Entering The Plasma Age

After 10 or 11 years of reliable service, our big, boxy Toshiba 50-inch finally started giving up the ghost over the past several days.  We'd get an all-white screen when first powering it on, and then it would eventually reset back to normal.  Since we'd been talking about getting a new TV for a couple years now, I finally decided it was time to start looking into what was out there over this past weekend.

This afternoon we bought a 50-inch Panasonic 'smart' plasma TV (model TCP50S60, for the record), along with a "some assembly required" stand, since we were no longer going to have a mammoth crate of a television to store our various components on top of.  We spent a lot of time putting the stand together, although Vicki was her usual, organized self and it actually went fairly smoothly.   Once that was done, it was all on me to disconnect our jungle of existing equipment and reassemble it on the new piece of furniture.  I took my time and actually tied off all of the cables for once so that it wouldn't be quite such a mess back there.  I'd picked up a couple of HDMI cables along with the TV and stand (and surge protector), and I have to say that things are looking pretty sweet right now!  I have the Rogers Next Box and PS3 both going into the TV via HDMI, and that upgrade along with the plasma itself have made an eye-popping difference.  I played a little bit of the Fuse demo and couldn't believe how much better everything looked.  Money well spent, I think.