I acquired my new TV yesterday. I had a certain price range in my head that I expected it to be, then was pleasantly surprised to find it was much lower at Fry’s when I was wandering around. I tried to buy it Friday night, but discovered my debit card has a daily spending limit. The medium-sized bank in Oklahoma I still use does not have 24-hour customer support I could call to re-adjust it. Saturday morning I got it approved and headed back to Fry’s. On the drive up, my salesman called me to let me know the TV was put on sale this weekend for a President’s Day sale — $500 off! Since the extended warranty was a function of the retail value, it too dropped $140. This tickled me to no end, I was going to be able to buy it for $1000 less than what I was saving up for.
The TV is amazing. It adds an order of magnitude of improvement to the whole brain rotting television watching experience. One end of my apartment is all glass doors and windows which projects a considerable amount of glare on any TV in the morning. While I was in the showroom I took my flashlight to see if I could get any nasty glare off this unit. I couldn’t there, and I don’t get any in my apartment.
From my apartment I can pick up at least 6 digital local broadcast channels: KLRU/PBS, KEYE/CBS, KXAN/NBC, KNVA/CW, KVUE/ABC, KTBC/FOX. Even though most of the programming is non-HD, digital reception of the stations is superior to the analog reception I watched before. A new antenna also lets me pick up other channels I didn’t before, mostly en Español
In addition to the image quality, there are several other things that are just flat out nice features. The unit takes my many inputs for DVD and game consoles, I no longer have to get up to flick a switchbox to change what I want to do. All audio now runs through the TV, so I can finally control volume remotely after 15 years. It also takes me down to one remote control for all my gadgets without buying some expensive universal remote. Mitsubishi has what they call “NetCommand IR”, which is a set of IR emitters you stick in front of your DVD player, VCR, and other gizmos. You program a mapping of remote control buttons into the TV, then you can control whatever device is selected on the input. For example, when the DVD input is selected, the play/stop/pause buttons work the DVD player; when the VCR input is selected, the same buttons work the VCR. You don’t even have to flip a switch on the remote. Brilliant!
I must toss my VCR though. VHS movies look absolutely horrible on the big screen. I need to get DVDs of my favorite VHS movies and get rid of the tapes.
