upgrading.

on black friday, we joined the ranks of the HDTV set.

our tv had been fucked up for ... at least a year and a half, i guess. maybe even longer. we turn it on about once a month. sometimes, it was fine, like around the end of october when we watched casino royale without a glitch. other times, it was not so happy, like when we were trying to play mario kart with friends, and it decided we wanted to watch a dvd instead. and then maybe cable. and then mario kart again. and then cable. and then a dvd. and then cable. and then it needed all its channels re-programmed. and then there were the times when it turned itself on randomly. and then off. and then on. and then off. in quick succession. eventually, we took to just leaving it unplugged and plugging it in whenever we wanted to watch anything.

so, with the digital broadcast switch coming up, and a possessed television, we decided to take advantage of victims of the poor economy and buy an HDTV at a ridiculous discount (we missed the even deeper newegg.com discount because we were doing research).

also, we bought a PS3 to go with it using another black friday bundle discount.

surprisingly, there isn't much buyer's remorse. it was sort of more than we can really afford (a savings withdrawal is forthcoming), but we both agreed that if we were going to do it, we were going to do it right, and buy a nice tv now instead of a cheap, shitty one now and then a nice one down the line. the PS3 has a surprisingly effective upscaler for both games and DVDs, and the tv itself has a pretty nice scaler, making standard def broadcast TV and wii games also look pretty good (the only disappointment is okami, which is apparently too detailed and pretty to upscale well). yay for playing 4-player mario kart and actually being able to see what you're doing.

it even fits on our old ikea tv stand.

next bit of research: what do you do with an old CRT TV that you are unable to donate because it's got a fucked up logic board?