A Whole New World

After living in our neighborhood for close to two years now, HDTV is now available in our area through our cable company. We've had an HD-ready television since last year (we bought it mostly for enjoying Netflix DVDs in beautiful full-resolution widescreen), but have had to put up with regular non-HD programming when watching broadcast television. So I was very excited to finally take full advantage of our TV. Watching shows like American Idol and 24 in high-definition widescreen with 5.1 surround sound is tremendously entertaining.

While ordering up the new service, I decided we might as well get a DVR (i.e. Tivo equivalent) as well. The long-awaited installation occurred last week and as soon as everything was all set up, I felt like my entire television-watching life has completely changed. The idea of pausing "live" TV is a wonderful thing and I no longer have to stay up if I want to watch late-night favorites such as The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and the occasional Late Show with David Letterman. Sure, I could have been using our VCR for these things, but tapes are cumbersome and VHS recording quality has always been pretty lousy.

So why do I ramble on and on about this? Well, it's partially because I'm so excited to have this cool technology finally at our fingertips, but mostly because I've let it take away from my evening blog-writing time (as can be seen by my gap in writing). I guess I've been finding our new "toy" irresistible over the past week. But now that I've allowed myself sufficient indulgence time, I hopefully can begin balancing the allure of HDTV/DVR technology with once again regularly sharing my random thoughts here at The Shapiro Files.