My sister has a new “shack” on the south coast. I use inverted commas because it’s not a shack at all: it’s a brand spanking new house. But because it’s their house away from home by the coast, they use the vernacular and call it a shack. (All the more ironic when you consider their actual home is in a different town on the south coast and probably physically closer to the beach than their “shack” is. But I digress.)
Because the place is new, they chose to furnish it with new stuff. This included new beds, furniture, and appliances like fridge, microwave, dishwasher and TV. And they got a pretty nice 42″ plasma job.
My extended family was invited to spend a couple of nights there in the days after Xmas. And a lovely time was had by all.
On the drive home though, C suddenly made it known she wanted to upgrade our 80 cm CRT TV to a 42″ flat screen model.
Now, I’m as much into new tech and gadgets as anyone but I know that with an 80 cm TV, sitting 4 m away, the detail of the picture is just fine. I’ve never really felt the need to jump on the HD bandwagon. I might have mentioned as much before: so much of what’s on TV is either shit, or I don’t have time to watch it. I don’t need to see Deal or No Deal in stunning HD quality. It’s just overkill.
But, on the drive, home, we stopped in at Colonnades and picked up a 42″ LCD and a surround sound AV receiver.
Later that evening…
We were asking ourselves what we should watch on our new big screen and the choice was naturally a random episode of Gilmore Girls, which we love for the witty banter and esoteric pop-culture references. I think we dived in somewhere in the middle of season three.
But it wasn’t the same.
The picture was so clear, it made the whole show look like it had been shot on home video; there was none of that movie-quality softeness to the picture. It somehow broke down the fourth wall and made the show look not like genuine people in a small town in Connecticut but made it look like we were looking through the camera at actors, acting on a set on a backlot in LA. It ruined the illusion completely.
First step was to desaturate the colour. Then, I took the sharpness right back to as low as it would go (because Lauren and Alexis should be in soft focus) and then I dug through the menu and found this setting that takes the blur out when there’s panning and turned it off to put the blur back in. Save settings.
So now we can watch stuff in HD when what we’re watching lends itself to that. But when it’s more about the story, the characters and the show (as opposed to the technology), we can now apply our own “make it look like shit” user settings.