Apparently rich people have TVs in their dining room

[Roundtumble]

So I'm having a conversation with a family member about renovating the dining room and they have the idea of putting a TV in there. I said No, Tv's aren't meant for the dining room where we are meant to eat & enjoy each others company as a family. They respond with 'we're rich & rich people have Tv's in their dining room'.
(We are rich= in love, family etc etc not so much money..yet )
First of all I don't know where they got that notion from that rich people have Tv's in their dining room and secondly not so much an Aibu because I don't think I am at all but what's your take on it?

It really annoys me that the TV is for the majority of the time the focal point at a lot of family gatherings(usually the men in my experience.) I think it should be off limits during any type of family time except for movie night etc. It totally takes away from really getting to spend time with your loved ones especially when you hardly get to see eachother with different work schedules/life in general.

I have a Tv in each room in the house apart from the bathrooms and the utility room. The dining room is a large lounge diner and we have a seperate lounge as well, but we have 6 adults in our house and there is always people popping in and out so if someone has pals over anyone else can move to another room to "view"
Its not about being rich its about what suits your lifestyle

We're fairly well off - we only have two TVs, one in the den, and a small one in the utility room for when I'm (or rarely someone else is) ironing. That I recommend!

Crosspost with @HazelBite - there's one more you can add

I have a kitchen/diner and another room which has a dining table for 12 at one end and a a music/library area at the other. Neither have TV's. The only TV's in my house are the one in the TV room (which is mainly used by the kids), the one in the gym (mainly used to play yoga videos on youtube) and the one in my bedroom (which I only ever have BBC news on when i'm getting ready in the am).

We have a 32" in the sitting room and a 26" in the kitchen. DH has a tiny little solid state b&w in his studio, and my bro has a large widescreen in his own sitting room. No tvs on bedrooms or anything, no screens in bedrooms in fact, we all leave our laptops and tablets downstairs.

I'm 'old money' and dh is mc.

Always love mumsnetters pontificating on what rich people do...

I don't have a dining room

what I really want to know is how do people find the time to watch so much tv!

We have 2, one in the living room and one in the family room. My middle son once said that a school friend who had visited for supper asked if we were poor as we only had 2 televisions in the house

I have never heard of anyone with a TV in a dining room -why? It's not a comfortable place to watch TV.

We hardly watch TV anywhere in the house these days except for Netflix in bed! 4 DC and the TV is never on. It's all phones and computers. We have a living room with TV (that never goes on), a more formal living room with no TV, a basement / teen room with a large TV for movies and video games and a TV in our room. The kids play minecraft etc but not at the dinner table!

I think you friend is joking, most probably.

My dining table has ten places. We don’t have a TV in the dining room and only one in the entire house. We are not rich at all, but comfortable.

We are very low income for various reasons but come from a middle class background. I’m not sure wealth equates to any sort of indicator of class anymore. What is class anyway.... I’m going off on a tangent. We have one tv in the living room and that’s it. I couldn’t stand to have TVs all over the house. I couldn’t stand the noise.

Ugggh, that sounds tacky more than anything else. I grew up with TV in the sitting room and a small portable in the kitchen; I think an old TV was relegated to the upstairs sitting room but never used as we tended to watch the portable at the kitchen table if we wanted to watch something different.

Now I have TV in the sitting room and nowhere else (but the caravan one is stashed away somewhere). The dining room is knocked through into the kitchen as a kitchen diner; the piano used to be there but is now in the spare room. The TV is only on when something is being actively watched and never when there are visitors.

And fruit bowl was on the side and candelabra on the table in my parents' dining room; I do the same with that very same candelabra. 😉

I'm sort of wealthy. Privately educated highly professional job but we didn't hunt!! we have a kitchen diner with tv. Dining room is now playroom and has a tv mainly used for mine craft. Lounge has massive tv. We also have one in our bedroom. If I had my way though we would have one small inconspicuous one. But my husband is a flash harry.

Properly rich people have TVs in an actual TV room.

Definitely not rich here. We have two televisions; one TV in the living room and one in the den. We may get a third for the bathroom, as part of the extensions but I'm not convinced it's the right way to go yet... Bit tacky maybe.

Oh, and like a PP, we have a piano in the dining room.

I have a dining room (at the moment, moving in the summer and won't have one). I have art on my walls (and a smallish TV in the sitting room, don't know the size).

OP, I think you're conflating "rich" and "upper class". My DC and I are decidedly upper class, but are also very poor (thanks to school fees) and therefore don't possess a telly. We have two pianos, though, including a Steinway. They fill up the space that other stuff would otherwise occupy. Make of that what you will.

@boredofwaitingagain we also have some monstrous sized tv. I actually rang my husband at work when it was delivered and asked him if they’d maybe delivered the wrong one. They hadn’t

Roundtumble

I'm from the US, having a 'breakfast nook' or informal dining room is common in most homes. They usually are part of an open floor plan so the TV in the living room might be viewable from the table.

People with larger homes often have in addition to that, a formal dining room, I've never seen a TV in a single one of them.

My ex is from a well off family, I can just imagine them and all their friends scoffing at having a TV in the dining room.

I've never seen a TV in a dining room in the UK either.

I bet Donald Trump has a television in his dining room!

I remember reading that he likes to have ice cream after a meal, but that all guests / other diners get one scoop whilst he gets two!
Seems quite petty behaviour to me, pretty childish, so I reckon he uses his dining room television to watch fox news and Peppa pig.

Ooh- Leigha- I love breakfast nooks, with built-in seating banquettes, and tongue and groove [sigh]
So cosy when you're sitting drinking tea with the rain hammering down outside the window, and you're all warm with a crossword or book. Bliss!

I wouldn't have a television in mine though, I don't have a television.

I don’t even have a dining room so I must be extra poor. Mind you we only have one TV anyway so maybe that balances it out?! Utter nonsense- the richest family I have ever met (I’m talking full on multi billionaire football club owner rich here) has TVs in pretty much every room. Even the bathroom. But absolutely not in the dining room. Why on earth would you?!

We're rich, we haven't got one in the dining room. Have never ever seen one in a dining room, rich or poorer! The worst one I've ever seen was a massive one in an indoor swimming pool! How do you swim and watch the telly at the same time!!!???!?