that's what I figured happened when they went from proper swivel pedestals to those stupid wedges. Hell even computer monitors are joining in on the action, the number of brand new, fairly high end and expensive monitors whose stock base is just bolted to the back and have zero adjustments is ridiculous.
- I got a VESA stand for my grandparents TV for 15 bucks. Solid steel and sturdy as fuck.
  
  Yep, and the manufacturer can't even be bothered to spend that much more money to include a high quality stand with a thousand dollar TV with already high profit margins. Somehow, having to throw the default OEM parts in a landfill because they're intentionally low quality and barely usable and being forced to buy a passable replacement separately is just a thing that they expect us to do now. Capitalism innovates y'all!

I can't help you but I love this post.

Because you bought a really cheap TV and the little feet on the sides are cheaper than a center stand that needs to be much heavier and sturdier.
- Yeah that's one of those companies that buy bulk cheap TVs to slap their logo on and make out they're a tech company... Looking at you Kogan.
  
  TCL owns it's own panel manufacturing company.
  The latter half of your comment are probably what use TCL panels, but in this case, this is straight from the source.

No one has seemed to mention the rise of sound bars. Center stands block sound bars and so so many people are using them now.
- That's because TV's no longer come with decent audio because they are made as thin as possible for whatever reason.
  
  Bought a new OLED from LG last year. Main body is 3-4 inches thick and the sound is bloody incredible. There are still some gems out there
  
  No surprise, a wide screen tv from the late 90s was big enough to house 2 gaint speakers and a subwoofer.
  
  Flat Panel TV were always meant to use with a sound system. It is only meant to display video. The belief has always been they are for higher end viewing. And it's impossible to get good sound out of a audio in a chassis that thin, that is why sound bars exist. Ask anyone who knows home theaters and they will tell you more than 50% of the experience is the audio. You're better off spending money on a good audio system and even going with a smaller screen if dealing with budget constraints for the best experience. They make them as thin as possible because people want that.
  
  Yeah they rely on the sound bouncing back from the wall which is why some TVs have the speakers on the back

Stand measurements are right on the box! They expect you to read them. 🤣

I have that same TV (50"). They know what they're doing
The TV is so flimsy, I don't trust it with a narrower stand.
Making a stand like this means the TVs can have the same stand parts for all sizes.

Same energy

Cat
- Op clearly saying something about the cat but can't concentrate because cat

Hahahaha what do you mean? This has to be satire. Nobody is that dense right? If it doesn't fit, don't buy it lmao.
- Is it that hard to read the post? OP is right, almost every TV on the market has the same cheap, shitty plastic feet, and they're spaced as far apart as possible so you're unnecessarily size-limited when trying to buy something like a bedroom TV to sit on top of bookshelves or a tallboy.
  I'd like something more than 32" for my bedroom too, but I can find one new 40-42" TV on the market with a central stand now, and it is some obscenely expensive 4K OLED thing from Sony. I am keeping an eye out for older, pre-owned TVs as a result, but am yet to find any good deals.
  
  They are that far apart to accommodate soundbars
  
  Central stands are just not that safe on bigger screens. Sadly, the easy way is to place feet on each side of the screen. One could always go for a wall mount.
  If you don't like a product, don't buy it and if you know that every product has this design, then it's hardly a surprise when you unbox it at home.
  This posts seems like OP didn't check if the TV would fit before buying and now they're angry at themselves.

You'd be first in line removed that your TV fell over if they moved them in 6". Wall mounts are $18.... buy one
- I'm going to second this. I usually use wall mounts for my TVs and let me tell you, once it's dialed in... Chefs kiss
  The problem is getting the right mount with the right support for the TV you have. You can't use a super cheap support for a super big TV, the adjustments won't work correctly and it might fall off the wall.
  Once you find one strong enough for your TV and determine how high/where you want it on the wall, the next task is simply finding something to mount to. My favorite method is to combine a few ways of securing the mount. I find the studs and put a solid wood project board over top of where I want the TV to mount, and screw the board into the studs. I then place the mount and trace out where it needs to be screwed in, I then go through the board, and the drywall/plaster with a drill and put in toggle bolts that sandwich from the mounting plate, through the backer board, into the drywall. It's massive overkill to do it this way. Once that mounting plate is secured, it's definitely not going anywhere with all of that extra support.
  The basic concept I'm thinking of with this is that the backing board will spread out the load from the bracket being weighed down by the TV (the rotational/twisting force). This keeps the main pressure going straight down the wall.
  Once the TV is hung and adjusted, it has no risk of being knocked over by your cat, it's off of any surface, so you don't need to sacrifice table space to support it, and in all likelihood, you won't touch it again, apart from the occasional cleaning.
  IMO, the only down side to mounting the TV to the wall is that you can't easily plug a new device into it. It's always a struggle to shove your face between the TV and the wall to try to see where the stupid connector is and plug it in.
  
