Lewies Blog

My plans on purchasing an HDTV have changed a bit.  Rather then going with the 42″ plasma monitor, I found a nice 26″ with true HDTV resolution.  The other one was 1024×1024.  I went through a few more stores today and thought about a few things.  Plasma screens are fragile.  LCD has a better lifespan, and more light weight.  My current regular television is 27″.  Larger televisions get a bit pixelated if you really take your time to look and scrutinize.  LCD is cheaper.  I couldn’t tell the difference between the two with brightness, frequency of updating, or colors.

Something I did notice is that various LCD televisions have different color to them with the same picture.  I found a really nice one that has very vivid colors from RCA.  The whole outer edge is also black, which makes it a bit more to my liking rather then going with all of those silver ones.  This television also has many different inputs for SVideo, RGB Component, DVI, etc.  I should be able to hook my cable box rite up to it as well as a computer if I wanted to.  I’m still doing some research on the whole thing, but I think I have my mind set on this one.

I purchased a new TV stand for the living room from IKEA.  It fits nicely in the corner and opens up the room a bit more.  All of our components are closer to the television now.  Upgrading to the HDTV shouldn’t be a problem when the time comes.  I’ve still got to break up a few more boards from the old entertainment center.  That thing was on its last legs from being moved so often.

In related news, the XBox 360 seems to be an item that is hard to get your hands on.  There seem to be bundles ranging anywhere from 299 up to 899.  For 299, you can get a box with a wired controller.  399 you can get a box with a hard drive and wireless controller.  The more expensive packs come with games, services, and lots of accessories.  My interest is an XBox 360 ($299), 2 wireless controllers ($50 * 2), a wireless network adapter ($100), hard drive ($100), Media Remote ($30) and a game - Kameo: Elements of Power ($50).   $680 total.
The crazy thing though - is the price.  That’s the price of a computer. I am sure I could find a bundle to bring some of that price down, but that is not the point.  It’s come to that day when entertainment is valued so highly in our lives that we are willing to pay for it.  I still want the system, but its just … high.  Even eBay auctions are high on there prices as well.

I wonder what the XBox 360 can actually do besides your run-of-the-mill games.  Can I surf the web and check email?  Does it have a word processor or spread sheets?   It’s got some tough computing power, I am sure.  I just want to be able to do some computing stuff with it if I can.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 20th, 2006 at 1:29 am and is filed under Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.