Ok, so we're buying this
television for Dad. Not Mom because she'd probably get mad and really
wouldn't appreciate it. But Dad hasn't quite made up his mind. We go to
Costco to look at some of their televisions. They're all HDTV Monitors
or EDTVs (Enhanced Ditigal Television, which don't accept HDTV input,
all they do is sharpen NTSC signals which is ridiculous to my mind).
Eventually we convince Dad to get the 42" LCD Projection HDTV.
Drive back to Circuit City. Steph gets a CC credit card so she can take
advantage of the 18 month no interest financing. Television, 4 years of
support, and a Maxim Magazine television stand (it's all cloudy glass
and metal) come out to a bit over $3000. I pay for about $1180.
Oops, the television won't fit into Steph's Forester. It has to be
transported top side up otherwise we could fit it in sideways. Oh well,
we take the television stand and Dad calls around trying to find an
available friend who has a truck. When we get home Christopher and I
start building the television stand. Instructions are clear and by the
time we're done we also the television.
We set everything up. The television and stand are quite big and it
doesn't look quite right but I'm sure we'll get used to it. We hook up
the inside antenna to it and turn it on. The television scans for
channels and finds the analog and digital stations. Digital looks
really good. Analog merely ok though bigger since this is a bigger
television.
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There are some problems. We
can only get good digital signals from about half of the stations. The
other stations cut in and out, quite disappointing. You can adjust the
antenna but you don't want to constantly do that as you're changing
channels. Some stations have multiple digital channels which is kind of
weird. Dad's favorite channel, Univision 19 comes in quite badly though
eventually we get it to an ok state but it's still worse than on the
old television.
The television has 7 video inputs. We set up the DVD player on video 1
and leave the VCR hooked into the RF feed. It changes video sources
slowly so it's a bit inconvenient going from video 1 all the way back
to broadcast. We also have audio out to the stereo system but dad only
turns it on occasionally. With this television you have to turn off the
speakers for this to work which is an extra step.
So Steph got an email back from Amazon. We place the order and then go
through some form so they can manually refund the discount. At this
point I'm way way way over budget and have very little in my checking
account. I'll have to not spend any money for the next month or two.
We watch Ocean's Eleven on the television and it looks great. You can
set the television to display in normal, full, widescreen, widescreen
zoom. Mostly it's for standard NTSC to fill out the screen though it
looks funny. But you can also do a bit of it with widescreen broadcasts
which I don't really see the point.
Dinner was Dad's tamales, which are quite good. Didn't use to like them
but when I went to college I missed that kind of food.
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