It started with a little bit of flat-screen TV envy. Every time I visited someone's home and gawked at their shiny new plasma or LCD TV, my living room setup felt a little 20th century: I had a 28-inch, old school TV with a backside as big as a fridge, and a stereo whose most modern feature was its two (count 'em!) cassette tape players. I did have a TiVo, but that only increased my feeling that I should be doing a better job of being a modern electronic citizen. Here's what my setup looked like:
You don't even want to know what was happening behind the console. So began my year-long quest to join the flat screen masses. I coughed up $26 for a one-year online subscription to Consumer Reports, whose overview of HDTV and all the various TV options was pretty useful. I also started visiting tons of TV showrooms in New York City: the Sony home entertainment complex, Samsung's similar version in the Time Warner Center, J&R, and on and on and on.
