Monster Out Of A Box

Yesterday I decided that I would swing by Best Buy to see if my TV was in, load it up in my car, and then, after meeting Scott at the comic shop, have him follow me home and help me haul it in.
And that’s what I did.
The TV had to be taken out of the box in order to fit in my backseat, but once it was out of the box it slid in pretty easily.
I toyed with the notion of just covering it up and leaving it in the car until I get moved into my house. If I hadn’t been 100% that doing so was just asking the Universe to have me get into a car accident I might have done that, but instead I decided to stick with my original idea.
Once we’d hauled it up to my place, I decided that I should get something to eat before doing anything else. I was also thinking about buying an HDTV antenna just to test it. I was thinking I’d go to the Best Buy in Leesburg (I bought the TV from the Best Buy in Sterling) to get the antenna, and then grab something from Arby’s.
However, I decided that Super Target would be less of a hassle and that I could grab something from the Pizza Hut Express in there.
So I went to Super Target and discovered that the only HDTV antenna they had was $50, which is considerably more than the $14 antennas they have at Best Buy. I decided to just call it a miss and, after having a cheese pizza that was incorrectly placed in the pepperoni slot, I went home.
At home I took the hutch off my desk, disconnected the monitor, and put the TV in its place.
My computer has DVI out, whereas the only PC connection on the TV is VGA. I’m not sure why so many TV manufacturers have moved away from using DVI, though I suppose it has to do with the fact that many newer computers have HDMI out, which is in compliance with all that anti-piracy HDCP crap. Once I get moved and settled in I’ll be buying a Media Center PC to hook up to the TV and it will have HDMI.
In any case, I wasn’t concerned, as I knew I had a DVI to VGA adapter lying around somewhere.
In retrospect, I should have been suspicious over the fact that I found the adapter as quickly as I did.
The adapter was built on the assumption that the monitor being connected to it had its own VGA cable (as had been the case with my old 19” CRT that I had connected to the DVI graphics card that the adapter came with), so it didn’t do me any good, as I didn’t have a VGA cable to run from the TV to the DVI to VGA adapter on the graphics card. Even if I had a VGA cable I wouldn’t need the adapter anyway, as my graphics card has a VGA out in addition to DVI.
So I decided to make one more trip out into the world to get a VGA cable. Once again I opted not to go to Best Buy, as Office Depot is closer.
Naturally they were sold out of the 6’ VGA cables. However, they did have a 10’ VGA cable, which, while excessively long, would do the trick, so I grabbed that and went back home.
At home I discovered that I’d actually bought a VGA extension cable, which meant that I still didn’t have what I needed, as the cable was male/female while I needed male/male.
Not wanting to go out again I opted to wait and get a VGA cable on the way home from work today.
In the meantime, I found that I did have a cable for one of the available input/output combinations: S Video.
To say that this was less than ideal would be an understatement. The max resolution available is incredibly low and it looks like crap on the TV.
For the most part, anyway. I will say that setting the mode to “Over-Scan,” which scales up the video to the higher native resolution, and then playing a high-resolution video file – such as the HD clip I have of Carla Gugino getting up out of bed in Sin City – makes for a pretty decent viewing experience, though it really just made me want to see what it’ll be like once I have an HDMI connection and a Blu-Ray or HDVD video source (the Media Center PC I’m going to buy will have the LG hybrid drive).
Right now I have the TV and my regular monitor connected in a dual-monitor set up, and I’ll probably leave it like that after I get the VGA cable. It’s only going to be for a week anyway.