lots of cool things happening around my place in the last few days. we are making the transition to HD so that required a new television and a switch to DirectTV in order to get HD programming and a TiVo that will record HD. our old and trusty Sony TV gave it up a week or so ago and so the hunt for a replacement was on.

i looked at various models, features and kinds. i was trying to stay under 2K as i think that’s enough to spend on a TV, even if we do watch a lot of it. we settled on another Sony and are looking forward to the delivery on Tuesday. so, that’s the first part done. need an HD TV. check.

next, due to the good folks at Adelphia not being able to offer HD cable in our area as of yet, we are forced to abandon them and move to DirectTV. actually, its not that big of a deal as DirectTV is the only one that offers a DVR with TiVo anyway and we have to have TiVo so that’s a no-brainer. i would rather give my five bucks a month to a company i like instead of a company that kinda sucks like Adelphia.

so, now we have a DirectTV HD DVR with Tivo to hook up to the dish that DirectTV will be sending with an installer next Monday. i will have to use the TV for almost a week with only standard def programming (sad for me). although, i should be able to get over the air HD in the interim as our building has an antenna on the roof. so that’s cool. either way, i can wait a week to get this all finished. then, i can cancel Adelphia. i can’t wait to make that call.

of course, any good HD TV needs a progressive scan DVD player to go with it so we needed to get one of those also. again, a Sony was the call. good reviews at Amazon.com and a price that’s pretty darn low made this a winner. it should arrive in a day or so and then we can really see what one of those Superbit DVD’s can do. more on this later.

as the whole process moves along, i will report back in and also post some reviews of the various parts of this HD puzzle like the TV and the DirectTV Tivo. plus, does the Superbit DVD process really make things look better and is it worth not having any extras on the disk? i’ll get into that also.