Send Help: Confessions of a Home Theater Addict
By Mark Grady
Send Help Now!
It's time for me to come clean about something. I have developed a hopeless addiction to technology. There, I said it. Isn't admitting it supposed to be the first step to recovery?
I blame this addiction largely on the influence of my former roommate. Sure, during my teen years I experimented a bit with the VCR, the Atari 2600, and the cordless phone (who didn't?), but it was purely a recreational thing, and definitely limited to the weekends. It was not until a few years after I moved to New York City that I started to lose control.
Of course, it started with a free sample. My roommate bought a DVD player, followed shortly by a surround sound system. It was the best of times and it was the worst of times. I got to experience all the glory of DVD quality and sound, but without any major cash outlay. What I didn't realize was that I was happily tap-dancing atop the proverbial slippery slope. I thought that I was having some harmless fun, but the crystal-clear images of "The Matrix" and "Pink Floyd: The Wall" were becoming burned into my imagination as surely as the magnetic interference from the unshielded center channel was being burned onto the TV screen.
Our author, Mark Grady, deep in emphatic soliloquy on the finer points of home theater.
It goes without saying that the first thing that I did when my roommate and his gear moved out was to run out and buy (with his eager help, of course) my own home theater set-up. It didn't matter that even the simplest of systems was way over my budget, I had to have something. Instead of spending the weekend helping my incoming girlfriend unpack, I spent the weekend on top of a 12-foot ladder destroying my plaster ceilings (and several mounting brackets) in a desperate and ill-conceived effort to install my new surround speakers.
Installing and experimenting with all of those shiny new components was sheer euphoria. I didn't care about the distance that it was creating between me and my friends, as they yawned their way through my countless virtual soliloquies about the merits of Steely Dan's
Gaucho in glorious DTS Surround. I didn't care about the strain that it was putting on my romantic relationship as I started going to bed later and later. I didn't care about the effect that it was having on my job, as I spent hour after hour hiding in my office, desperately googling (well, altavista-ing back then) new and innovative ways to connect various components.
The only thing that I did care about was the dark side of my problem. I'm not talking about the throbbing pain in my chest that accompanied the opening of each month's credit card bill. That could be assuaged simply by turning on the 34-inch Sony XBR HDTV (widescreen, of course) and flipping to Discovery HD Theater. I'm talking about the sad realization that the goods that you already have just aren't doing the job anymore. You start to suspect that the DVD player's picture is blurring, the HD-DVR might be skipping some of your shows, and the CDs that you have ripped sound flatter than they once did.
The sad fact is that the difference between me and a healthy person is that a healthy person realizes that good is good enough. My brain doesn't work that way. I need more, and more, and more. DVD player skips? Better give it away and buy one that costs twice as much. HD-DVR unreliable? Must be the cables! Better go out and buy Monster Gold-Plated Fiber-Optic Triple-Diamond-Rated, Professional-Engineer-Grade Coax cable! It only costs $100 per 1/2 inch!*
Even as I write this, I know that I will never turn my back on this addiction. If I ever do an about-face, it will only be to look back and consider if I should buy smaller (yet more powerful!) surround speakers. Or maybe to consider where to mount the side channels in my newly expanded 7.1-channel system.
Send help? Sure, but send it in the form of a bigger paycheck.
* Not a real product, please don't e-mail us asking where to buy it -Ed.
