I Can See Clearly Now

As I drove across the bridge, I could see the bright yellow sign growing larger in the distance. On closer inspection, the large, angled black lettering could be read as "Best Buy." After weaving in and out of traffic, at Cambie Street and 6th Avenue I turned left and pulled into the parkade (for my American friends "parking garage").

As I paid $2 for my 1 hour of parking (which was actually only $1/hour and I was a moron and selected 1 hour put plunked in the only change I had, a $2 coin), I was highly anticipating the treasures I would find at the top of the escalator (that was more like an escalator to heaven for a tech nerd like me).

With my Best Buy flyer clutched tightly in one hand and the worn rubber of the escalator rail in the other, I sauntered into the store and headed immediately for the "TV and Video" department.

I was greeted by rows and rows of new television sets. CRT, LCD, Plasma, DLP, projection, HDTV, EDTV, Sony, Toshiba, Sharp, JVC...I can honestly tell you, in a free market, there's too much selection. But I was more interested in a deal that I saw in the flyers. Buy a Sharp 37" LCD and get a free 20" Sharp LCD free!

Normally when I enter an electronics store, I try to escape before: a) I've attempted to buy something or b) a sales person tries to get me to buy something. In most cases, I'm just looking but sales people are all over me like a fat kid on a Smartie (chocolate candy). But when you're legitimately going to buy something, they're nowhere to be found.

Short attention span moment: I recall a story from my friend David. He went to spend up to $10,000 in "Wow," a Las Vegas electronics store. No one came to help him so he went to another store and spent $7,000 in new toys. He then took the receipt back to the original store, asked for a manager and showed him the receipt saying "I could have spent this $7,000 in your store, but when I came in, no one helped me."

This wasn't the case. Someone came up to me within 2 minutes of entering the store. He asked me if there was anything I was looking for. I told him that I was interested in LCD TVs 32" to 40" But I was more leaning towards the 37" Sharp TV special. We quickly determined that 37" was in fact too BIG for my apartment. Considering the TV is 6 to 8 feet from my sofa, 37" was just a tad too big. My old TV was a 24" Sony Wega and an equal size HDTV is 30" (because the aspect ratio of NTSC TV is 4 x 3 and HDTV is 16 x 9).

We then walked over to the aisle with the 32" LCD TVs. There was a good looking Sony model there, but I have been turned off by Sony since I had some hassles from them trying to get some warranty work done and they were out of stock. There were other some other ones, but the one I ended up liking the most out of all of them was a Toshiba model.

Okay...to make this long story shorter...I dropped almost $3,000 on a new TV set, HD PVR for my satellite dish and an upconverting DVD player. Just when I was proud for not watching as much TV, I spent an entire weekend watching TV feeling guilty for spending too much money!!!

But hey, I actually saved $1,000 buying the Toshiba TV (instead of the Sharp special) and with that bought the PVR and upconverting DVD player.

Feeling guilty but my High Definition picture is much clearer now!