Tuesday, December 06, 2005

High def

I haven’t watched television in about a week. My satellite service went out last Wednesday. I didn’t notice for a few days, and with a weekend thrown in, today was the first day a technician could come to diagnose the problem. It’s strange, I don’t watch a lot of TV, but when it’s not even an option, I find that I crave it. All week, I’ve been pacing around the house wondering what I’ve been missing. Not much, obviously, but still – not being able to tune in because it’s unavailable, well, that’s just creepy. I don’t know how else to explain it.

So, tonight with my satellite service repaired, I’m surfing through all 240 of my channels. There’s nothing to watch, nothing that will hold my attention for very long, of course. Still, the tactile pleasure of my thumb on the remote control is calming. It occurs to me that the steady decline in quality of television programming has been countered in recent years by the improvement of picture quality. I have a big screen TV with high definition. I’ll surf pass a couple of dozen normal resolution programs but stop at all the high def channels to admire the picture. It’s astounding really.

I’ll watch anything in high definition. Opera. Bass fishing. Balloon flyovers of the grand canyon. Rally racing across the Kalahari desert in Africa. Whatever. There’s a program that puts a high definition camera half above the water and half below in an Amazon river. Fish swim by. Bubbles rise to the surface. Plant detritus floats by. That’s it. No narration. Just splashing, gurgling and swirling river noises. I love that program. For about 30 seconds. Then I need to move on. Right now, I am watching a program depicting the Hawaiian Tropic Bikini Girls. You simply cannot believe the quality of this picture. I’m serious, you can actually see insects crawling up and down on the palm trees behind the scantily-clad girls with supple breasts, firm thighs and plucked eyebrows. Are those goose bumps on those poor girls? Who knew that it could get that chilly on the beaches of Maui?

3 comments:

Mike said...

Is the Victoria's Secret Fashion show in HD because that would be awesome. To be able to see the fine detail on the angel wings and the classic footware. It's just too much!

Mike said...

I could watch bass fishing in HD for many seconds! I could probably watch NASCAR in HD for about 10 seconds, unless there was a crash, which is about 10 seconds more than I would normally watch NASCAR.

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