January 31, 2008

DIGITAL PEACE

I just knew that I was going to create a problem. Santa brought a PVR and a full-meal-deal cable package this past Christmas that has brought great disturbance to the force. The installer decided that this new piece of hardware should be hooked up to the best TV in the house which turns out to be the big screen in the basement. This has been a closely held secret for the past three years, thus allowing the head of the household, in all of his manly glory, to roam the digital universe in peace and solitude, confident in his battery-draining clicking of the channel changer.

The PVR has brought an unsettling number of tourists to the island in search of Star Trek and Oprah and we (the royal we) now understand that there are approximately 125 hours of recordings of this historically significant evidence of life in the universe. The original intent of the big screen was to be able to view hockey, some travel documentaries, the occasional blockbuster movie (if an invitation had been extended), perhaps an interesting cooking show, from which a recipe could be stolen and the Planet Earth DVD's. This invasion of the sacred male sanctorum has involved the wholesale movement of most furniture items, the banishment of the treadmill to the furnace area, feminine claims to certain chairs and lamps, the need to remove dirty glasses, plates and fast food containers and a certain traffic congestion that brings great disruption to the natural order of things.

It is now crystal clear that the genie has been let out of the lamp and that it will not return unless a significant inducement is offerred. Further to the cable guy's desire to hook up the PVR to the best TV in the house, it seems that a visit to a suitable store of electronics and all things mysterious, will be in order. I have been conducting extensive research on such things as LCD, plasma (not just your father's blood supply apparently), 1080i vs. 1080P, processor speeds and HDMI inputs (are you not impressed?) and I have determined that to return peace to the planet will require the purchase of a new television with all of these above mentioned features, for placement in the main floor family room and a reconnection of the PVR to the household's best TV. Some of the specifications and benefits are still unknown to me, for instance does anyone actually know what a pixel is, and can mere mortals see one, and what does it do, and.........?

No comments:

Post a Comment