Adventures in TVland

6/2006: Ghost town of Bagdad, CA. Sprung board to local school house.

It was near 100F today. Thank God for central air conditioning. So, Friday night our big screen TV went out. It had spontaneously been turning off by itself. Iwas just sure it had to be a ghost or something, but turns out it was the power board, whatever that is. But it was still working, just had to keep turning it back on. Friday that went bye-bye. So, today was spent TV shopping. Eventually we settled on a 42" HDTV Hitachi Plasma Flatscreen. Getting it where we wanted it was a mess! Lets just say that we had to bring in our picnic table, stand on it, lift the TV up to that point then raise it above our heads. Augh. Nightmare. Got a nice tricep workout! So, we get it all rigged up and I tell you what. The picture was thoroughly disappointing. The quality wasn't what I expected. Every channel looked like a 4x6 picture overblown to a 8x10. It was really washed out. We called the store (because of course it never looks like that in the store). We had gotten the TV with the most resolution and we don't have HDTV channels. Something about the lines having to duplicate because the video being inputed had to double itself, blah, blah, blah. Unless we ordered HDTV and only watched the EIGHT channels supporting HDTV, this was the picture we were going to get. So, long story short, we decided it wasn't worth the $$$$ watching a grainy/blurry TV. So, we had to take it all down, repackage it up, and in the end, we now have a regular 32" LCD flatscreen and it's 110 times better and $1100 cheaper. It's pretty sweet. Having had a 52" big screen to this is a change, but the quality is so much better, it balances out.

Friday afternoon a smile returned to my face that hasn't been there in quite some time. A smile, until now, I wasn't sure would return the way it has. I'm glad it's back and I hope it sticks around for awhile...