New TV

(Written 18/10/2010.)

A week ago, I had an email from Sainsburys to let me know that "Nectar points are worth double at Argos" for a few days. Now, this aroused my interest somewhat, because I have quite a lot of them. For three years, I've been putting my expenses on a Sainsbury's credit card, and paying the balance as soon as it was due. Given that I've had a little international travel during that time, the points fairly rocketed up. Anyhow, the gist of the email was that I could shop at Argos to the tune of £300+ and simply swipe my Nectar card in payment.

I've been thinking for some time about getting a flat-screen TV, but I wanted to wait until I could afford HD too. Having consulted the online Argos catalogue, I found that HD flat screens now go for less than £200, so I nipped off to Argos, chatted with a knowledgable cove and selected a 22" job for £170. Or £85, given the "double points" deal. Or free, given that it was paid for with a tangible recognition from a grateful supermarket for purchases I'd made that had been refunded by the people who pay my expenses.

No wonder this country is in such a mess.

The TV was delivered the other day, and I'd set aside The Archers Omnibus yesterday morning for installing it - not a job I was looking forward to, given my technical expertise. I fully expected to either get no channels at all, or Moscow Direkt, Live Jewellery Auctions, 24 Hour Sheep, The Welsh Assembly, a handful of fortune tellers, ghosthunters and fat American preachers, a sports channel so underfunded that it constantly trails the highlight of the week, the Danish Wife-Carrying Championships, several music channels devoted to men shouting at lots of women in bikinis, a business channel where the latest share prices from Wall Street, Tokyo and Azbekistan roll across the bottom of the screen (ATK 38, FV 50, DFL 126, M&W 92, goat 47), The Estate Agent Channel, a comedy channel that thinks that the height of wit was achieved with Only Fools And Horses and Last Of The Summer Wine - and none of the stations that I actually watch. (I may have got slightly carried away there, but you get my drift.)

So, as the rumpty tumpty tumpty tum, rumpty tumpty tum tum of our alternative National Anthem burst forth at 10 a.m., I unplugged the old TV, unpacked the new one, connected all the plugs, switched it on and prepared to do battle.

An on-screeen question - "Langauge?" There were lots of options, including Finnish, but luckily I knew the right answer. (Unlike some poor Finn, who would probably have preferred the question "Kieli?" What's more, they wouldn't have found "Suomalainen" in the options either, so they'd have been bamboozled right from the start. Toshiba may have missed a trick here.)

Having selected "English", the TV then did an astonishing thing. It asked "Do you want to set up this TV?" Having considered the possibility of a trick question, or further questions of a technical nature, possibly involving RGB values, I gingerly pressed the OK button. The TV then did lots of things for several minutes, found hundreds of occasionally bizarre channels (The Surgery Channel, Lesbian Live PPV, Woodwork Now, Vacuum Forum, Bingo Zingo, Mali Today!, Be Saved You Sinner with Fat Sweaty Johnson, ITV, and Live Sheep Auctions, to name just a few)... then stopped - and it was just like my old TV! Except cleaner, and some channels were in HD.

Now, there are some folks who will think that I'd be quite proud of this achievement. New telly installed in less than ten minutes while listening to Vicky's future veal coming home, not bad, eh?

You'd be wrong, though. Oh, I'm very pleased with the new telly, and I'll be even more pleased after I've called Virgin and they start piping lots more HD into it, but there's one aspect of the process that has added to my general gloom.

You see, it's dawned on me that I have brought into the house one more thing that is considerably cleverer than I am.