TV OR NOT TV?

Is that a question?

In a quandary corollary to my uninstalled car radio, yesterday I returned a broken converter to our cable TV provider. For some weeks it hasn't been working right, and as a consequence, the TV hasn't been used. But, since we are paying for the service, and I have a burning desire to see the first episode of House, M.D. on the 21st, I collected the box, having untangled it from a mess of cables and wires that are evidence that the shoemaker's family goes shoeless. I usually depend on my in-house IT expert to do these things. The tangled pile of cables and wires included odd wall warts that related to no existing device, attached to an unplugged-in power strip. Clearing the mess didn't make the cable box work. It is broken, possibly fried in the last big power outage we suffered.

Anyway, that's what I told the cable folks when they asked what was wrong. "How should I know? It doesn't work."

While at the headquarters, I was enchanted by a huge HD screen that was playing lovely video postcards of Hawaii flora and beach scenes, interspersed with satellite images of Mexico and Finland. "Is that a promo or a channel," I asked. "I could watch that all day long," forgetting of course, that I can look at images like that with my own eyes off my own lanai any time.

"It's Digital 1000," the customer service rep told me. "You can get it if you have HD." Which I don't. I have a $250 19-inch color set in the bedroom and an even smaller one in the living room. Channel 1000 made it look worthwhile to spend all that money, thousands of dollars, on one of those big displays that assault you on entering Costco. I could get several more MacBook Pros for the price of one of them. The first time I saw one of those screens in action, all I noticed was how clumpy the newscaster's mascara was.

We reconnected the new cable box and it works just fine, does all the things my basic service says it should. I turned on CNN for about 10 minutes this morning and then turned it back off. So much inanity. Stories about murdered school coaches, flu vaccines, health care/insurance debates, a successful teen tennis star turning pro. I suspect the TV will go untouched again until the House movie.

The Wizard of IT NEVER turns on the TV, not that he doesn't spend a lot of time looking at screens. He surfs the web as much as any couch potato with a TV remote control. But I have come to understand that he will do that because he exercises internal control, picking and choosing on the net. Theatre movies (he won't go, too loud) and broadcast TV are too passive for him. It doesn't quite explain how he tolerates the opera. I suppose because it is broken up into acts, allowing him to jump on his Blackberry in the intermissions. The individual acts are just non-virtual sites he chooses to visit for a while.

Anyway, I'm regarding the TV now a little like a recovered Vicodin addict might regard a vial of pills. If I turn it on, I'll get hooked again. It will be a challenge. Gotta watch out for the TV God. Gotta watch House.