My computer monitor, a KDS Radius I've had for three or four years, died on Friday the 13th. For about a week before, it flickered now and then and I kept checking the connection to make sure it was in tight. I finally realized the flickers were a quiet cry for help from one who'd served me well for so many hours. Then the blood drained from it and it lost all its color. Everything was black on grey. I rebooted and from that point on, every image on the screen stayed there. I clicked from my desktop through four or five websites and suddenly had all of them, superimposed one on top of another. It was very sad…like the monitor was sobbing to me, "I told you I was sick."
That was it for the KDS. Since the new monitor I ordered hasn't arrived yet, I hauled out my old, smaller, non-LCD monitor and I'm using it right now. There's some sort of "evolution of technology" that impacts your sensibilities. Not all that long ago, this device — working exactly the way it does now — was an impressive, state-of-the-art wonder. Now, it's small and clunky and I feel like I'm typing onto an Etch-a-Sketch. We get spoiled real easily. Two years ago, I had to do without a cell phone for a few days and it was like not having running water. You wonder, "How do people get along without this?" forgetting that for most of your life, you did.
In the meantime, I just received the new TV I ordered for my office. I used to have a 19" Sony placed where I could watch it while I worked. I can do that if I'm in the mood and if what I'm writing isn't attention-intensive. I can have the TV on while doing e-mail or browsing the web or sending out my daily output of 1,000,000 Spam e-mails to people asking if they want to buy cheap drugs from strangers…or even while doing this. For more serious assignments, I either have to have the TV off or use it like a night light, paying it little or no nevermind. (Jack Kirby, laboring at his drawing table, usually had a TV on but tuned to a Mexican station. He liked the music and the "company"…and since he didn't understand Spanish, he wasn't distracted by what was said.)
My Sony had been flickering for months and I finally got around to replacing it with a 32" LCD set with HD. That's a picture of the new arrival above. It's the Philips 32PF7320A/37, which is one of the few models that size with a built-in Hi Def tuner. I ordered it from Costco via this page…and get this: They say "The estimated delivery time will be approximately 7-10 business days from the time of order" but I ordered it last Monday around 3:00 in the afternoon and a nice UPS man brought it to me Wednesday just after Noon. That's all the more impressive when you realize that I didn't pay for the express delivery which promises it in 3-6 days.
So far, I'm delighted with the sound and picture. The biggest flaw I've been able to find — and this is pretty minor — is that the automatic screen format feature sometimes gets confused. It's supposed to detect a widescreen video signal on its own and adjust the margins accordingly but I sometimes have to grab up the remote and change them manually. Not a big deal. I'm hesitant to recommend the thing since I've only had it a few days but I'll let you know if it blows up or gets fuzzy or starts displaying only Geico commercials or anything.
What's frustrating is that I have an HD set but my beloved Series 2 TiVo doesn't record HD signals. I can watch local channels live in high def, pulled in right off my old roof antenna…but I can't record or pause them. Owning a TiVo has ruined live TV for me — another "evolution of technology" spoilage. The DirecTV people offer a TiVo-like video recorder that will interface with my satellite dish and handle HD but I test-drove one at a store and found it clunky and poorly designed. I've decided to await the Series 3 TiVo which will work its magic with HD and which has been announced for later this year. (Possible drawback: TiVo has not been great at having upgrades and new products out when they say they'll be out.) I really think the company folks dropped the ball by not getting a Hi Def TiVo out sooner, though I suppose they had their reasons.
There was one moment on Wednesday that seemed almost symbolic. Before I could put up my new LCD set, I had to take down the old Sony, which was a tube-type set. I lifted it off its perch atop some filing cabinets and its plastic housing splintered in my hands. Like the KDS monitor, it had served me well for thousands of hours but now its time was up and its outsides practically disintegrated. What is it with electronics equipment these days? Why can't they just stop working? Why do they have to commit suicide in front of you?