Well, I haven’t installed my new Samsung SIR-T451 yet, but that’s only due to my laziness, as well as my desire to have some quality time with my wife after the kids went to sleep, rather than spending the evening entangled in a Medusa of wires and outputs. I also wanted to get an upgraded indoor digital antenna for the system.

In the meantime, I’d like to report that the Circuit City experience was rather pleasant and easy. I picked up what I needed and browsed through the new flat panel displays like a kid in a candy store. The prices are still prohibitively expensive in my view. For the several thousand dollars for which these things are being sold, I’d be happier to purchase new carpeting in our house instead. Nevertheless, if the price were, say, to drop to less than $500, I might – just maybe—relent.

One thing of note. I must confess that my previous experience with HDTV was not all that positive. Of course, I’ve heard the advocates state that once you see HDTV you can’t go back and that its so much better than analog that you’ll watch potatoes rotting on your TV screen in bright, beautiful HD rather than see ANYTHING ELSE in analog. I’ve always had a bit of skepticism about that claim, although some displays are quite attractive. However, I recall on a number of occasions that some screens had a shimmer to them (probably because they are not scanned images but glowing pixels) that induced a fearful feeling of nausea in me. No, that was not the nausea associated with the Human Condition (thank you, Jean-Paul “Hell is other people” Sartre). Rather, it was the highly unusual means of watching moving pictures on 1st and 2nd generation sets (again, glowing pixels), as contrasted with the usual analog mode of watching a series of flickering still pictures. It made HDTV viewing extremely difficult for me at least. I’m happy to report, though, that none of the models I saw yesterday produced the same effect. Happily, this problem seems to have been resolved.

I also know that one of the advantages of HDTV is “CD-quality sound.” Which provokes another observation (did you expect anything less)? Did you ever wonder what’s so good about CD quality sound? I recall that when the technology was introduced, people went into paroxysms of ecstasy regarding how the sonic “highs” were so high and the “lows” were so low. Hmmm, I said to myself: “Self, that sounds like manic-depression, not a musical experience.” Nevertheless, it was nice to hear clear recordings of my favorite music without the annoying pop and hiss associated, for instance, with analog records (something, which incidentally, could be minimized through appropriate but expensive technology at the time). I admit, though, I was taken and quickly adopted to buying nothing but CDs. However, I now buy CDs because there’s no alternative. You couldn’t buy analog recordings if you wanted to. Have we lost something? I think the answer is yes. When you compare analog and digital recordings, especially of “classical” (a misnomer) music, you often find that some instruments sound tinny, processed or otherwise not quite like what they sound like in person. In fact, some connoisseurs have claimed that analog recording sometimes more accurately capture the sonic contour of the real thing than digital recordings. I tend to agree (although the distinction may disappear with the increase in digital sampling rates of modern digital recordings). The upshot, I suspect, is that this is all a matter of expectations. In the analog world, we expected a certain degree of noise, which we naturally filtered out in our listening experience when possible, but also a high degree of fidelity to the original. In the digital world, we expect clearer recordings (less noise) but accept a certain departure from the “real sound” in the concert hall in order to have that clarity. Naturally, one wonders what new set of expectations will arise with digital video and, conversely, what we may lose.

Ok, I promise the next post will be less philosophical and more technical as I really connect the technology together. I’ll be getting an upgraded indoor antenna today as well to supplement the experience.