No Longer Your Parents’ TV
I’m old enough to remember the days of dial-tuner TVs (19″ was huge, 25″ was nirvana) capable of receiving exactly 12 channels. For those of you too young to remember, this was VHF channels 2-13. Of course, those were also the days when you were lucky if 3 or 4 channels were available in your area. My how things have changed.
I just bought a new set, replacing a 46″ rear-projection HDTV I bought in 2002 — yes, I was an early adopter. The old unit was in perfect shape, but was too big for the available space in my new house. It’s now been donated to a senior citizens home, where I hope it sees good use. This particular unit was exceptionally “modern” for its time, as one of the first units with an HDMI input.
The replacement is another Sony, also 46″, also HDTV of course. Not only does it have multiple HDMI inputs (7, to be exact), but it’s also a 120HZ 1080p unit that hangs on the wall. It uses about half the power, and is EnergyStar 3.0 compliant. It adjusts its backlighting to match ambient room light. And I’ll bet it has a much wider viewing angle. The rear-projection unit was limited in this respect.
One thing that attracted me to this particular model is that it has “a PC input2 (HD-15 pin) [that] offers the added versatility of using your HDTV as a computer monitor.” So I can grab a decent spare PC, put in a really good video card, put it on my home network, and watch videos on Hulu or other services on a screen that’s 5 times the size of my standard PC monitor. It also takes Blu-Ray and any number of other formats, and can receive various types of USB and memory cards.
Today’s models are not just a “TV” anymore — instead they’re multimedia output devices that can be used for a wide range of entertainment and educational purposes. The sad thing is that, even with 200 channels to choose from, there’s still nothing to watch!