doodledee

Yesterday afternoon I finally cranked my motivation up high enough to drive down to the Richfield Time-Warner store and trade in my regular fake-tivo cable box for one that also does HDTV decoding. Oh, happy day. Note: the fact that the Twolves' playoff games are being broadcast in HD may or may not have helped kick me in the ass and get me moving. (Hint: yes it did.)

The HD fake tivo has been out for a couple of months now and it costs the same to 'rent' as the non-HD version, but I was balking at changing because it lacks the almighty two-tuner recording capabilities of the non-HD one. By upgrading earlier, it would have meant that when Survivor and The Apprentice Frontline and something cool on CSPAN were going head-to-head, I wouldn't have been able to record them both at the same time. And that, my friends, was pretty much an upgrade killer.

But now that the... uhh... CSPAN season is over, I figure it's safe to downgrade to one tuner and upgrade to some hella clear widescreen basketball. And HOLY CRAP is the picture awesome. I swear you can even see the wheels on Spreewell's shoes spinning. Mint mint mint. The only downside is that the HD feed is a couple seconds behind the KFAN radio commentary, which means I have to listen to the bozo TV guys instead of Little Sid and JB. It's capital 'b' brutal, but at least it's in Dolby Digital surround sound. Or at least that's what I've been told. My stereo hasn't yet been fully reincarnated after Operation Plumbing Freedom so I'm missing out on that side of the HD coin.

Along with the 'special' Timberwolves coverage, we also get a bunch of other HD channels. Things like NBC, CBS, PBS, and whatnot. I guess we've actually been getting (read: paying for) them all along, we just didn't have a way to watch them. Beyond the standard ones, there are like 4 'premium' HD channels that the cable dude tried to sell me, too. When he flipped through them for me one was showing old game show reruns and another was showing a fish tank or something. I told him that $7/mo for fish tanks and game shows seemed like a lot of money. That's when he told me that the game show channel sometimes showed reruns of sporting events from the previous day, too. That's when I told him a) no and b) to work on his sales pitch.

As soon as the playoffs are over I'm bringing everything back and downgrading to the most basic of basic cables for the summer. At least that's what I keep telling myself. And I'm thinking Team Cheapass will win over Team Picture Quality in this instance of the brawl to end it all.