You Want to Touch it, Don't You?

There may be some for whom this is not a remarkable experience, but for me, getting to have a serious conversation about buying a TV that looks like the monolith from "2001: A Space Odyssey" was like being Dave Bowman and finding myself in that formal bedroom from another planet.

It was like driving your clunker to the dealership and testing one of their newer models:  after you're finished your clunker seems all the more clunkier.

I have a TV, but I might as well try and watch movies on an Etch-A-Sketch after looking at what's possible with LED technology.  My TV is the first job out of school TV that I lavishly purchased with my tax refund.  It's has a whopping 32" glass picture tube that, I am here to tell you, is no fun to carry by yourself up 5 flights of stairs.  

When I got it home, I was thrilled.  It dwarfed both my apartment and all other TVs I had ever experienced, but now, it is dead to me.  I don't know how and I can't say when, but I am going to have to end our two decade long relationship because my head has been turned by a younger model.

I got to have this conversation about flat screen TV thanks to the generosity of one of our donors and the cooperation of our friends at Best Buy in Heath.

Armed with the donor's seed money, we were able to negotiate a discounted price on a 42" Westinghouse LED TV.  Imagine, 10" larger than my soon-to-be ex and it uses 20% less electricity than a 100w light bulb.

We have paired this TV with a Blu-Ray disc player and the necessary cable:  a quality picture cries out to be seen and enjoyed so VHS just wasn't going to cut it.

When I was in the store finalizing the transaction, I asked one of the sales associates what would be the best disc to show off what the TV can do.  His first answer surprised me:  "Speed Racer."  He wasn't talking about the cartoon series, but the disastrous live action movie that came out in 2008.

My face must have reflected my inner skeptic, because he said, "No, really."  He went on to tell me that the DVD had won some industry award for sound, or picture, or something.  But, it didn't matter because they didn't have any in stock.

Instead of settling for something borrowed from a Japanese TV show from the mid-1960s, we went with something blue, Pandora blue.

As the blue maraschino cherry on this audio visual cupcake, we are including the 3-disc collector's edition of James Cameron's "Avatar."

You don't have to love the movie, but you will be powerless to resist the picture and sound coming from this hypnotically powerful flat black monolith.

Resistance is futile.