I agree that we should do everything in our power to reduce energy consumption, but while some seem to be fixated on the milliwatt power consumption of a light emiting diode, they seem to have forgotten that the electronics industry selected light emiting diodes 30 years ago to phase out the 10 and 15 watt incandescent pilot lamps. In fact, in regards to light emitting diodes, quite often a light emiting diode is used in place of a common diode in a rectifier or wheatstone bridge comparator circuit and the end result is there is NO appreciable power consumption because the circuit would have required a non-light emiting diode anyway. If peope were really intent on reducing global energy perhaps they should reconsider whether or not they really need 3000 or 4000 sq.ft homes for a family of 4. Do we need a snowblower to clean a 20ft sidewalk? Do we need a 7 passenger SUV to transport one person? How many mega watts of energy are consumed daily to idly chit chat on cell phones? Before I built this home it took me more than 6 years to work out all the design details with the overall emphasis on reducing energy consumption. In the first three years after it was finished my local power company changed meters 4 times, inspected my meter enclosure and service entrance equipment numerous times and even installed a computerized demand recorder. When I asked why their comment was, "Your electrical utility consumption is 40% less than a comparably sized home in this locality and we are wondering why. After spending about three months discussing my design features with thier engineering staff I now have the distinction of being a "Good Sense Energy Test Prototype Facility". Although I did custom design and build my HVAC enviromental system, and made some rather dramatic changes in the architecture and construction of the home, everything I did was with common off the shelf components that are available anywhere. IN fact, some of the most effective energy saving features would go totally unnoticed to anyone walking through the house.

RECEPTION and AUDIO HUM/STATIC are two different things in my thought processes. My age is great enough that my study of electronics was during the days of vacuum tubes. I was competent to do some repairs on the equipment of that era. Auto radios had wonderful noise filtering capabilities and an old TV transformer with 6 volt output could be used to eliminate the vibrator in the car radio and power it from AC at the house. My lighting is now mostly fluorescent --of several types-- and LEDS of at least 3 types. I think those generate RF noise. Perhaps my radios have failing capacitors in the audio circuitry- non replaceable, no doubt. The old tube type would have 60Hz hum when the audio circuit capacitors were failing. All the reviews of portable radios on the web have a sizeable number of unfavorable reviews. 90% or more positive would be good for me.

Unfortunately your options for a "great" picture and sound is going to be somewhat limited in that size of television because consumers generally want bigger TV's and manufacturers put their efforts into those. Your best bet is to visit your local stores and see what's available. Generally speaking the better quality televisions come with "smart" features but, obviously, you don't need to use them. As for connecting the TV to your computer, all modern televisions are going to come with some number of HDMI ports and a COAX connection. After that there may or may not be other connections (component, composite, etc.). Does your laptop have an HDMI port? If not, you're going to have to find a TV that has the port you need. As for watching over-the-air television, all you need is an antenna. The number of stations you can receive is going to be a function of your proximity to the local broadcast towers and the kind of antenna you have.

I actually had to look it up, as I was unsure about this, as I am certainly the big outlier ... I don't like moving. But yes, the median number of years that people stay in there homes in the US is just over 10 years. And psychologically, if during your stay in your home, you need to replace an appliance once, most people probably won't get overly upset. This is especially true, if it was an appliance that the previous homeowner bought and where you can blame another person for making a bad purchasing decision. I am sure appliance manufacturers have studied this problem in detail. But in the end it is a simple optimization problem. What is the minimum amount of investment that you need to put into your appliance so that you can charge a price that encourages the maximum number of purchases? And from everything I can see, the answer to this question is somewhat less than 10 years of typical lifespan. This also explains why many German appliances have a reputation of lasting longer; Germans are more reluctant to move and when they do move, they take the appliances with them. So, longevity is more important in this market. I agree with you that this is very frustrating for people who expect to stay in their homes for a long time and don't actually want to replace their appliances all the time. You often can get higher quality appliances, but you need to up the cost a by quite a lot more. Also, I don't think that "more electronics" is necessarily the root cause of the problem. Rather what I think you are seeing is a false correlation. Manufacturers are decreasing investment in the type of work that I described earlier. Building for longevity is expensive and the market doesn't ask for it. On the other hand, the market does demand that you have new and different product features each model year. So, that's where you see investment. One thing doesn't really have anything to do with the other one. You absolutely could build a reliable appliance with all sorts of crazy features. But nobody demands it. So, you now erroneously determine that the crazy features are what makes it fail, whereas it really is something like underspec'd capacitors, inappropriate trace widths, borderline power transistors, undersized heat sinks, or missing surge protection -- or simply just flimsy mechanical parts.