LSD and TVs

It's enough. I mean, I've had enough. Never in my life did I think that buying a new television would be so complicated. Am I the only one NOT excited about this electronic progressiveness? What happened to just buying a plain old tubed television. Now there are small tubes, big tubes, tubeless, Plasma (isn't that part of red blood cells?), LCD (a derivative of LSD perhaps?), Rear projections (huh??), Conventional (that sounds a little familiar), or Combos. Wouldn't that be easy: I'll take Combo #2. Yeah, well it's not that way.

4:3 and 16:9, though mathematical in their interpretations of aspect ratio and such, are now used to refer to the sizes of the picture on the screen. Oh, and then you have 16:9 enhanced which is basically a squarish TV trying to give the impression of being widescreen (you know, a widescreen wannabe). We have been told many times that 4:3 screens (the squarish-looking tvs that we have been used to for years) are on their way out. Within 1 1/2 years or so, a squarish tv will project a black line on top and bottom of the picture, because most programming is being produced and fed in 16:9 (true widescreen) mode. That's the wave of the future.

I know there are people out there that can just buy a large, widescreen Plasma or LCD TV and not flinch at the price. We're not in that position, but we also do not want to buy a gasping dinosaur of a tv that will be irritating to watch in a matter of 18 months or so. So, we'll keep studying on it, asking questions, gaining electronic knowledge until perhaps we fry our minds!!

On Christmas morning, our 55" large, black, big screen (not wide screen - there IS a difference) gave up the ghost. While listening to Christmas music on one of the music channels, the crisis hit! I was downstairs with the girls cooking breakfast. The aroma of sausage and pancakes was dripping off the end of my nose. However, my husband, who is forever a turbo banshee when it comes to smelling anything wrong electrically (there's a childhood incident that caused this fear in Jeff), came running down the stairs hollering, "Turn everything off. Turn everything OFF! Something 's frying!" (Need I say what I thought was frying at the moment?)

He ran around the room with his nostrils doing types of calisthenics that I didn't know nostrils could do. Finally, he reached the television, and with satisfaction in his eyes, he quickly "pulled the plug" on the old electronic codger. This television actually came with the house when we bought it three years ago. The previous owners were leaving the country and that huge monster of a TV was not something you could put in your carryon, for sure! So they left it. It was already having a few issues, but we were just thankful to use it for this long.

It's not a huge deal that we don't have a television downstairs, except when our married daughter and her husband come, our other daughters decide to watch TV, and invite whoever else knocks at our door. (Our rotating front door is a subject for a future blog!) One night last week, while I was fighting the flu, I counted 8 other people in the room besides me! Hello....I have the flu - does anybody care? Guess not.

Anyway, we really like having our standard ole 27" upstairs, but it just may be that it has to go downstairs before long, even though it is sure to get lost in the mere size of our family room.
A larger screen would be nice when we have college students in, but that is yet to be determined.

HD-capable. HD-ready. Integrated tuner. Digital. S-video cables. All that jazz. It's enough to make my head spin!

Actually, the more I look at TVs, the variety that's out there, and the prices of them, LSD doesn't seem like a bad idea! Perhaps the drug-induced aura will cause our little 27" to seem like a 55"!!