The retail stores must be happy that we're funding the economy with all these HD upgrades; they don't even need to sell the features of the product, but just have it available at a competitive price. When every other customer is walking out with a Blu-ray player or hi-def television, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that that's what people want. Hopefully there won't be a long line of recalls soon afterwards.

I figured out that outside of sports and events, the science channels are the best benefactors of HD. All those ocean or wildlife scenes look fabulous, and even Dirty Jobs HD looks really dirty.

So the cable channel is trying to promote the catchphrase about being Kanyed, but that has me thinking. When in the world are we non-media people ever going to give award acceptance speeches only to have some other person interrupt us? I think the idea of adding Kanye to your personal photos makes more sense.

It's one thing when you name your pet or children after someone in the television world, but it's another when you discover your name and your friend's name are later used as starring characters in a sitcom. Unless your name is fairly common, would that throw you for a loop whenever you're seen together? What if your last name matched too? Would you still watch that show or movie?

Long time no blog. I admit I've been pouring most of my online energy playing slot machine and virtual pet games, but it's been a lot of fun connecting with my old buddies and meeting some new folks to swap virtual toys. Looking back at my old blogs here, I sure do miss writing about television and chatting here.

I remember some years ago, they had played the Star Wars Episode 2 movie on one of the first digital projector runs in the country. I remarked to my buddy that we were so close to the screen, that you could see the pixel lines. He then moved back a bunch of rows to watch the rest of the movie.

Fast forward to this year, where we finally went and gone hi-def with a new console. I found it interesting that the 37-inch ones cost as much as the 40-inch ones, as it's considered an unusual size, but the 37 is good for our furniture limitations. The weight is much lighter than the old CRTs, and it's supposedly Energy Star, although I feel like it's a bigger heater than the old one. My dad convinced us to get the 1080p option, which I hear isn't necessary for that size but still nice to have.

After bumping up the cable bill again, I finally got to enjoy hi-def service, and wow, so here's what I've been missing the past few years:

The most impressive show so far is CSI: Miami. They had some outdoor scene and it felt like I was there. The vibrant colors and hi-tech lab stuff were a nice touch, and doesn't have as much Dark and Gloomy like the other CSIs.

The local newscasters' coffee mugs on their anchor desk. One of them has both a Starbucks cup of the day AND a mug, like, what, you can't have just one? Or maybe it has some water or some secret teeth whitener?

Crazy detail on the sports channels. Can't wait for the bowl games, sports playoffs, and Olympics. Too bad there aren't that many teams I care about.

Catching part of the Lord of the Rings weekend makes me want to get a Blu-ray ASAP. Of course that means more upgrading, so maybe not. Celtic Women on the PBS promos looked pretty darn good too.

Meredith Vieira's makeup job during closeups on The Today Show. I knew coming in that Jay Leno puts on a lot of makeup, but at that hi-def resolution, you can see any of that clearly, and wrinkles. Julianne Moore's hair looked great on all her guest spots on the talk shows, but I feel for the regular people on the news that don't have the opportunity to be made up like that. There was one part recently where the detail was so good you could read Meredith's news card. But the people are still crowded up in the center of the screen when it comes to positioning people in those shows; guess they don't want to lose the cable-clinging standard def crowd.

House decorating makeover shows. Looks good for Clean House to get more messiness on the screen, but when the extra space is just used to show more wall space of a hallway or a tiny bedroom, I feel rather sad about wanting to buy a place.

CN HD and Disney XD HD is a waste. Some shows took advantage of the extra space, but what's the point of putting Phineas and Ferb or any cartoon where I could draw outlines of the characters myself?

In the anime world, which isn't hi-def yet, I've been watching The Wallflower, which is quite funny given the number of folks I know who love all that New Moon stuff. I also got to see some of One Piece without the 4Kids editing, and there are plenty of others in the queue for the rest of the year.

Needless to say this has increased my television watching dramatically. I found myself watching the series finale episodes of Monk, more CSIs this month than the rest of this past year, and even that AMC remake of The Prisoner, which features Jesus and Gandalf stuck in some town trying to mess with each other, and more WTF moments than Lost. Fear big white balls and mysterious holes.

Question: What shows do you enjoy on hi-def or movies that you would automatically upgrade in your collections?

I was reading a cnn.com article that talked about how wikipedia was planning to move to an editor based system, which sounds similar to tv.com, but not really. I could see where the stakeholders in the Wikipedia group would be more concerned about controlling their content. At least on here, we could always point to the neutral source known as the actual broadcast episode or released boxset, and provide fairly reliable official guides and news articles. We editors usually aren't the actors or programming directors ourselves that we could pull rank on our information. I hope they do continue to credit our work on tv.com whenever they cover TV shows.

The Wiggles have moved from Disney to triple-digit cable-land on Sprout. It's cool that they get to do a few new segments, although their Wiggly Waffle show is broadcasting at 6-9am ET, which means 3-6am PT. Ack, I can't stay up late for that. But it's cool to see them do birthday announcements and pseudo-live things after being free from The Mouse.