  Once the TV is hung and adjusted, it has no risk of being knocked over by your cat
  My cat can jump to the middle of my mounted TV with a nice amount of force. I'm sure if she wanted to, she'd find a way to jump to the top and break it.

If the TV is VESA compatible, there are tons of third-party stand options.

Two tiny legs are cheaper than a large flipped “T” base for it to rest on.

At least you have a cat to hold it up
- The cat's for scale.

All of you saying you need center stands don’t realize how much heavier the stand needs to be for safety. For cheap TVs, you will get wide stands for freight reasons. They usually come with mounting mechanisms where you can get your own stand that will cost more than the TV itself.
Common sense people. If these shipped with center stands the cost would be double and you’d be complaining about how there’s no TV deals anymore.
- You're clearly in the pocket of Big TV Stand.
- A center stand for a TV this size can be had for less than $25 retail price. If you call it a "monitor stand", you can find one for $15 or less. That's hardly "more than the TV itself".
  
  It's a 32" TCL. Those are like $130. We're talking a 5-10% increase in price which definitely isn't double, but it's significant enough to dramatically affect sales.

They're expecting you to have a mount for your wall, already installed, even, from the last TV. So the legs are an afterthought, they're cheap, easy to remove and you'll probably toss them, they know. So they're enough to use for store display, no more.
- Some rental places don't allow you to mess with walls and it would require repainting if you move.
  So not always an option.
  
  There are furniture based mounts and standalone vesa stands
  
  Buying a paint can and some spackle isn't expensive enough to prevent me from drilling into the walls (unless you've got popcorn walls or something and that's just foul). I have done it it in several rentals and got my deposit back in full. The other ~~portion~~ option though in this instance is to buy a VESA mount. Some of which can even just be mounted to the tv stand.
  But also, people should do research before they buy things.

I bought a center stand at Walmart, that mounts to the wall mount spot on the back of the TV. "Onn" brand for $18.
Works, but I do understand your frustration.

Because it is genuinely is way cheaper to include 4x 4" plastic legs, than a steel center stand capable of withstanding the torque.
For people who wall mount and for those with wide tv stands these work fine and save probably $30 / TV, and produce less overall waste.

There's nobody but yourself to blame in this one lmao

I don’t understand why most of the commenters are against you, i find the change from center stands to edge stands annoying. Especially since it seems difficult find smaller TVs nowadays

Pepperidge Farm remembers when TVs didn't even come with a "stand". It was just a big box with no real "mounting" options.
I can still remember the sound my back made when I picked up my first 32" TV.
- Shudda been liftin with yer legs there, buddy
  
  The way to lift well is using your back completely and then twisting it.
- I used to fear what would happen if I dropped one of the older TV's on my foot. It was a pretty great motivator to not drop it, and to try to fall towards it if I fell. Sometimes it even took two people to move them because they were heavy and awkward.
  We have definitely advanced in making them more moveable, and I'm happy about that. I don't miss throwing out my back.
  I do miss the screen static though.

You should be mounting in on the wall anyway. Unless you want your cat to tip it over, that is.
- Ah yes the installed mount in my....apartment I rent and cannot install things into
  
  Damn what shitty place doesn't let you mount stuff to the wall?
  
  Pretty much every landlord in the world will let you hang things on the wall, so long as it's not unreasonably destructive. They're pretty much planning on doing a little spackle and painting the place when any tenant moves out anyway.
  A tv mount usually only requires 4-6 screw holes, which wouldn't be hard to fix later on.
  
  There are loads of solutions to that, don't be lazy
  
  There are monitor arms that can be attached to a desk/table, maybe they can be adapted, or maybe there is a mount that can be mounted like this
- No you should get a proper stand that mounts to the TV
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwO5r0r-XdY

Sketchy fast math says a 32" TV will be roughly 30" wide .... Feet appear to be 3" in on each side which would put them at 24" on center... What kind of umpa lumpa ass table do you have? If that is your only option you can get a treated 8' decking board for like $8, have Lowe's cut it in half and throw it on top of the table to extend it.

