At first I'd planned on waiting until February 15th, and then when the government extended the HD deadline (um, why are we waiting? Television is not exactly a crucial service, hello! But I guess I'm being insensitive,) I thought what the heck, I'll wait until June. But then I went by my daughter this afternoon sitting a couple of feet away from her brother's laptop, watching what should have been a horrific pageant of a war display (Braveheart) but was instead a cute miniature action scene, and I wondered about what waiting would really buy me. I'd hoped a lot of saved money with the advent of plummeting sales, but the TV I wanted was already half the price of the least expensive big TVs and the prices hadn't budged on President's Day like I expected them to.
I bet the 'big' TVs I think about are average in most people's minds. Yikes. To me, those 50" things are as big as I want to imagine, and those would fill up half our living room (and not in a nice way.) Our brand new, gorgeous television is 32" and it looks plenty big to me. Not bulky--it's smaller and lighter than our big box, but the screen is actually larger, and clearer. I have a hard time imagining one of those monstrosities in the main aisle looming in our living room. Actually, I take that back. I can perfectly imagine it, more intrusive than Darth Vader and more obnoxious than Jerry Lewis. [ducking to avoid protests thrown by Jerry Lewis fans]
Yeah, yeah, I'm going into raptures over a dumb appliance. Still, it's good to have our family tradition of the TV dinner theater not just return to its former glory, but exceed it. Since we go out to the big screen theater maybe once or twice a year, don't have the television turned on from morning to night, don't watch Saturday cartoons, or late night SciFi, and we might catch the news only once a month, the TV was never about mindless passage of time, flipping channels and enduring commercials. It's about entertainment, and culture (and because I have family members who enjoy that sort of thing, the eye-gouging 'humor' that is Robot Chicken.) It's about storytelling, and art, and fun for a couple of hours. With the occasional weekend marathon of our favorite TV series. I love those.
It'll be fun exploring our DVD collection all over again. How does The Dark Knight look? How about Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? Pride and Prejudice? Phantom of the Opera?
I'll enjoy finding out. Now I'm totally motivated to clear off our dining table and turn it into the center of our social lives again. We can see the big picture from there. Crystal clear.
3 comments:
The Dark Knight is probably going to look dark. I know Ironman does.
Movies are made to be shown in a pitch-black space on a huge screen; they don't show up well on a regular-size tv in my living room with a lamp on or light coming in the windows. Now I understand why people build special "media rooms" without windows and with the ability to turn off all lighting.
Just make sure you plug it into a good sound system!
We watched Iron Man and it didn't seem too dark to me. That's a relief! We have a lot of windows upstairs. The sound seemed really good too, but then we've been listening to our laptop audio for quite a while. So I'm very happy with the quality of picture and sound. Phantom of the Opera was wonderful.
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