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Sun 5 Nov, 2006 08:10 am
Sorry kids, this thread is not what you thought!
Anyhow, I A2K in a 10x12 room which contains the computer, a couple of chest of drawers, a sofa bed, and a TV. Up until last night, the TV was a Zenith 19" 1987 model. The picture is perfect, the sound satisfactory, and I have never had one bit of trouble with it. It was the perfect size.
On many evenings, I would curl of on the sofa bed, and watch reruns of Law & Order. It was a comfy little womb, and I found the entire experience very relaxing, and a great way to end the day.
We have a 50" TV in the living room, and are seriously considering buying an even larger, high definition model. That TV is connected to high quality, outside speakers, a subwoofer, an amplifier, VHS, DVD and JPEG players. It's a great set, but I don't get the warm, fuzzy feelings that I experience when I am in my little room. (I also like the idea of being able to check A2K during the commercials.)
Anyhow, my husband decided that we should dip our toe in "hi def" by starting in the small room. I figured that since the new sets are in widescreen, that I wanted a TV where the picture was as least as tall as my 19" set. I figured that a 26-27 inch TV would be just about right.
My husband gets the idea that for a few bucks more, we can get a much bigger picture. So we start researching 37" sets. We go to the store, and I like the 37" set that we have picked out. The problem is, that the more that I look at it, the more that I realize that it is MUCH TOO BIG. Although it would fit in the space allotted to it, I felt that it would overpower the room.
I see a great 26" set on clearance that I felt would be perfect. It was last year's model of the Sony XBR series, the high end. He finally talks me into a new 32" set, from the same company, but not the high end. He claims that the 32" set is "brighter".
Anyhow, we installed the TV last night. We have not yet gotten the hi-def cable box, so the picture is ok, but not great. The TV looks fine in the space, but the whole ambience of the experience has changed. I really liked the little old TV, and the comforting feeling that it provided.
Why did I write this thread? I dunno. It is not an important issue in the scheme of things, but I had to get it off my chest. Thanks for listening!
i much prefer a small size screen, tv 27 inch, perfectly fine for viewing, an as for my computer monitor, a 17 inch flat screen, running the highest resolution my graphics card can manage, and then i shrink the image down so i'm not even using the full screen, makes everything nice and crisp and pretty (thank god my eyes are still good enough to manage the print size)
Due to poor eyesight, for me, bigger is often better.
i expect i won't be able to manage like this forever (but i live in hope)
Yin/yang. Guys often seem to want BIG equipment (and yes <giggle> that might be Freudian), whereas for women the size doesn't always count. The interior designer in me says that the screen should be proportional to the distance that you sit from it. I don't know what that proportion is, but I know it exists. IOW, the smaller the room or the closer you sit from the TV, the smaller the screen should be.
I recently bought a 32" flat screen TV (upgrade from my perfectly fine 1982 Sony Trinitron!) for my living room. It's fine. A (male) friend was over shortly after I got it. He read the specs, and talked me into connecting it to my computer as a monitor. When we turned it on and I sat down at my desk, I felt like my eyes were being blasted. It was very clear but felt like I was being enveloped in the whatever was on the screen -- and not in a good way. I kept rolling the chair back from the desk, as far as the keyboard would allow and it still wasn't far enough. Even he had to admit that, although 'awesome' for games, it was too much for daily work.
I've down-sized my television over the years. My puter monitor is about the smallest you can get without using a laptop. I don't want the equipment to be the room. I want the stuff/equipment to be something in the room.
The thought of a media room totally freaks me out.
ehBeth--
I'm with you. Phoenix wanted a window on the world in her refuge, not the whole world in living technicolor with bells and whistles.
I like cocoons and cocooning. I'm also fairly adverse to change and often take a don't fix what isn't broken approach to my life. It would bother me if my comfy cocoon was changed for the sake of change but I'd adjust to it eventually - probably once the feeling of newness wore off.
My "Media Room" - the livingroom, really, features a relatively largescreen HD TV, which does have a superb picture and is part of an elaborate home theater rig with allsortsa bells and whistles and gewgaws. The bedroom tvs are conventional (not HD), varying in size from 32" down to 20", and I find them perfectly satisfactory for casual viewing and/or dozing off to. My office has a 21" conventional TV in one corner, with a much smaller conventional TV in a hutch shelf on my desk (there are a couple pictures of my desk here on A2K - too lazy to look for 'em right now, though), for casual viewing while I'm at my 'puters. The larger TV is rarely on, though its not uncommon for the little TV to be on, volume muted, and one of my monitors displaying 2 or more other TV prgrams, also muted, via a 'puter's Tuner card ... so I can track news and financial info during the business day.
As far as I'm concerned, HDTV is marvelous - I love it - but I don't much see the point to it unless what's going on on the screen is the focus of an overall entertainment experience ... with actual HD program material and multi-channel surround sound.
HDMI is digital, so unless you get a faulty cable, the crappy one should look just like the more expensive one. Cabling analog signals is where you gain picture and sound quality with better cabling.
32" is about the smallest size worth buying in HD. Any smaller than that and the difference in picture quality over standard digital cable (480p) isn't going to be noticable.
Also, if you live in a major metro market, there are sh-tloads of HD signals in the air, you just need an antenna if the set is HD ready. They are flat and look like propellers - Radio Shack sells "HD" antennas for around $75. Plus they're small enough to easily conceal indoors or out.
Phoenix--
Imagine your Golden Age years if your husband didn't have hobbies and enthusiasms?
Noddy- At one time I could get really excited about improving our sound system. It got to the point where I backed off, probably because my interest in the subject is far less intense than my husbands'.
Now don't get me wrong. I love music, especially classical music. Have you ever had to sit through multiple playings of the same two minutes of music, with the expectation that you were expected to critique all the differences, as various components were exchanged? After a few decades, the whole thing got very, very old.
I love to listen to a piece of music, just for the sheer pleasure of it, in its entirety, and not have to give my opinion on the relative clarity of the high frequencies, the rise time, or the decay. To me, music is an art, not a science. The equipment is simply a means to an end.
For years my audio strategy was to buy the low end of the elite lines. When rugrats punched in the passive subwoofers I was glad I took this tack.
Phoenix, if you can tell the difference between a cheap 5' HDMI cable and a gold plated one, I've got some investment quality swampland in northern Michigan I'd like to show you.
Phoenix--
You have my sympathy. Intensively admiring someone else's hobby horse can be exhausting.