JimK:  I had a HUGE workout yesterday…maybe the most I’ve worked out in one session since I started this madcap journey.  I slept for crap, and I promised some people I would do some work on their website (Guys tomorrow is ALL YOU) so the last thing I wanted to do was haul furniture and carry a bunch of heavy crap around all day but I woke up today and could not do anything else but what I’m about to show you.

This was our old entertainment center after two hours of pulling components, sorting wires and so forth:

Nine years of dust. Fun.  It weighed about 130 pounds, but I stripped off everything that would come off and basically dragged it down my front stairs, trailing broken parts down my neighbor’s driveway and dumped in it my backyard.  We’re awaiting trash amnesty month here in Hamden, and my backyard is starting to look a little like something you might imagine seeing in say, the Ozarks.   Two entertainment centers, a pile of very large boxes, a large couch, plus three contractor trash bags full of crap they won’t take in the garbage.  OH!  One of those bags is all VHS tapes.  So, yeah.

All that in order to set up this:

That, my friends, is the Samsung LN-46A550, perhaps the finest value in 46” LCD televisions that can be had today.  if you can find one for a good price, that is, because the minute Amazon sold out of them everyone around the web jacked up the price.  Amazon was selling it for under $1100, and I checked it at around 2 PM one day.  I did not notice the low stock warning.  By 5 PM when we had made the decision to get it, they were sold out and every online retailer had jacked the price.  We found one - the last one, open box - in person at a Bernie’s for $1200, where I told the guy I wasn’t paying that much when i could get an open box buy for a grand, he threw in a two year warranty.  Truth is I was totally going to buy it anyway if he gave me nothing.  I wanted this model so bad.  It’s not 120hz and it’s not a glossy screen, but it has a hell of a picture…easily the equivalent of a Sony Bravia in the same size class, for about half the cost.  I love it so much I want to get insanely inappropriate with it.

THANK YOU, MR. & MRS. CROSS.  My in-laws bought this for us for our ten year wedding anniversary.  Without them we would be watching that Proscan 27” tube.  And also be homeless.  So, again…THANK YOU!

So now when I bitch about the Battlestar finale you’ll know I’m seeing it glorious high definition.  Not sure how that helps any of you, but hey…HD Six.  Is all I’m saying.

BTW, in case any A/V nerds want to know, that receiver is a Yamaha RX-V2700 that I got via open box. $875 about five years ago.  The center channel is a Polk CS220 I bought open box at Circuit City in I think 1998, and the speakers are Polk RT35’s.  Not open box, but I got ‘em on a clearance sale.  The surrounds are Bose 301’s.  I know…no highs, no lows, must be Bose.  True.  But the 301s have a side-firing set of midrange speakers that bounce off the back wall and make great surrounds, and they match well with the Polk RT35’s.  The sub is a Sony SA-WM40, which if you know your budget speakers you know is a killer sub for very little money. I think I paid $99 bucks in 1998. If you didn’t know any better you would think Polk made it, it matches so well.  I also have a Polk PSW505 subwoofer but it is not hooked up.  Too boomy for this room.  It currently serves as a second end table for Donna.

My interconnects?  Whatever the hell I can get that looks sturdy.  I understand basic science, so I know that overpaying for interconnects is stupid.  My HDMI cables cost ten bucks each and my component cables came from Walmart and cost nine.  My speaker wire is Radio Shack and my optical cables are a mix of whatever I can get that is cheap. in short runs, digital either gets there or it don’t, people, so stop overpaying for cables.  Fuck Monster Cable, they can eat my ass.

Anyway…we’re very excited.  This literally took me all day to tear down the old gear and set up (most of) the new gear.  I’m about ready to fall asleep on this keyboard, so I’m going to stop typing now and go stare at my beautiful television until I drift off to sleep where I will probably dream of making love to a Samsung HDTV.