At some point last week, I think my family slipped me a mickey, because the next thing I knew I was accepting delivery from Best Buy of a 51-freaking-inch plasma TV. To give you an idea of how crazy that seems to me, suffice it to say that it was replacing a 27-inch Sony Trinitron—and I think the 27 inches indicates how far the tube stuck out in back.
This TV went straight down the basement—we still have a modest (32-inch) flat screen that lives in a cabinet in the living room, since I'm not one to have a big TV be the center of attention in our main upstairs room. Pete, especially, is in heaven, because now his Xbox games are in HD and I guess all the blood shows up even better! (Nah, you know me—I'm still pretty strict about what games he's allowed to get, specifically no uber-realistic war games. The people who work at GameStop are very helpful when it comes to explaining why a particular game gets an M—for Mature Audiences—rating. Sometimes it's horrific combat violence and sometimes it's just sci-fi violence but with plenty of cartoony gore.) Anyhow, the plan already sort of paid off, because yesterday he had several friends over after school, which was a first—he pretty much always goes to someone else's house because they have a better TV. I wanted to create a basement playroom that the kids would want to invite their friends to. We even got a few beanbag chairs. Woo-hoo, are we fun or what?
Anyhow, the Comcast rep at Best Buy had said that we wouldn't need to pay extra for this TV's HD box since we already have HD upstairs, and we have Comcast for cable, phone, and Internet. But when Andy got to the Comcast store to pick up the HD box, they said it would be another $10/month. I guess the guy felt Andy's pain, though, because he said that he'd throw in a DVR and give us all of the channels. All of them. Yes, HBO, Starz, Cinemax, Showtime, etc. etc.—all those channels that we've lived without for all these years. That, plus the On-Demand thing that we already have, and Netflix ... well, let's just say that if I hear anyone in this house complain that "there's nothing on," I'll scream.
Over the weekend Andy, Pete, and I watched The Bourne Legacy, which stars Jeremy Renner as Aaron Cross, the newest super-spy. It was as good as these movies usually are—exciting and fast-paced but not exactly something you'd think about for too much longer afterward. Oh, and big. It was really big.
Sadly, there will still be "nothing on!" We took the plunge and got a huge TV a year or two ago, and I can't imagine how we ever lived without it. I had them haul away our old Sony Trinitron when they delivered it.
Posted by: Elena | January 08, 2013 at 11:29 AM