Saturday we turned on our TV....the 19 inch model we bought at Montgomery Wards as a floor model back in, what, 1998?...and Old Faithful showed us just a bunch of weird lines, followed by a funny smell. When we tried to turn it off it wouldn't turn off.
So now we are in the market for a TV.
Every year for the past several years, we would play the game of TV Agonization every Thanksgiving Week. This consisted of looking at every Black Friday ad on the Black Friday tracking websites, selecting one or two sets we might want and going almost to the brink of purchasing. Last year I literally had the TV order all set up on Amazon.com, then decided to do something else and chickened out at the last minute. This year I said to ourself, "how much longer is that TV going to last?".
It was almost a point of honor, not going the modern HDTV route.
So now, if we want a TV, we need to shop for one, right in the middle of the holiday shopping rush. And that shopping experience has changed greatly since 1998.
Shopping for a TV - in the old days - would consist of looking at the pictures at the local appliance store, then reading Consumer Reports and bringing home a set. Total effort - a couple of hours?
Today shopping consists of answering hundreds of questions....screen size? refresh rate? LCD or Plasma? 2D or 3D? Number of HDMI hookups? Internet ready? Store brick and mortar or online? and then browsing lots of websites, and ending up with one gigantic pounding headache.
So far I could care less about the lack of TV because I have my trusty computer but dear spouse is having major withdrawal symptoms. I lost track of the number of complaints about not being able to watch the Giants game yesterday.
Thinking back to our newlywed days when we lived without a TV set for months (more than once) on end for various reasons, it's tempting in a way to do that again...but we are too hooked on instant information, The Weather Channel's Waking Up with Al and watching DVD's. So we will get that TV.
And maybe we'll even enjoy the experience, once we get over the shock.
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