I finally jumped on the HDTV bandwagon.

I had previously stated that one of my goals for 2007 was to get a new TV. It was definitely time for an upgrade from my old 27″ CRT, but I didn’t want to get into a lot of debt to do so.

Then the Bears got into the Super Bowl. 😉

Once upon a time, a long time ago, I’d decided that if the Bears got into the Super Bowl, I’d go to the Super Bowl. I’m a third-generation Bears fan and grew up being teased mercilessly by my peers at a time when the Cowboys were the team to beat. When I realized during the playoffs that the Bears had a strong chance, I started looking into Super Bowl tickets. Of course, they were ridiculously expensive…about $3000 for a pair at the time. I decided I had better uses for $3000.

I gave myself a salary increase as of 1/1/2007. My salary is still not up to where I want it to be, but I have about $760 more a month after taxes now. That, combined with the decreased rent from having a housemate, made me figure I was safe going into a bit of debt for a couple months (I had some stockpiled money, so it wasn’t $3000 in debt) in order to get a HDTV, a new couch, and host a Super Bowl party.

I got a new couch that I really like. It’s brown microfiber — very comfy! Then, last weekend, I decided it was all or nothing, and shopped around for a plasma TV. I’ve wanted a plasma TV ever since years ago when I saw one of the very first Pioneer Elite plasmas in a store (playing Lord of the Rings) and realized there was no other TV with a comparable picture. Plasmas then, of course, ranged into the 5 figures for a 50″. So I waited…and waited…and waited. My stated goal was to buy when a 42″ hit $2000 or less. That happened a couple years ago, but due to the low salary I was paying myself and the high rent costs I had, I couldn’t afford anything. — rent was then 55% of my take-home income. With my current salary and housemate, rent is now running 28.5% of my monthly take-home pay — a dramatic difference. My goal is to get that number to the government-recommended 18.5% of take-home pay through further salary increases and dividend payments from Simpli.

Back to HDTV. I did my research and consulted AVSForum.com extensively. Besides the fabled Pioneer Elite, which was out of my price range, the recommended HDTV seemed to be Panasonic. I visited Costco and Best Buy to do more research. Costco had a coupon that brought the 42″ plasma down to $1300+tax. That seemed like the best deal I was going to get.

Until I searched “panasonic plasma” on craigslist. Seems a lot of people were moving and had to sell their plasma TVs. The going price for a Panasonic 50″ plasma was about $1500. I measured my TV shelf and a 50″ would fit perfectly! I emailed several sellers and found one selling a Panasonic 50″ plasma for $1400. This is the same TV that Best Buy is selling right now for $1999. I asked Seth if he wanted to drive up to Livermore with me to pick it up, since his car would actually fit it. We did so, and now I have a beautiful new TV for a much cheaper price than I would have paid in a store! The only downside is that I only get the remainder of the warranty, and it may be difficult to actually utilize the warranty since I wasn’t the original purchaser — but hopefully I’ll never have to use it. I haven’t had any problems so far with the TV.

I soon figured out that the TV wasn’t the only thing I would have to upgrade. My ancient Sony first-generation DirecTiVo would have to go, too. It only supported 4:3, and the compression the TiVo used, which wasn’t noticeable on my old 27″ CRT, was painfully obvious on the plasma. Back to AVSForum (and TiVo Community as well) to do more research. It quickly became clear that I had two options: 1) Stick with DirecTV and pick up their own PVR, or 2) switch to cable and pick up a Series3 TiVo. My loyalty to TiVo is stronger than my loyalty to DirecTV, so I made a switch I never thought I’d make: I switched to Comcast. I negotiated with them for a better deal since I would get digital cable and high speed Internet from the same provider. Reading the forums later, I realized others were getting better deals, but I negotiated the Digital Silver package, HBO, and high-speed Internet (which was bumped from my current 4Mbit to 6Mbit) for $100/month including tax for the first 12 months. It saves me about $23/month from the Comcast and DirecTV package I had before, and in a year I can call and negotiate again.

Comcast came out to install, but they didn’t install correctly. I’ll spare you the details, but it took 4 phone calls and some Googling to figure out the problem. After the 4th phone call, everything finally started working. That was about 2AM yesterday. So I’ve had HD for almost 24 hours now, and…um…it rocks!

Most of my friends don’t even have TVs. A lot of them pile on my couch to watch shows like Boston Legal every week. I’ve always been one of the more TV-obsessed of my friend circle. It’s weird…most of my friends will watch grainy videos on YouTube for hours and then not be interested enough in “TV” to buy their own TV. I’ve never had too much hangup or pretense about my TV watching. I have a TiVo (and now I have a really nice Series3 TiVo!) so I watch whenever I want. I watch a fair amount of TV, but never feel pressure to watch it…it’s just something I do for fun.

Before this week, I could count on one finger the number of 16:9 HDTVs people I know personally owned: 1, and that HDTV belongs to my parents. Now I have one and I just have to shake my head at all these so-called geeks who have crappy TVs or no TV. HDTV is awesome!!!! Not only are most of the primetime shows in HD, but there are some really neat HD-only channels. For instance, right now I’m watching M:HD, which is just music videos in HD. The music videos are cool, and better yet, there aren’t any annoying VJ’s, and they play a great selection. (The Eagles live was one of the most recent videos they played.) The only commercials are for Mitsubishi HDTVs. HBO has a HD channel, and there are a couple other HD channels that just play old TV shows or movies in HD. Yesterday, one channel ran about 12 hours back-to-back of “The X-Files” in HD. Most of the popular sports are broadcast in HD.

I just don’t think that most of the population is aware of how many shows there are in HD. I sure wasn’t — I thought most shows were still being run in 4:3. It looks like most current primetime shows are taped in HD and then downconverted to 4:3. Even two of our local news stations are running the local nightly news in HD. Better yet, the switch to digital TV means networks can cram more stuff down the same size pipe. The local PBS station, for instance, has converted itself into 4 PBS stations (none HD, it appears, but all digital), which each play various PBS content at any given time. Two local networks have added on 24×7 weather channels in their digital lineup. This is way cool.

The Series3 TiVo gets my thumbs-up, too. It finally has an integrated Ethernet port (what took you so long, TiVo?!) Since my router is upstairs, I bought a Logitech Play Link off of woot.com and plugged one end into the TiVo and one end into the router upstairs. Voila, instant wireless! (It’s not very fast, but it doesn’t need to be.) The front of the TiVo shows what show you’re recording right now, which is nice. The remote is well-designed, but oddly appears to be missing the “List” button, which I used frequently on my old TiVo to go right to the list of recorded programs. (Without the List button, you have to Tivo-button->Select, which is not terrible, but I miss the List button.) The Guide is much faster (FINALLY!) and adding a Season Pass is much faster. Finally, with a 250GB hard drive instead of my old TiVo’s 30GB hard drive, it can record a lot more programs.

I’m very happy with my purchase, even though it means I’ll be paying it down for a couple months. No biggie… soon it’ll all be paid off. In the meantime, I’m preparing for 20-30 people to show up on Sunday for an awesome Super Bowl party! Woo!