I’ve been thinking for a while about updating my television (a 68cm Loewe CRT, non-widescreen, analogue) to a shiny new digital number.
People who know more about this stuff than I suggested I look at Samsung’s offerings. I know I’ve had two Samsung computer monitors for years which haven’t missed a blip, so I took a look.
In the shops, anything smaller than about 102cm (40 inches) looks tiny against all the massive sets on display. But I know that in a relatively small livingroom, 81cm (32 inches) should do nicely, though I wasn’t sure if that would still be bigger than the old TV for 4:3 programmes. Some quick calculations involving Pythagorus seemed to establish that it would be.

Samsung’s Series 6 look pretty good. Full HD, 100 Mhz, play media from USB, Internet access, including Youtube and ABC iView (soon). Enough sockets that I’ll be able to plug everything in (and have spares).
RRP for 81 cm is $1049. Gulp.
But the street price? Seemed to be around $800-900 depending on where you look. $750ish from some online place I’ve never heard of before. Hmmm. Maybe later this year I’d have enough shekels saved up?
Then yesterday in Retravision I spotted it the $699. Oooooh.
Tempting, very tempting.
To coin a phrase, stay tuned.
Update 11am: I got it. The good thing about buying a non-huge TV is I get to take it straight home in the car. Have set it up, but will need to get some new component/HDMI cables for things, and still figuring out the menus. Looks good though; the cricket looks glorious on it.

Update 12:45pm. DVDs (using some old RCA cables to hook up my old Pioneer DV-344 via Component) look utterly fantastic. Wii less so… but that’s still using composite cables. USB playback works well, and looks good. Still figuring out the menus.
Update Thursday 8am. Figured out how to get it to ignore duplicate channels. Still wondering if there’s a way to get it to display programme information each time you switch to a new channel, as the STB did, and other TVs do. Also hooked it up to the PC (not ideal, but still tweaking settings) and ordered a cheapie Wii Component cable off eBay for $8 (after seeing them for $40-48 in the city yesterday).
Update Thursday 3:20pm. Seems I’ve found something not to like about this TV: most Set Top Boxes and digital TVs will automatically show you the programme information when changing channels. This one doesn’t, and it appears there is no way to set this option on… one has to manually press the INFO button, or use the GUIDE.