The G_ddamned Free Market

[Sony KDL-32M4000/91]

Since I seem to be spending a fair amount of my life here in this little apartment I have decided to dandle myself by buying a television. A television, like a cellphone, a stereo, a car, a computer, a refrigerator, a microwave, a digital camera, a DVD player, indoor plumbing, and electric light, is a necessity of modern life.

I have a television but it is in the hands of people who are paying what seems to me a pretty penny for the use of my house for a week. So like a proper American I NEED a second one. Hopefully there will be others renters as well so I can even pay for it. I have had good luck with Sony products in the past (except for an over-priced micro-tiny laptop which sucked) so I started with those.

I quickly found out that there are S-series Sony televisions, L-series, W-series, K-series, V-series, M-series, XBR4's, 6's, and 8's,and absolutely nowhere any explanation what the differences are. The specifications and compare-the-products tables for them are all but identical. They vary as to size and price which makes sense, but also as to series, with no explanation of what difference it makes if one spends more or less.

Yet another age issue, I suppose. I still occasionally refer to 'color televisions' and regard 32 inch screens as enormous when everyone not verging on senility refers to them as 'small'.

One would think that if I had money and saw a shiny object I wanted, that I could just get it. But no, not in the Third Millenium, the Age of Marketing.



Postscript -- I have learned that the much-prized and expensive 1080p highest resolution HD is useless because there is almost no source material for it. Cable companies do not broadcast in it. DVD players do not use it. A 1080p television is an enormous and very expensive device the sole function of which is to play Blu-Ray disks. My local movie rental place has six Blu-Ray movies in stock. Six. Netflix has a few but you have to pay extra and go on a waiting list to get them.