I am such a technophile ...

I have been holding out on HDTV. I just did not want to spend a fortune on a TV. Luckily, the prices have been declining steadily. I decided to buy a HD LCD TV last October. I have been keeping my eyes peeled on a bargain set since then. When Apple announced Apple TV last January, I realized that I need to get one soon as it only works with a HDTV. Well, Amazon dialed a right number with $1200 for a Samsung 40in LCD 720p set (pictured above).

I am pleased with the TV and the service minus how long it took to get here. Eagle, Amazon's delivery service, took nearly two weeks to deliver. What irked me the most was that the TV arrived in Phoenix about four days ago, but for some reason it set in the warehouse for a couple more days before making an appointment for a delivery. To their credit, they did a great job of setting the TV up for me and taking the packaging away.

You may be thinking what I might do for HD content, now that I have a HDTV. I am going to get my HD content from over the air tuner. You know local free broadcast. I am forgoing cable and satellite as I really don't want to pay every month. Lucky for me, digital signals are strong and there are local HD channels although not every program is in HD.

I am amazed at the picture quality of the TV. I know I need to calibrate it, but it still looks pretty good in Movie mode. One thing I don't like about HD is that pictures look too sharp. I do miss the soft outline of the analog.

Only down side to upgrading is the money that must be spend on the big equipment and other ancillary equipment. I decided to spend $90 to get another DVD player as the old one could be only hooked up to S-Video. The picture was awful. I also spend $40 dollars on two cables. One to hook up Nintendo Wii via component and DVD via HDMI. Now, I am happy with the setup. If only Apple TV was here already, then my digital entertainment life would be grand.

In preparation for Apple TV, I also bought an Airport Extreme (802.11n), super fast router, from Apple for $170. I've set up a wireless network just like the picture below.
Here is my break down of the cost as I wanted Apple TV for my living room.

• Apple TV: $300
• Airport Extreme: $170
• HDTV: $1,200
• Upconverting DVD player:$90
• Misc. cables: $60
• iMac (in the future?): $1,500

Wow, that is so much money to support a $300 contraption.