Dragged into the Modern World of TV

A few months back I had a brilliant idea: I noticed that we really don't watch much TV and when we do, we often just do so on hulu via a laptop. So, why not drop our basic cable subscription, save some cash, and pretty much retire our TV. Sure, we'd leave the one in our family room in the basement for watching movies. But, we should be able to ditch the one in our bedroom, which is where we do most of our TV watching. We could even take some of the money we saved on cable and invest it in a netflix account or some other services that we might get more value from.

I pitched my idea to Shira. I have to to admit, I was convincing. Very convincing. Just not in the way I'd hoped.

Since that proposal, we've dropped basic cable, and picked up Fios. So instead of having say 75 channels to choose from, I now seem to have hundreds. And we've temporarily retired our TiVo series 1 (until we can put it back to use!) in favor of a brand new Fios DVR. And last night the upgrade was completed, as we retired our old fashion clunker of a TV in exchange for a 42" LG LCD TV.

Yep, ever since I suggested we reduce our TV setup, we've gone and gotten all modern.

Seriously, look at this before an after photo:

I was doing a pretty good job of being skeptical about the whole new setup. And then, as I was flipping through the manual, I saw it contained an Open Source Software Notice. Holy smokes, I realized, my TV is running Linux 2.6. Heck, it's got a Lua interpreter built in.

Then it gets better. I notice an Ethernet jack on the back. At which point, I have a one sided conversation with Shira:

(Thought: Hmmmm, wonder what happens if I plug in a network cable...)
Honey, honey! Check this out - it wants me to setup a network!
Seriously honey, you've got to see this - our TV is acquiring an IP address.
Babe, I'm telling you - an IP address!
(Thought: Hmmm, what's this NetCast button do...)
Angel, check this out - you can watch YouTube on this sucker!
Sweetums, I don't think you are hearing me - YouTube. And who knows what else.
This TV rocks!

Yes, I was won over by an Ethernet port and YouTube. How sad.

And this morning, I blasted the Star Wars film score while the little one and I prepared to go to day care. Colossal waste of resources? Yes. But hey, just because it's a TV doesn't mean I need to treat it like one.

All I know is that I better not mention my idea of selling our cars and getting a Zip car subscription to Shira. I'm libel to end up driving around in a Porsche or some such nonsense.