Here's is my Popeye pop culture column from this week's FlipSide.
There's an evil presence lurking in my apartment as we speak, waiting for me to get home this evening. It's a big, black ominous thing that has teased and tortured me, keeping me awake for hours at night when I should've been sleeping. And the worst part? I'm the one who brought it in and gave it a home more than a month ago.
It all began around Christmas when I was fed up with not having an HDTV. I'm a bit of a technophile, and it pained me that while I had a PlayStation 2, Macbook with DVI (high-def capable) output and the finances for digital cable, I still had a junky old standard definition TV.
It was time for an upgrade, so I did some Internet-hunting and found a great deal on a 37-inch Westinghouse. I pulled out the credit card and voilà! A few days later, the delivery man was knocking at my door, dragging a box big enough to sleep in. After single-handedly pulling the behemoth box up a flight of stairs, I unwrapped the monolith of technology and plugged it in. My life hasn't been the same since.
Who would've thought that an additional 600 lines of pixels would make such a difference? (For those non-nerds out there, standard televisions have 480 lines of resolution that make up an image.
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Top of the line HD has 1,080).
My PlayStation games didn't look all that much better, but benefited from the widescreen aspect ratio. Plugging in my Macbook turned my laptop into a computer with a beautiful 37-inch monitor. But, oh, the cable ... the cable has been the real culprit. After the Comcast man came and set up my new cable box a couple days later, I have sadly found myself in front of the TV more in the last month than the previous six.
Does it matter what's on? Not really. "American Idol"? Can't stand the show. "American Idol" in high-def? Wait a sec ... this show isn't so bad. And let me tell you, you haven't lived until you've seen Pam's dimples in high-def on "The Office."
I'm not much of a nature or history buff, but yeesh, Discovery HD Theater is like the coolest channel ever. I don't care if the program is about underwater plant life in the Adriatic Sea, if it's in HD, I'm there. "Sunrise Earth," a program that is simply an hour of straight footage of some random early morning nature scene, can keep my attention as well as an episode of "Lost" (which, by the way, also looks awesome in HD).
Even WITF, Harrisburg's PBS affiliate, is less boring in high-def. I mean, really, how can you not eat up the idea of "Low Carb Cookworx" in HD?
And so my couch potato belly grows. HDTV has turned out to be the worst best gift I've ever given myself. And as we speak, it just sits, patiently, waiting for its owner in the dark. Please don't make me go home.
Hmm, I wonder if the Yule Log will be in high-def this year?
I too watch too much TV and am also in the market for a new 26" LCD.
So what is this about a cable box from Comcast ?
I have their cable and the ever growing bill (now $90)..
I simply plug in the cable connector, thats all - I do not want another bill.
I may do what many should do - pull the plug - and rejoin the human race...lol