I got it one piece at a time...

[bruss01]

Reminded of the old Johnny Cash song (where he worked in an auto assembly plant and stole a Caddy... one piece at a time over several years). That song had a humorous ending, I'm hoping for better results with my Home Theater upgrade - which is also being done, "one piece at a time".

It all started when my Panasonic DVD player went belly-up a few months ago. Just quit working, won't play a disk. I bought it in 2003 so I guess it has given a few years of good service. I didn't want to replace it with another DVD player because I knew that the format war had finally been settled and was looking forward to Blu-ray. I have been watching HD tv's going up in quality and coming down in price, and was looking to take the plunge eventually. My current TV is a Panasonic set bought in 1998 for I think $360 which has never given me a moment's bother. It has been an excellent and trouble-free unit all these years.

Anyway, I spotted a Samsung BD-2550 on sale at Best Buy. I was interested in this model over the 1500 because we have a fairly large DVD collection which would benefit from the superior upconversion capabilities of the 2550. We got it and hooked it up to our Panasonic TV. Of course we had to set the resolution output to 480i so we are not able to see HD in terms of resolution. However, is it just me or do the colors seem "richer" than standard DVD? So, we have the first piece of the puzzle, the disk player.

I was hoping to catch a good deal on the TV I have been ogling, the Samsung LN52A750, but no one had it on a Black Friday special. I shopped around on-line, panting like a dog who knows the food has been put in his dish, but the dish hasn't been set down for him yet. Finally on Saturday I recieved a long-overdue check for some extra work I had done, and that sealed the deal. I found it for $1997 from Abe's of Maine (which is actually in NJ, go figure). Free shipping, no tax, wall mount bracket as a nice freebee. It should be arriving in a week to 10 days, just in time for the holidays. I can't wait to see the difference in picture depth and quality.

Now, what to do with my old Panasonic TV? It still works like the day it was new. I hate getting rid of stuff that is still useful...