well, you can still plug anything you want into it, ie converter box or cable box... or if your like me, we just have basic cable which requires no extra boxes

To me 50 seems steep, the mouse i can imagine doesnt pop up every second like the plat ones do, and the missing remote makes it a inconvenient tv (not getting into its small screen size), I would try to talk him down to 35 or so (if this is something you wanted)