My New TV

My new TV is great. It looks simple, but there's a lot more to it than you might realize.

It was not easy to buy. I bought my old TV with a roommate. We walked into Nobody Beats the Wiz in 1993, and the conversation went something like this:

"Hi. Can I help you?"

"Yeah, we need a TV."

"What kind?"

"Something about $300."

"OK, how about this one?"

And we walked out with a Goldstar TV that served me well for over 15 years. The only special feature the salesman mentioned was something called a comb filter. To this day I don't know what a comb filter does.

My new TV is bigger, brighter, crisper, and more expensive than that old one. I put a lot of time into choosing it. There was Internet research for hours, comparison shopping, looking up customer reviews, asking friends for their opinions, reading what the experts had to say. Even got a demo.

It has dozens of inputs, and it's not easy to figure out what they're all for. Long gone are the days when all I had to do was plug in the cable cord to the cable hole. With my old TV, there was only one jack. If I really wanted to get fancy I could connect it to a VCR. Now I have to navigate jacks of all different shapes and technologies and read the tiny description below each one. Even then educated guesses are required. I wish I had the manual.

My new TV has a really complicated remote with lots of buttons. I'm not sure what they all do. Before, I didn't used to have a remote at all. The sound on my old TV faded out at critical moments. The screen was small. It was heavy and thick. But it brought me many fond memories.

We watched Ray Houghton score in the World Cup to shock Italy. As I leapt to my feet cheering, a full keg cup smashed into my chest. "Ireland scores, beer flies!" screamed Angus from Ireland.

I learned to appreciate the humor of Beavis and Butthead for the first time when they announced KISS is "pretty cool for a bunch of mimes."

I remember one night my roommate and I stumbled upon "Ed." In one scene the hot girl that hapless Ed couldn't get was heading out with a biker dude. Ed stopped her and asked if she knew why she always fell for the rebellious types.

Yes, she said, "Ed, you're the safe one. I want some adventure."

No, he responded, "He's the safe one. You know exactly how that relationship will end."

My roommate and I hoisted a cold can of Bud in Ed's honor.

I watched that TV the old-fashioned way: at the mercy of whatever was on at the moment. With my new TV, there's a lot more planning and organization. It's plugged into a DVR so I now watch shows I didn't know I was missing in the first place. The DVR applies just a hint of psychological pressure to think about TV in advance. It wants me to have priorities, taste, and forethought. The more I make commitments and focus on what's really going to make me happy in a nearly infinite universe of possibilities, the more I enjoy my new TV. I'm getting used to it.

There's still more to learn after months of using my new TV. I expect to keep discovering advanced features for years to come.

My new TV is thin, flat and elegant. I'm sure the TV makers will keep coming up with bigger screens, new designs, and sexy enhancements to tempt me to upgrade. But my new TV is all I need.

I love my new TV.