When was the last time you adjusted the vertical hold on your TV? Have you recently had to bang the cabinet side to keep the picture from flopping? And horizontal hold, how often has that been an issue? Dealing with rabbit ears or antenna on the roof to which you send up the old man in the pouring rain because the signal from Seattle is screwed again?
Such video thoughts are in my mind because we – yes we did – smartly marched out yesterday and bought ourselves a fancy-ass new television. You know, one of those flat-screen sexy things of which it will take us a couple of years, or possibly a further lifetime replete with electronics engineering degree to figure out in terms of operation.
Why do electronics geeks that design these things assume that everybody is as OC as they are about this kind of thing? I just want to turn on my TV and have it work and when it’s working (and I know this is a tall order in this age of Idols and freaking Survivors – of the latter I refuse to actually watch at all until they bump somebody off – or slutty and singularly repellant females from the eastern shore) I want to be entertained, or at least diverted.
And so far we have been. Oh yes, we did get it hooked up. And it has a hi-def component and if I still went to movies, I’d truly be firm in my resolve to never go again because all the goods are here at home and I don’t have to listen to some asshole talking on his mobile while I’m trying to watch an overloud (and possibly bad) flick. By the way, I know that ‘asshole’ and vociferous public cellphone chatting are redundant.
When I was a little boy my dad bought our first family TV. I don’t think I felt such jubilation again until I realized the differences between girl and boy parts were both welcome and reflective of some kind of divine plan. In other words, I was thrilled.
And you know, that old 21-inch black-and-white set the old feller (he was actually probably about 35 at the time) back about $450. That would have been about a month’s salary in the day. And with that TV we had to deal with all the nonsense I mentioned at the beginning, as well as having to replace assorted tubes on a regular basis, and with all that the reception still kind of sucked. And ultimately, its live-expectancy was about 10 years max.
In our case, our problem with shelling out for a new TV was based on the fact we’re cheapskates and also that our original ones (we each had our own from before we met) still worked quite brilliantly. You see, TVs don’t seem to quit these days, so why replace? Well, I guess it ultimately came down to quality of image. I do feel bad for the old sets that sit forlornly in the rooms to which they’ve been relegated but, hey, life moves on.
Our new one is a Samsung LED and it’s wizard. Doesn’t Neil Diamond have a song called Samsung Blue? Well, by day 2, it’s not yet making us blue and it’s only sentimental attachment to my poor old Hitachi that makes me feel a bit weepy. But, sorry ‘Hi’, it was time to move on despite your built-in VCR player.
Well it’s about time you joined the 21st century!
Yeah, it’s a wonderful place to be where a body if that body were so inclined c0uld watch 5 hours worth of a dead junkie’s funeral on a big flat screen. Made Downton Abbey look wonderful, however.
Heaven forfend you should have Lucy on your roof! ;-
Indeed so. I haven’t checked. She may be there.
I miss seeing the picture on the screen disappear into a dot when you turned the television off. It was a great stalling tactic before bed.
I’d forgotten about that lingering dot. Thank for reminding me. Yet another thing we can miss.
OOh, a new sexy tv. It will rot your brain cells with a much higher efficiency than the old one.
See my earlier comment about 5 hours of a dead junkie’s funeral and you’ll know you speak the truth.
i was so happy when we replaced our behemoth that three men could barely lift with our sharp LED, that even i can lift. (the behemoth had died.) the picture is great and the added bonus is all the extra space on on the tv stand top. We had room for speakers! Enjoy.