Samsung Flatpanel LED TV

We got ourselves a new TV. Because we had to re-paint the living room.

Anyway: The deal was that I had to get rid of the Media Center PC. I did a thorough analysis of the most used features and concluded that what I initially thought (back in the day): that it would be cool to have PC-access in the living room on the big screen, really wasn't cool at all. What with emergence of the iPad and notebook PCs and all. What we did use, though, was the guide, and especially the ability to record TV and occasionally watching a movie - this almost solely by streaming from various Internet services.

So I started hunting: and ended up with a 40" Samsung LED TV. The picture is crystal clear, it can record TV (although it only has one tuner so we can't really record something and watch something else), it can stream movies, which was exactly what we wanted. The sound does not match up to the external speakers we had on the Media Center PC, but no one expected it to.

It does a host of other things, too. Facebook, Google Maps, Twitter(?) - you name it. And the thing is this: it doesn't do it real good. I don't know why they bother - do people really want to spend 5 minutes waiting for the TV to connect to Facebook - I can walk to the kitchen, grab the iPad, check my mail, Facebook, make myself a cup of coffee and get back in front of the TV before it's ready. Sheesh. And then there's the dialogues - I don't know where they teach developers that you need to confirm that a file was deleted (after being presented with a very nice progress bar). I can only confirm that I noticed the file was deleted. Hmm.

Apart from these small glitches I do believe that we've got what we need - and the user experience is probably better than I expected (feared?).

Now I'm just waiting for the Microsoft Surface to come around; now that will be a treat and make Apple think.