The Grand TV Plan

Note:  I’ve written this in retrospect. I was way too enraged at the time to write sanely about the experience. When originally written, this had so many more capitalized sentences and some choice four-letter words, which I’m sure, would have sent some panties into a bunch. It’s better now so on with the story.

Getting my TV to work with this new HDTV deal (government subsidized scam to sell unnecessary TV’s) has been a real hassle.  My TV is a little 20-incher made in 1996 that I inherited from my parents’ estate when they died.  It works just fine so I’m not buying a new one.  About a year ago I bought a new DVD player after my old one died. Went to Best Buy and was assured that it had an HD receiver so everything would be hunky-dory when this program was rolled out.

Well, yes and no.  It does have one but it won’t work, as it theoretically should have. So, after several days of no TV and much contorting, hanging upside down and so forth to hook the thing up sixty ways from Sunday I cried “uncle” and went to Best Buy. What’s truly priceless is that my coupon for $40 off expired on June 10, the day after being at Best Buy and being assured that my DVD player would work in the same capacity (and by a store manager)!

There’s a BB near me, which just opened several weeks ago.  Minor problem, they’re OUT of converters!  But, an associate assured me, a truck had “just” come in and was being unloaded as we spoke, so if I could wait about 20 minutes, I’d be all set.  One half hour later I’m no closer to my prize.  Turns out, oops, none were shipped on that truck.  But they have 20 coming in this weekend so I could order one and pay NOW!  How special is that? 

At that point I was rather obsessed and had them check another store which had 131!  Well, it now has 130.  Drove over and dropped (ticked me off) $49.00 plus 9.25% sales tax.  (See a black cloud over a stick figure of me if I could draw in Microsoft Word.)  So back home and after 1.5 hours of pulling out boxes and cables and the cabinet for the umpteenth time, I have TV.

This is all so unnecessary.  I don’t care what they’re pimping about more broadband for emergency services and so forth, you know there’s more to it than that, but the public will never know.  My, I’ve become a little cynic haven’t I?