The New TV Seems Like The Beginning

Yeah–this TV is going to cost us more money. As soon as I watched a little HDTV, SD (old school analog television) looked shabby.

IMG_2172-1.JPGA few weeks ago our family room TV died a horrific death during a thunderstorm. You can still see the picture, but the blue gun no longer lines up with the other two. It’s not a linear error either. Straight lines from the offset blue channel now form an arc. Everything appears on the TV twice… on the TV twice.

I did a little shopping and some online searching before deciding on a 47″ Vizio SV470XVT1A, which we bought this afternoon. Our old projection model was a hassle getting home. This LCD model fit nicely in the back of the SUV and Helaine and I were easily able to carry it in.

vizio-tv.jpgYeah–this TV is going to cost us more money. As soon as I watched a little HDTV, SD (old school analog television) looked shabby. We’ll need HDTV service and our SD DVR will need to become an HD DVR.

Actually, this whole episode sent me looking at AT&T’s U-Verse service. The website says it’s not available on my street. I suspect it is, because it’s available one street over and I’ve seen AT&T’s boxes in the neighborhood.

If you work for AT&T or know someone who does, will you help? Drop me a line.

The U-Verse package (including moving my home phone and Internet access over) looks like a good deal. Plus, AT&T’s DVR is in the midst of becoming a real media center, feeding any TV in the house from one location. It looks like they offer more than Comcast for less money. Gotta pay for the TV somehow.

Back to the TV for a second. It set up easily and has a very sharp picture. Right now it’s on the floor, but we’ve got a stand on order. This set was bought as much for its ability to fill a ‘built-in’ physical space as much as anything else.

4 thoughts on “The New TV Seems Like The Beginning”

  1. Enjoy it Geoff. I’m sure you’ve already found the local HD channels, which are included by law in your regular cable package. Comcasts HD isnt great, but its something. I think the regular HD package is an extra 10-15 bucks a month, including the HD capable box. Not too bad. As for DVR – I know you’re a Myth TV guy – I built a new MythTV box with onboard DVI output – hooked that to a DVI-HDMI cable and use that. It’s great for downloaded HD content, but I’ve yet to try it with an HD tuner – although I’ve read that it is possible to use the firewire port on the Comcast box and hook it up as a tuner. I got Linux to recognize the box, but didn’t go to much further than that – since MythTV has become my wife’s favorite item, I don’t have time to take it down and tinker with it for too long. Also google for the “HD HOMERUN” which is an HD tuner that streams HDTV over the LAN. MythTV also recognizes this stream as a tuner.

    You’re certainly right about one thing – As I said to my brother when I was telling him about HD – It’s not that HD looks so great in itself – it’s that when you switch back to SD you can really tell how horrible it is in comparison.

  2. I was supposed to have AT&T Uverse installed at my home yesterday. For what you get the price is great and I was thrilled to have another option to cable other than a dish. The installer was scheduled to arrive between 10 and noon and at 12:30 when I was still waiting I called to find out what was up. After waiting on hold for more than an hour I was told that my appointment had been cancelled due to a problem transferring my existing telephone number from my current provider to AT&T. Nice of them to let me know! I told them I had taken a day off from work for this and they were quite unapologetic. I called back to see if could speak to someone a little more customer friendly and said I really wanted the service but they had to be able to send someone out this week or I would just cancel my order. Once again the were unmoved by the fact I was inconvenienced and told me even if I wanted a new phone number from AT&T it would be three weeks, after I had already waited three weeks from when I placed the original order. Even after all of this I almost went ahead and scheduled another install date but I was too wary that this incident was a harbinger of things to come and decided to stick with my current provider. I’ve had AT&T for cell phone service dating back to before they were AT&T (and before they were Cingular) and knew their customer service was iffy, but this was the last straw. Now when my service contract expires later this year I think I’ll go to a new mobile carrier. Not to let my bad experience influence your choice but I thought it was story worth sharing.

  3. Geoff,

    It’s funny that I was looking at the U-Verse also this week, and the box on the pole is 300 feet away, yet I am not able to get it as of now. Call Rob L. at AT&T. He has it in his house and I loved it. The pic really pops on the screen.

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