Own Worst Enemy

I honestly, HONESTLY went into Best Buy with the intention of buying a stop gap TV for $400ish....  but when the chips were down, I just couldn't bring myself to do it.  Especially when I know damn well that it'll be at least a year, probably more before I replaced it.

First things: why Best Buy?  Because I have a Best Buy Credit Card with pre-approved 18 interest free credit.  We don't have the money to splash on a TV at the moment, so it was whatever they had.

Second: what TV?  I did look at the Dynex, Westinghouse and RCA TVs... I really did, and they were just horrible.  I did look at the massive, no bevel OLED 240Hz TVs but even I can't justify $2000 on a TV.

So I've compromised.  I've gone for a Toshiba 46", 120Hz, 1080p LCD - which is an older tech, but correspondingly only about $175 more than I intended to spend anyway.  It's got 3 HDMIs and a PC Input, so everything can be connected now.  It's about half what I paid for the 42" LG 1080i LCD 5 years ago.  As that was part of my relocation "package" it's technology not my money I've lost.

On the plus side, now I can actually watch BluRay in the correct definition...

And I can dig out the HDMI cable for the X-Box too...

I Can Haz New TV

So, it's in the house and wired in.  First impressions are 'holy crap is that picture for real' - seriously, the quality of the picture is just stunning.  Way beyond what the old LG used to do.  OTOH the sound quality is very different...  I'm prepared to believe, for the time being that the quality on the LG was actually the problem but we got used to it.  It was certainly very muffled.  

Anyway, amazing things were running the BluRay in 1080p for the first time.  Gosh.  So THATS what all the fuss is about.  Even M who has been agnostic to the BluRay thing was shocked at the image improvement.

It's larger than the old TV but somehow looks smaller...  there's less surround and basically the entire thing is about a quarter the thickness.

Finally... the xBox, oh my poor xBox how I have crippled thee with the Composite connection...  the imagine on HDMI is just f'king amazing.

Anyway, I am taking a day off tomorrow to play video games and NOT think about cashflow, investors or Cloud Services Platforms.