Its recommended that the surface that you put your TV on be a couple inches wider than your TV.
- Only because they made the stand that wide 🙄
  
  because the TV is that wide.
  not sure what you expect them to do about it.
  
  A wider base footprint is inherently more stable.

It's way cheaper to produce such stands (they can be way less sturdy).
Also stop wide-shaming your perfectly nice 32" cat.

I don't have anything to say about the TV sitch but your cat is pretty.

I actually just bought a Sansui TV that almost wouldn't have fit the desk but it had 2 sets of places where the legs could be attached, so I just attached them to the inner ones. Welcome change. Not sure how uncommon it is since I've only owned like 5 TVs and most just had the little circular base in the middle instead.
The legs being so far out is maybe since manufactures found it to be the most stable places for the skinny leg designs they use now. So yeah, cost cutting measure probably.

I measure the shit out of everything before I even go out to buy a TV. Having this feet design simply would have meant that either I wouldn’t have bought this televisi, or I already intend to replace the table.

Did you not see the foot in the store showmodel?
- A lot of show models in stores are wall mounted these days, saves on space (especially at places like Walmart and Target where they sell smaller sizes). That's being said, though, it doesn't take much to look under a wall-mounted TV to figure it where the foot(s) go.

Even then just a piece of wood cut to size to lay on top wouldn’t hurt. Table looks scratched up pretty bad as it is anyways so it’s not like appearance is your game here.
- almost all advice i see given in lemmy has at least a minor insult and i gotta say I'm here for it
- Lmao u didn't have to go this hard

cat is build better. cat can stand good.
- You can break a TV by knocking it off a table, you can't break a cat that way. Therefore cats are better designed than TVs.

You should seek a therapist
- Or buy a wooden board. People with large TVs can afford a fence board.
  
  The high cost of wood is the real !mildlyinfuriating.

give your cat some scritches for me :)

Your orange cat is still trying to process your anger.
- I imagine him muttering to himself "tsk tsk tsk ...I knew you should have measured it like I told you...tsk tsk tsk"

Did you measure the table before buying the TV?

Cat: Did you get the accidental coverage Dad? Purrrrr Purrrrr (rubs scent from face on tv) Purr Purr CRASH MRERRRREREOW!!!!!

There are many thoughtless, idiotic design choices today, for example curved edge phone screens, shitty ultrasonic/photo fingerprint sensors in the scren, no jack connector, microsim, etc. I call it engineer idiotism.
- That and the endless pressure to innovate means they end up suggesting stupid shit no one wants and have the sales folks work that out
- And that doesn't apply here. The feet are out wide for stability, keep weight down, cost, and leave room for a sound bar.

Kitty is probably over in !cats being like “mildly infuriating…. Human is ignoring me for a flimsy idiot box…. And it’s meal time!”
- Nah, it's orange, so it's probably not thinking at all.
  
  Lasagne
  
  that's so rude. you realize, of course, that orange cats only have one brain cell each, it looks like it's shared because that cell is quantum entangled with every other orange brain cell. So it's not that the one cell gets passed around, rather its that all orange cats are thinking the same thought at the same time.
  and it's usually "i'm hungry."

I mean two little hunks of plastic are most definitely cheaper than something big and sturdy in the middle as it needs to be over engineered to make up for the lack of physics being on its side. You can buy an aftermarket TV stand or wall mount it.
- With how cheap, and ubiquitous VESA mounts are - it doesn't make sense to expense $20/TV for a metal stand that everyone is going to throw out.
- The two pieces of plastic don't need to be right at the ends though, a third of the way in would probably be perfectly fine
  
  They put them so far apart so you can put a sound bar underneath. If it weren't this way someone else would be complaining here that their new Black Friday soundbar doesn't fit under there TV.

The cat is not impressed, yeah.
- Very difficult to sleep on.
- I believe the OP might be the cat. The cat has a complaining pose.

Sadly nowadays the stands that come in a box should just be used temporarily tool you get a more permanent solution. You can get done really good mounts that use the VESA mounts at the back.
I would never trust the standard stands, they have way too much wobble to them.

377 comments