Posts from — May 2007

Well, I’ve taken the plunge and ventured into the world of flat panel televisions.

My trusty old 20″ Magnavox TV finally died. Bought with money we received from our wedding, this standby piece has been relegated to the bedroom since 2003′s purchase of a 65″ Mitsubishi widescreen projection TV. As such, it was pretty much on light-duty – only getting any amount of use when I was traveling and Heather needed some noise in the room to get to sleep. It just couldn’t compare to the big screen on the first floor. Since my new job doesn’t require as much travel, the TV has been nearly unused for several months. But, a recent week-long stint in Las Vegas for the National Association of Broadcasters Show, simply brought the old TV to its knees. It died a sad death of high-shrieked static noise. Sleep well, old friend…

Now, what to do? I just couldn’t see spending any money on something that wouldn’t last a while and the placement of the old TV in the bedroom was really awkward. Really, the room screamed out for a flat panel, mounted to the wall, directly across from the bed. Oh great muse of decoration, twist my arm again, please!

So, I did some research and began shopping online and in stores and settled on a Panasonic 42″ Flat-Panel Plasma HDTV Model: TH-42PX75U. I loved it! It was the right price ($1500 at Best Buy and 10% off) and it was also the clear winner in picture quality in that price range. An excellent buy. So, I bought one.

It sucked.

The first unit that I brought home whined louder than an ill-mannered child in a never ending art museum. I think it might have actually been louder than the old Magnavox I was trying to replace. Well, clearly that wasn’t going to work.

The second unit that I brought home had severe menu burn-in all along the left hand side of the screen. It was so bad that I could easily read the words “Setup Menu” during a dark scene during a movie.  Aw, crap…

The very nice folks at BestBuy offered to order me another one or to have one brought in from a neighboring store. While their customer service was very good, I wasn’t about to take a chance on what seemed to be a bad product.  No, thank you, I don’t think so. The units that I had were manufactured in March of 2007 – a big aluminum sticker said so right on the back. Being a new model for Panasonic, these units were hot off the presses and clearly they are having a few issues with production quality in the early units – at least in the 42″ model. A neighbor of mine has a 50″ that looks and works beautifully.

So, what to do, what to do… Do I return it and not get a TV right now, or get something smaller, larger, what?

Being the cheapo that I am, I ended up negotiating with them on the Pioneer 42″ 4270-HD Plasma instead. They didn’t want a $1500 return, and by the time I finished the negotiations and returned the power cleaner they talked me into buying to stop the “humming” of the first unit, this beauty only cost me $150 more than the Panasonic. Not bad for the model that I would have picked originally if it wasn’t for the cost.

The Pioneer has amazing, very life-like color. A bit richer than the Panasonic, and certainly more realistic than LCD. It makes no noise whatsoever and looks absolutely phenomenal. As all plasma’s do, during the day it can suffer from some glare, because it has a glass front, as compared to the plastic front of LCD’s. That’s OK with me though, as this unit was for the bedroom and doesn’t get used during the day.

As I mentioned, my intention was to put it on the wall – and after testing it out for a few days to make sure it worked, etc. I started the process of hanging the beast. The $99 medium tilt bracket (also includes a slim profile bracket) that they sell at Costco did the trick in no time – and it was $100 less expensive than the BestBuy equivalent. The hardest part was running the wires through the wall, as I ran the power cord through as well, so it would have a completely “cordless” look to it. A decent sized HDMI cable running to a sweet Motorola HD-DVR, a set of component video and TOSLINK to my slightly older DVD player and things were right as rain.

See… Everything works out for the best. Now I have a GOOD reason to buy the Logitech Harmony 1000!

Part of me wants to say – “Can’t we all just get along?”

Watch this and see why:  Immigration Watchdog Video

I know that a lot of what’s in the video above is simple politicking at an amplified level to meet the rhetoric coming from the “other side”, but this kind of stuff still makes me shake my head. Why immigrate to a new country and then try to make it just like the one you left? Even crazier is to ILLEGALLY immigrate to a new country and then complain that people won’t let you make it like the one you just left. I’m sorry, I just don’t undertand that.

As a resident of greater L.A., I’ve come to greatly appreciate and respect Mexican culture. They are largely a hard-working, family-oriented and God-honoring people – all traits I think we are in desperate short supply of here in the States. I guess what I don’t have a handle on though – and I’d argue that we as a Nation don’t have a handle on yet either – is how many Latinos share the antagonistic, near treasonous views espoused on that video?

That’s the real question. And, frankly, I’m not quite certain that I really want an answer to it just yet. Ignorance is bliss…for a time.

I was pretty quiet about the Imus thing.  In a nutshell, what he said was certainly unkind, but the outcry was unbelievable and overkill in my opinion.  I’m amazed that it took people at least 3 days to add the “ho” term to the complaints about what he said.  Apparently insulting the quality of one’s hair is more important than the quality of one’s sexual purity.   Hmm – oh yeah, this is America, isn’t it?  Silly me.

What I really don’t get, is how there is no major outcry about this kind of stuff:

Rage Against the Machine musicians tell concert-goers that Bush administration members should be hung, tried and SHOT!

Go ahead, tell me there is no disparity here.  Are we, as a society, really more concerned about a borderline derogatory remark (the hair, not the ho) than we are about individuals wanting to kill our high-ranking elected officials?  That’s nuts.  Why doesn’t this bother more people?

You can try to explain it away by saying that Rage Against The Machine is a bunch of has-been, anarchists that nobody listens to anyway, and they probably didn’t even mean it, etc.   But that just doesn’t hold water – Imus is…er…was, a shock-jock comedian that, YIKES, made fun of somebody.  Where’s the difference?  Only in the public’s reaction to the incident…

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not trying to condone what Imus said. It really wasn’t a nice thing to say – but last I knew, he didn’t make a name for himself by being nice.  All I’m asking for is parity.  If “we” can excuse Rage (which clearly “we” can, because this isn’t a front page story), why couldn’t “we” excuse Imus?  There is no good answer there…

In my opinion, we would be better off as a society if we focused on policing our own unkind words rather than the unkind words of others.