Categories
Film TV

Silver is the new black

Instant movie review:
Intolerable Cruelty
. Didn’t seem as deep and complex as, say,O Brother, but very enjoyable, some great dialogue, some great laughs.[Thumbs up]

[Hi fi gear]
Black vs. silver

The topic of the colour of home entertainment equipment came up at Tony’s on Saturday. (Along with some other topics, including an innuendo-laden comment Tony would rather everybody forgot he made, concerning his secret of the prickless sausage).

Anyway the dialogue went something like this:

Tony: I wish to raise a motion for the consideration of the house on the topic of colour schemes of hi fi gear, and point out that some of the equipment installed at this location is black, and is therefore beyond its useful age.

Rae: As effective financial controller, I hereby veto the motion.

heh. Okay so I made that up completely, but that was the gist of it.

It certainly seems to be true that every few years silver will be in the "in" colour, then it’ll flip back to black again – in fact doing a brief search in my own diary archives I found an entry from 1996 where I mention something old being silver, and the new stuff being black.

But now silver is the new black.

Thinking about it, I recall that Josh and I have discussed this in the past, and I think I agree with him: that I prefer black. Because if you’re going to the full effort of trying to watch a movie in the most cinematic-like surrounds possible – with the lights turned off, the TV pumped up loud, it and the DVD player switched into 16:9 mode, and possibly even a comfy chair dragged into a position directly in front of the TV – the last thing you want intruding is some bloody bit of silver apparatus below the TV reflecting a stray beam of light that’s snuck in from another room.

Not to worry, even if silver is the fashion, you can still get some gear in black. The most recent home entertainment gadget I bought was the lovely new TV last year, which is black. Ditto the DVD player. The newer of the VCRs is the odd one out – it’s silver.

Which do you prefer, silver or black?

By Daniel Bowen

Transport blogger / campaigner and spokesperson for the Public Transport Users Association / professional geek.
Bunurong land, Melbourne, Australia.
Opinions on this blog are all mine.