Finally, HD

Remember back last year when I made a foray into HD? Let's just say it didn't go well.

Well, I got brave again. This time I wanted to make sure I got WOW. 52" seems to do that.

I went for the Sony KDL52W3000. It's an 1080p LCD with 3 HDMI inputs. Berclair Television gave me a great price. My wife found a nice stand for it and we coordinated the deliveries.

It seemed like it was going to work out fine until I visited Comcast. "Sorry, we have no HD boxes. We'll take your name and call you." That was a week ago. My phone hasn't rung.

You may recall that I'm kinda persistent so I didn't accept that answer. The third Comcast store I visited had plenty of the Scientific Atlanta 8300HD DVRs.

Delivery and installation went well. Berclair Television did all the setup. I used HDMI connections for the cable box and the Philips DVP5982 DVD player.

That was until I tried playing a DVD.

"DISPLAY CONNECTED NON-HDCP COMPLIANT" and then snow. The first call was to Berclair. "Must be a problem with your player." I should not have let Berclair leave until I played a DVD.

The next call was to Philips. "Must be a problem with your TV." Would you have expected anything else?

So, I chilled for a day or so and called Philips back. This representative walked me through a reset procedure and it still failed. He gave me an RMA and it's on its way back to Philips.