Note that you can no longer buy a TV. You can buy a video unit that sounds like rodents in heat. You can then pay the same amount again for a sound unit. I resent that.
Not quite sure what you’re getting at, aside from snide comments about things not being perfect out of the box.
Standard consumer 480i CRT TVs were, on the whole, not exactly exciting in either video nor audio. A low-end 42” 1080p HDTV is far better than the 27” box I paid the same price for 13 years earlier. Of course a $2400 55” LED-LCD panel with a discrete audio system will be much superior, but then you’re paying some 8x as much. Other than the blacks being a bit gray, I had no problem watching _Contraband_ on the aforementioned 42” panel with stock sound ... and I can nit-pick with at serious video/audiophile levels if I want to.
My ideal is indeed to buy a no-receiver no-audio video-only monitor of high visual quality, then deck it out with a good sound system and discrete content processors. I don’t want to pay for OTA/cable TV reception hardware at all, and whatever audio is built into the box _will_ be inadequate. If I resent anything, it’s paying for the bundled mediocrity that forms a “TV” per se.