Series of Tubes

Adventures In TV Buying

Or (referencing their horrible radio spots) "You don't go to B&H; you go through B&H."

Meaghan and I decided to gracefully retire my 19" CRT TV in favor of the latest and greatest, and today was the day to go get it. We are the proud new owners of a 32" Samsung Series 5 (LN32A550, see specs here ), but that's not the main focus. The focus is the store we used to acquire this lovely little gem.

New Yorkers, and in fact most A/V enthusiasts on the East Coast, are familiar with B&H. Originally a camera store, B&H has expanded its footprint to include TV and other home electronics. They often have the best prices, and (at least with cameras) highly knowledgeable staff. They are also possessed of some truly bad advertising, but that's another story. I'd never been to B&H, despite working a block away from it, so today was my first experience.

You know the famous scene in Chaplin's Modern Times, with the machines and the conveyor belts? Lucy's (Lucille Ball) experiences as a pastry factory worker? How about the recent commercials where everybody in a given commerce situation moves in perfect sync, paying with a tap of their credit card? If those three memes had a menage a trois and produced a child from that union, it would look a lot like the inside of B&H. Packed from the entrance to the (thankfully) separate exit, every movement except for consulting with the sales staff is orchestrated. There are queues that lead you to other queues, and New Yorkers aren't famous for their tolerance of line-standing. There are conveyor belts passing items overhead, and elevators bringing larger items up from the basement for handoff to patrons.

It was efficient, it was quick, but I don't think it was even remotely enjoyable. Granted, I was coughing up close to $1,000 for a TV, but that's to be expected, and I don't think that was the source of the unpleasantness. I felt like a cog in a wheel. My impression was that I was there to give money to B&H, with a lovely parting gift when it was over. Maybe if I'd needed more consultation with the salesperson it would have felt different; as it was, I walked in and selected my toy, then got processed out. The all-touchpoints customer experience, shall we say, was lacking.

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Mind you, we're happy with the new set. We calibrated it as well as we could, given that I had an old DVD copy of Avia Guide to Home Theater to work with, poor room lighting, and no way to properly analyze color balance, not had I done any serious HDTV work in close to a decade. The thing that's slowing us down is adjusting for the lag between the TV and the game consoles. (Now you know the real reason we got the new TV.)

Our current passion is Rock Band, a game that requires good timing. It's tough to achieve when there's a delay somewhere amongst the audio, the video, and what the Xbox360 thinks is correct. Just a few milliseconds makes a huge difference, and the calibration tool built in to the game is leaving us flustered. Meaghan just got done playing "Paranoid" (as made famous by Black Sabbath) multiple times, adjusting the lag slightly each time, until she found a setting we could work with.

We tried the Intertubez, and there was no helpful info. Samsung wouldn't have it, either, so we didn't even try them. Plus, it's the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend, and nobody's  likely to be answering stupid questions today. We could have asked Microsoft for info, but that would be a similar situation -- compounded by the usual Microsoft consumer support "it's not a problem with our product" answer. The publisher's official site wasn't any more helpful, since its calibration tool is perfect. Yes, I know everybody's got a different TV and other peripherals to account for, but some acknowledgment of the issue beyond some unhelpful forum posts would have made me feel much less incompetent.

OK, I'm done bitching. Now it's time to play. Actually, it's time to eat, and then play. Happy Memorial Day y'all. Try to spare a thought for the dead and wounded of so many wars, whose sacrifices helped shape a world where it's possible for me to bitch about trivial matters. Or, as I put it this morning: "Remember the fallen, because they can't get up." ;-)

Consumer Apathy

I hope you haven't come here to gain insight into the problem of shopper malaise now that we've passed Black Friday. I can't do that, because early reports indicate that spending and absolute shopper volume are both up from last year. Things are looking positively rosy in the Land of the Midnight Capitalist.

No, the apathetic consumer is me.

I'd love to be buying stuff for myself, for my sweetie, for friends and family, whatever. I even have a wish list somewhere that I haven't updated (and no, I won't be linking it here). It's just that I don't want to think about making purchase decisions. I'm in a consumer funk that has no relation to religion, culture, finances, or other factors. As Johnny Rotten once sang, "I can't even be bovvered." I wonder:

• how many others there are in this condition;
• how it's going to impact the shopping turnout during the thrice-damned Holiday Season;
• how businesses will try to counter such apathy; and
• whether countering it is even possible.

The last bullet is the tricky one. Part of my apathy is actually antipathy—I don't want to see any more advertising, and any attempt to break through my disgust with the culture of conspicuous consumption is likely to push me further away. A reasonably wise man whom I recently interviewed said, "If you try to change customer behavior so that they come to you and remain loyal, you'll lose." Or something like that; like I said, there's apathy afoot.

There's definitely stuff I want to buy. Unreal Tournament III just came out for PC, and it's going to be mine someday. I like to play first-person shooters that have bots because I suck at shooters, and UT3 has some very good ones. I keep toying with the idea of picking up the much-hyped Nintendo Wii for Meaghan and myself. There are several metric tons of roleplaying-game manuals I'd like to have, even though my dice are currently gathering dust in the bottom of my closet.

We're glutted for choice. Having a few more tchotchkes won't make my life better, so why should I get them? The economy is finally catching up to my long-held belief that we've been living outside our means and it's gonna bite us in the ass. Even though acquiring crap has a momentary pleasure associated with it, in the long run it doesn't add happiness. There isn't a marketing campaign in the world that can break through that.

Plus, the one thing I really want to buy, the 3rd season of Battlestar Galactica DVDs, still hasn't been released and I'm going crazy not being able to discuss the events with Meaghan, who hasn't seen any of the episodes yet. Add to that the writers' strike putting production on hold for the 4th (and final) season, and you could say I'm right pissed. What's the point of life if I can't escape it with good science fiction?

On a side note, I'm making public my wishes for a speedy recovery for Paul Greenberg's mom, who is hospitalized with a painful but not necessarily dangerous medical condition. She's in her 9th decade though, so any hospitalization is big. Join me in sending good vibes.