neurotwitch

tv time

We’re tv junkies. We have a tv in our bedroom, the guest room, our living room, and our office. We have just about everything cable has to offer except the porn channels (though we’d dump the forty or fifty sports channels in a heartbeat if we could). We’re faithful viewers of many shows (though it’s getting harder and harder to figure out when they’re on these days) even when a show has jumped the shark (except for Nightline. The new format, frankly, sucks the substance right out of it, so we don’t pay attention to it much any more except when Martin Bashir is on).

So, we decided a while ago, when the tv in the living room finally went, we’d get a bigger one. That tv is one I bought more than a dozen years ago, and the picture was starting to get a little weird, so we knew it was just a matter of time.

By bigger, we initially discussed a 36-inch tv. But we saw one, and decided it was too big and decided to get a 32-inch one instead to replace the 25-inch Zenith.

The Zenith finally died. Off we went to Circuit City, where Stanley scoped out a 32-inch Magnavox on sale for $268 plus tax. Not a hi-definition tv or a flat panel or any of those fancy new formats. Nope, you don’t get enough bang for your buck to justify the cost of those tvs and I think the picture on most of them isn’t very good. We’ll wait a few years for one of those, when the price hits the sanitysphere and the quality improves considerably.

We wanted the Magnavox because they have a sound feature that keeps the commercials, particularly the local commercials, at the same volume as the show. It irritates me to no end when the commercials blare out at the decibel levels found on a runway during take-off, particularly since the tv volume is already loud because I’m so deaf.

The Magnavox is so BIG. We’re overwhelmed by the size of it. We live in a 200-year-old house with small rooms, and the telly now dominates the east side of the house. It’s amazing what just seven diagonal inches adds to the size of the screen. We agree that we should’ve gone with the 27-inch screen—that would’ve been plenty. But it was so much trouble setting up this tv that we’ll keep it. Though we agree that we have to figure out some way to, I don’t know, ameliorate the impact of its size somehow. Maybe if we lower it or something, or move things around a bit—I don’t know.

I really LIKE having such a big screen—it will be great when we watch DVDs. But it’s so big ... it didn’t seem so big in the store.

1. The only issue with going old-school is that it doesn’t adhere to the digital broadcast standard that kicks in in a few years.  Of course, since you have cable (we don’t, thank goodness - that’d be waaaaay too much time in front of the tube), it’s a moo (moot) point.

   But 32 inches is niiiiice.  Our next TV will either be:
   <li>LCD flat-panel; or</li>
   <li>LCD projector.

   It’s the best option, given our spacial limitations in the apartment.

   Posted by Rudi  on  12/21  at  08:59 PM

2. Old school will work forever as long as you have digital cable—which we do, since there is no choice around here anymore—or a digital converter. You do NOT need an HDTV to view digital broadcasts—only the digital converter for your set. The tv companies would like to have you believe you need the fancy boxes to view digital signals, but it’s not true. So, you have three years to save up for that digital converter (which will probably be built into the LCD tv you buy).

   LCDs are shore purty, but what bugs me about them are not being able to view them from an angle, they get blurry when there’s fast action (try watching a basketball game at the appliance megastore and you’ll see what I mean), the blacks aren’t black enough and the grays are half-assed unless you want to spend the big bucks (like more than $1,200 for a 32-incher) to get better color differentiation. That is way, way more than I want to spend on a tv.

   Don’t know what an LCD projector is—never heard of it!

   Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  12/21  at  09:25 PM

3. Yeah, I’m aware of the converters.  I might go that route, though by the time we take the plunge they’ll likely be a cost-wash with the full-on TVs.

   The “LCD projector” is the same thing you hook up to a laptop for projecting the screen onto a large surface.  I’ve seen a few people use them for TV and movie viewing, and they work exceedingly well in challenging spaces.  Most of ‘em are also capable of HDTV resolution.  Of course, you’ll still need a receiver - a good place for the one of the stand-alone decoders.

   Posted by Rudi  on  12/24  at  11:42 PM

<< Back to main