Shortly after the first of the year I found myself kinda bored and was randomly sifting through various product reviews on Cnet.com. After reading about numerous ridiculous products like the "Lightsaber Lamp" I stumbled across a review of the Pioneer Kuro PDP-5080HD TV.
"Hmm", I thought to myself, "I've been watching TV on this 12" Zenith for about 5 years now - perhaps I should move into the 21st century and get myself a new one?" As I tend to do, I rather quickly rationalized that I deserved a nice television - after all, I'd been cheating myself out of quality TV viewing for years. I was pleased to find an available model at the low end of Cnet's pricing estimates. I placed the order.
Shortly after having done so I started to consider what it was that I was actually going to watch on this TV since I have the cheapest cable package available (mostly because Comcast forces you to get their basic TV service along with their internet plan). I decided that because there are so many services available on the internet these days that I would just stick with those as opposed to upgrading my cable service. The question, though, was how would I connect the TV to my network? After a little investigation I landed on the Xbox 360 as a fantastic way to wirelessly connect with my PC and have all kinds of glorious programming to view through services like Joost and Fancast. AND with the Xbox I can get an add-on that will play HD-DVD movies! And games! Perfect! Order placed.
Woke up the next morning to an email from Amazon (where I ordered the Xbox from) happily telling me that my order had shipped....to my ex-girlfriends house. Dammit!!!!!! I had succesfully avoided her for about 3 years and sabotaged my own efforts by not checking the default shipping address when I placed my order. So, I had to write a totally insincere email to her - "Hey, how the hell are ya? Been thinking about you a lot recently. How are your parents doing? Oh, btw, I just accidentally shipped a bunch of stuff to your house. Can I come by Thursday morning to pick it up?"
Shortly thereafter, the company I ordered the TV from called. Just a courtesy call, of course. By the time I hung up I had purchased a 5 year warranty for the TV. As Judy from Time Life Books (or whoever the hell the person on the other end of the line was) explained to me, Pioneer is the only TV manufacturer on the planet that doesn't offer a warranty if you buy their product from someone other than them directly. And, as an added bonus, with the purchase of the warranty they throw in "threshold shipping" as opposed to my original shipping plan - which, evidently, was the driver just jettisoning the box onto the street in front of my house as he sped by.
Later that same day Warner announced that it was adopting Blu-ray as it's high def version of choice, effectively killing HD DVD. GOD DAMMIT! Now I probably need to buy a PS3. Stupid Xbox! I got similarily screwed by Betamax long ago.
This is getting expensive.
The ex emails me back saying that she would be MORE than happy to bring my packages to my house. Hells no! Through a series of frenzied emails back and forth we land on my coming to her place Thursday morning at 9:00 - was like hostage negotiations. After developing my excuses for why I couldn't hang around her place and fix her garage door, garbage disposal, or computer I called a friend of mine and directed him to call me at EXACTLY 9:10 Thursday morning with a story about how I needed to go downtown and pick him up at the bus station immediately.
Thursday morning rolls around and I suck it up and head to Debi's house. My friend, naturally, forgets to call me. Debi wants me to stay for coffee - which, naturally, she hasn't even made yet. I kinda panicked and mumbled god knows what and fled. Debi was clearly pissed. Awkward - but I now have my Xbox and copy of NHL 2008! Woot.
Friday morning. The TV is going to be delivered today. Of course they can't give me any kind of an estimate as to what time it will arrive. Years ago I installed a wireless doorbell in my house. Well, evidently, my neighbors across the street had the same model and they bitched at me because every time my doorbell rang so did theirs - so I removed the damn thing. Consequently, when I am expecting a delivery, I have to remain perfectly quiet in order to hear the knock on the door (delivery people seem to think it's the height of hilarity to knock on doors with about the same amount of force that a butterfly exerts when it lands on a flower). So - no music - no games - nothing - just sitting, waiting.
At about 1:00 I hear a barely audible knock on the door! Two guys that appear to be ex-cons with considerable backgrounds in bodybuilding are struggling to wrestle a ginormous box out of the truck and up to my porch. They are succesful in doing so, make me sign for it and are gone like the wind. Took me a solid 5 minutes to drag the box (roughly the size of a Honda Civic) into the house.
After about 30 minutes of unpacking and tripping over the various materials in the box my brand new TV was visible! Gorgeous! I'd set up my version of a TV stand/Entertainment Center up in the center of the room (it's a spectactularly tacky set-up - it's a dog kennel with a wooden 'table top' - check it out). The question was - how the hell was I gonna lift this thing up on the stand? It's about the most cumbersome thing ever to deal with (the only good thing I can say about it in this respect is that, at least, it isn't posionous). Fortunately I went to the beer store right after I had left Debi's and had enough cases of beer to create a series of steps to slowly rise the TV to the top of the kennel.
Hooked up the Xbox, put in my hockey game and - - - WOW!!!! Incredible! The graphics were stunning.
Hooked up the wireless antenna and synched with my PC. Seamless!
Fired up an episode of Diggnation that I had on my hard drive. Wow - video quality sucks. I mean, really sucks. Sure that's an anomaly - tried a Sarah Silverman show I had - not really much better. Downloaded "300" from the Xbox marketplace in HD - marked difference - but it still wasn't true high def.
To make an increasingly long story short - ended up subscribing to DirectTv.
And it's amazing.