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Life Pet Peeves

Buying a new TV set

I had hoped to replace my old CRT in a few years when the pace of innovation on the LCD side had settled down, the standards have really established themselves, more HD content feeds are available, and the prices are lower than now. But no, the CRT called it quits a few weeks ago (no more vertical beam deflection) and we are forced to buy now.

Well, shucks.

I won’t repeat what’s been discussed to death in the various videophile sites and price-comparison fora. Just one simple question:

Why don’t hand the shops out simple 1:1 scale paper pictures of the various TV sizes? It is really hard to picture how the set you see in the showroom will look like in your living room and thus decide which size you want to buy.

Thus I spent yesterday evening getting the measurements of 32, 37 and 42 inch TVs and cutting cardboard as mockups. Holding these against the wall almost instantly told us what size we really need/want.

So dear Philips, Sony, Toshiba & co: what about it?