LN46A550

I purchased my first television after I was 30 years old. Since they canceled Hill Street Blues, I've probably never watched more than an average of 10 hours a week, if that much. I bought it specifically because it was my first management job and all my employees were talking about Seinfeld and David Letterman. I needed the context. This was Boston, 1993.

Before I got married, I swore that I would never be one of those people with a television in the living room. It has always struck me as vulgar. I have large bookshelves filled with books that I have purchased over the years. When people come into my house, I expect them to examine my bookshelf, deduce something about my character and begin a conversation. That's what a living room is for. After I got married and had three kids in the house I made my peace with Barney. In the living room.

I purchased my next television in 1998 at Circuit City after considerable effort. I seem to recall that it cost me over 500 dollars, but I cannot remember specifically. It was a very strange period. At the time, DLP TV sets were huge and so was 'home theatre'. It was still before the year of the Matrix and DVD but the time had already come when the arrangement of the living room could cost more than the computer. Something strange was going on in the market, but I was determined to remain on the periphery. I happened to have a den with a futon, and so I gained the upper hand against the television gods. Besides, my kids had long been rid of that annoying dinosaur and were now digging Pinky and the Brain. Much better. As for me, broadband to the home was here, as were MP3s and Sprint PCS. Balance was returned to the force.

The DVD revolution did not pass my household. Not long after The Matrix was on DVD, I made the purchase. It was the spring after The DVD Christmas of 2002. Being part of the Silicon Valley revolution, I was aware of Tivo, but I didn't take the plunge. It didn't seem worth it and besides, I had Netflix instead. Besides, for me, it was all about gaming. So since the introduction of the XBox, my 28 inch tube was all I needed. Friends were getting projection TVs and I would overhear this and that about home theatre but by and large it was all about the sound. I had, and still have, component audio and didn't really care about what's up in the 5.1 world. Especially after the XBox 360, I had all I needed.

But I got a Tivo anyway.

Since most of my work involves travel, I had become a good friend of Spectravision. I can recall all the talk back before Y2K about how impossible video on demand was for the home. Everybody complained about the cost of the last mile and what kinds of data centers were needed to accomplish all that. But Spectravision managed somehow to meet the challenge - so I've enjoyed all the movies I like + CNBC when I travel. But then The Sopranos happened, and I actually wanted to be home and watch TV. Then Deadwood and then ultimately 24.

24 changed everything as far as TV was concerned. Finally there was a realistic IT person and, well, you know all of the reasons that 24 is compelling TV. Naturally, as with everything else in popular culture, I was skeptical and late to the party. Then one day while I was working in Atlanta, out of sheer boredom, I rented the series from the local Blockbuster. I was hooked. I stayed up until 2am every night catching up through three seasons. It just so happened that I did so at a friend's house, a friend with the big projection TV, which I had previously been using for gaming Morrowind. But soon came The Sheild, and TV was interesting again, for the first time in years. Still, it was just fine on my screen.

It wasn't until 2004 that things began to seriously change. And so I recall a conversation I had with a couple colleagues over at Versailles in Manhattan Beach. The guy with the boat was telling the guy with the convertible Mercedes that he was ready to buy the new HDTV. They were talking 720i and 1080p and I was completely lost. I tried to change the subject but it kept coming back to that, and I was actually feeling a little jealous. One day I actually cruised one of the stores and watched a Pioneer. It seemed to be very strange that Pioneer would beat Sony, but that's what everybody said. I had seen a Fujitsu years before and we had a flat panel back in 2001 in our new Foster City office. Now they were 'only' 4000 bucks and the investor class was ready. I put my hands over my ears. I was just happy with my Tivo and dealing with that revolution.

But after a while, and especially after I spent some time in the test lab at HP in Cupertino, I started to feel the burn. Up there, they had a massive 60 inch plasma flat screen which wasn't HD but man it was it beautiful. I played my favorite visual flick, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. (yeah I know, but it still is a cool movie). I was hooked. And so for two years I have been watching and waiting, and gaming in low-def while my online buddies are sniping my head off and driving circles around me.

Christmas 2007, I got the Spousal Unit a 20 inch LG. Last year I took the family to Knotts. We stayed in a family style hotel, and even these cheap ones have HD. We hooked up the XBox 360, (yeah I brought it) to the 720p screen via the component connection. By this time I was all read up. I was sick to death of going to Comp USA and seeing all of the demos for Project Gotham Racing 3 in HD on the little LCD panels. I knew everything about them and watched the prices go down, but never down far enough. More of my buds had busted the move. But it wasn't until last September that I had actually gamed on HD. It was stunning, even on this cheapo panel. The burn was getting deeper. Getting the little LG was the first step towards the inevitable.

Just a couple months ago, FIOS-TV finally became available in my neighborhood. I don't know what took them so damned long. We already hooked up the double play but the triple wasn't available. How could they not have TV? It was probably because Adelphia had just lost our area and Time Warner just came in. We hate Time Warner Cable. Its suckitude is massive, and the DVRs we got were far inferior to Tivo. In the meantime, I had undergone a transformation in TV watching that began two winters ago. I became a complete devotee to all of the documentary channels, plus four.

When Discovery put Mythbusters on and they did the experiment with the flying Chinese throne, Boy and I laughed for a full ten minutes. We played the piece over and over again (thanks Tivo) and from that moment on, we never missed an episode. The same was true for The Deadliest Catch, and finally with Dirty Jobs, Mike Rowe became a new star in our household as did the Discovery Channel. Last spring in Philly, I got hooked on Modern Marvels and all of my fiction watching on TV came to a close. I had long tired of the HBO formula and two years ago stopped watching 24, The Shield and Lost. I continued to indulge in action flicks, but also started trying to get some classics.

Well it's finally June and my birthday is tomorrow and I'm off all week. I've worked enough so that I'm going to have overlapping paydays from my complete contract and my new job. So this weekend I got my over-researched machine. Finally. The Samsung LN46A550. Highly rated, good price, all that. And now I'm going through my library and seeing all kinds of things I've never seen before.

Today, the Verizon guy is supposed to show up with my new HD DVR. So sometime by 5pm I should be able to report on what HD really looks like from my living room.