2013-03-13

I blame my phone.

The charging/USB socket has been a bit wonky for a couple of months now, and was starting to annoy me. It only charges if the cable is at a slight angle, and it's rather frustrating. So I checked to see who did Samsung repairs in Edinburgh and the best bet, if I didn't want to send it away for several days, seemed to be Carphone Warehouse, who have a repair centre on Princes Street. I figured it couldn't hurt to at least drop in and give them a chance.

So I wandered from work in that direction, and passed the entrance to HMV, which is currently shutting down. There was a sign saying "All second-hand consoles now 30% off", and while I don't need another console myself (having three of them already), I figured I could check prices and let my brother Hugh know. A cheap PS3 makes an excellent Blu-Ray player and TV streamer, as well as a good games-playing device.

And then, wandering through the shop, I spotted a 47" LG TV. This model, to be precise. For £150.

They've had a Gaming Zone there for ages, tempting groups of people to book it out and spend a couple of hours shooting each other in the same location. And with the store closing down they were selling everything off. And by everything, I include the TVs, the HDMI cables, and even the sofas.

So I phoned Julie and asked how she'd feel about me buying a new TV. And she told me that that was fine, provided I checked the model number online and made sure that it got good reviews. And lo, it gets five stars on Amazon, and 9.1/10 on Revoo. Which seemed pretty damn good to me.

So I bought it, got them to carry it to the kerb (because it didn't come with a box or anything like that), stuck it in a taxi, and then phoned Julie so she could help me carry it indoors. It took me about 20 minutes to take the old one off the wall, shift the wall mountings over to the new TV, and get it back up there.

And now it's basically dominating the living room. I'm sure it will feel less ridiculously big over the next few days. But for right now I'm rather enjoying having a sideways Monolith on the living room wall. And it goes up to 1080p (the old one only went up to 720p)!

Edit: I never did get my phone fixed. *sigh* maybe tomorrow...

2013-03-13

Interesting Links for 13-03-2013

How I got a "new" TV