I’m a technology fanatic.
My podcasting partner Josh has observed many times coming over to my house that it’s like I live in the future (his words, not mine 😂).
I love that shit. New gadget? Sign me up. Well, at least I’m interested. It’s not so much that DO buy all of the technologies as it is that I WISH I could buy all the technologies.
I bought a new TV today.
Our Vizio has been with us for 13 years. LaDamian Tomlinson was selling this TV, that’s how fucking old it is. And it’s still kicking. It’s not broken. We don’t need a new TV.
But, see…it’s old, and it does have its limitations. Most annoyingly for me, it doesn’t pass through surround sound. And, well, the last “gadget” that I splurged on was a Bose sound bar (with accompanying rear speakers, of course, duuuhhh) that sounds amaaaaaazing…but because our cranky old wizened Vizio can’t pass through digital surround audio, I can only have ONE device hooked up to the sound bar.
Nope. Doesn’t cut it.
I should have known as soon as I got that shiny speaker system, the Vizion was going to drive me bananas.
It did.
I just want a TV where I can plug in all four of our devices (DirecTV DVR, PS4, Switch, and Apple TV — all of which will output digital surround audio through HDMI) and be able to get gorgeous, wonderful, immersive sound simply by switching the input on my TV. That’s all. Just give me audio across all of them with the press of a button. Not to mention that the old Vizio could only plug in THREE devices at a time, so we had to use an extra HDMI switch, which the Switch and Apple TV shared…hated that, too.
Well, no more.
I went to therapy today and decided to walk over the the Best Buy because I knew I was interested in getting a new TV at some point, and I just so happened to walk past their “opened box items” area and saw one of the TV’s I’d had my eye on during my research.
It’s a $750 TV…that they were selling for $300.
I didn’t buy it. I went home and looked it up online. It’s a great TV. Wonderful reviews. And enough HDMI ports for all of our stuff, PLUS an audio return channel (which is tech speak for ‘it will play perfectly with our soundbar’). I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I went back. I shined a light all over it to see if there were any scratches on the screen. It checked out.
I bought it.
And I spent the last few hours setting it up…and it’s wonderful. It works perfectly. And the sound. The sound I get now, even from watching DirecTV! Playing Mario! And I can watch my digital movies in 4K!!! Blade Runner 2049 looks and sounds incredible.
I’m so happy.
It’s a stop-gap TV. I do want to get a top of the line one in a couple years when the (true) QLED TVs finally hit the marker (they’re like OLED, but without the burn-in risks. When that happens, THAT tv will hopefully be our next 13-year workhorse.
But in the meantime, this new Vizio is sexy as fuck.
What a deal 🙂