TV Envy

After three years of being mocked for my small television, a meager but good quality nine inch Sony, I cracked. I know there's almost nothing but shit on TV, but it's not all shit, and sometimes it would be nice to watch a DVD from NetFlix on something other than >Conny's laptop.

Since I have nothing other than a tiny television and a crappy VCR, I was basically starting from nothing. What I wanted was:

• A widescreen (16:9 versus 4:3) television, so I can watch movies like they were meant to be seen. This means I have to get an HDTV ready TV.
  
• A progressive scan DVD player that would take advantage of the resolution of an HDTV.
• A TiVo digital video recorder, so I can actually enjoy the 2% of decent programming coming down my expensive cable feed that I keep missing.
  
• A sound system (speakers and an amplifier) that can do home theatre/surround sound.

The crown of this whole system is obviously the television, and after doing a wee bit of research, I settled on the Panasonic PT-47WX49 47" HDTV. Yes, if money had been no object I would have gotten a nice flat screen television. Yes, I would have preferred a direct view (i.e. non-projection screen) television to a projection screen TV. But factoring in the bang-for-buck factor, the Panasonic offered a nice HDTV widescreen picture at a good price. Either Panasonic has a staff of people who go around stuffing review sites with praise for this television, or people who own them really like them. I bet on the latter.

I was a little disappointed that the remote was not as big as shown in the picture. I thought it would be cool to have a remote almost as tall as the television, but it turns out the remote control fits in your hand. I was thinking a big TV might need a big remote, but it turns out the small one works just fine.

Then I ran around and got the rest of the crap:

• Panasonic RP56 progressive scan DVD player
  
• TiVo Series 2
  
• Some Yamaha AV receiver and some JBL home theatre speakers.

It's an unfortunate way to kick off TV-Turnoff week by admitting the purchase of a decadent and obscene home theatre system. If it's any consolation, I actually bought all the crap last week, but I was sitting on it since I wanted to surprise Conny on her return. And frankly, I've had my television turned off weeks at a time, so hopefully I can pro-rate that quality living time, and still bask in the rays of my mammoth television this week without any moral qualms.

Now that Conny has seen this ridiculous technological monstrosity which now occupies a significant portion of my living room, I can blather on about the experience of buying, setting up, and using this crap from the perspective of a humble computer geek (and not a home theatre wacko). I promise to pace myself, though.

Coming up in the next installment of the TV that ate the apartment: "What the fuck was TiVo thinking when they signed an exclusive deal with the morons at BestBuy?"
posted 4:45 PM | link |