For as much noise as I may make about trying to stay on top of the world of gadgetry, we've definitely fallen behind when it comes to keeping our home near the state of the art in electronics and entertainment. As I wrote a few weeks ago, I finally sprung for a low-end 42-inch Plasma wide-screen TV. While that's still in shipping hell, in San Francisco, and isn't expected until next Thursday, we've started making purchases to bring the house up to speed.Last week, in a quick visit to Best Buy, I made a long-needed move, to upgrade our DVD player. Long in the tooth, the DVD player would often stop in the middle of shows, and we would have to mark the scene at which it stuck, so we could start over again, after ejecting the disk, looking for scratches, and blowing on the player or disc (or wiping on our shirt). I'd had enough. So we got two new ones - one slim Sony DVD player for the living room, and a DVD/VCR combo for the bedroom, so Kristine can watch titles from school that still only come in VHS.
With those out of the way, our to-do shopping list still includes a few potential items:
* Upgrading our TiVo Series 1 by adding a Series 3 (and paying by month)
* Adding a serious flat-screen to the living room
* Replacing our spotty wireless. Our Airport base station is dying a slow death.
* Adding a DVD case to hold our single films and sets
On the priority list, I'd love to get rid of this massive monolith of an entertainment center we have dominating our living room, and replacing it with something lower profile. Kristine wants me to get it sold via Craigs List and having someone pick it up, but I think that's a rough sell. If that happens, we can then post the new TV on the wall, with a TiVo 3 hookup, and get things off to a big start.
Then, I can start thinking about upgrading our laptops to Intel Macs. That would be round two. Can't wait to dust off the credit cards.