…like sugar-free chocolate.
I am an admitted home theater snob. Among my circle of friends, they know that if they invite me to their homes to watch a movie that I could watch at my house, I’ll often have a moment of hesitation before I respond which betrays the fact that I am that asshole who wants to scream:
That said, my Samsung 46″ LCD TV that I bought back when I remodeled my house has been on the blink. It won’t power up, and given that I’m paying for DirecTV, and have a a ton of over-the-air HD TV shows (including Redskins games I’ve recorded) on the Powermac G5 (via an El Gato Systems EyeTV), and a Sony PS3, well…
I need my TV to be working.
The story as to why it isn’t working is a comedy of errors. When I plunked down $6605 (the MSRP was $9999, so I like to think I got a deal) for my Samsung LTP-468W I also bought an extended warranty through Repair Master (a.k.a., WarranTech).
The original TV I bought had a weird issue where the backlighting as uneven. Watching a bright scene in a movie was like looking through the bars of a jail cell… with one bar creating a blur in the middle of my vision.
To their credit, Samsung exchanged the TV for me… and when the next one showed up with several dead pixels (including a few in the top center of the screen), they exchanged it yet again for the unit I have now.
Of course, along the way, I didn’t get paperwork with each unit — and so I’ve had to reach out to the kind folks at Samsung to send me a document that explains the heritage of the unit that is currently defective so that the extended warranty will be honored.
So now I have to wait. And likely watch the Superbowl on something else. Something else being my, ummm, other HDTV.
See, when I bought a Wii, I quickly realized that a 20″ TV was too small to really enjoy the games with multiple players. Maybe it’s because I’m slowly going blind. Or maybe it’s the HD-elitist snob in me (as Homer Simpson once said in regards to standard-definition TV: “Awww! This is like rubbing dirt in my eyes!”), so I saw a deal on a 32″ LCD TV by Syntax Olevia for $600 and pulled the trigger.
Now, one thing I know is that for someone who isn’t big on A/V gear or movies, the size of a TV is a non-issue. I used to think it was a gender issue, but I’ve met a few women (like Liz Barone, my ex’s best friend) who super-sized her TV purchase with a 60″ Sony RPTV. It seems that if people really enjoy sports or movies, they tend to prioritize the quality (and size) of their TV accordingly.
So… submitted for your perusal is this photo of my 32″ LCD TV taking over the duties of the 46″ LCD TV hovering behind it.
The 32″ LCD TV is adequate. I will be just fine with it. It beats nothing. And yet… it is about as enjoyable for me as eating sugar-free chocolate when I crave the real thing.
Seriously, I need to eat some cake.
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