Amazon’s front-page should be outlawed. They show you the items you’ve viewed in the past, along with recommendations on stuff you may like (which are surprisingly accurate), and to top it off, show you what other people have done after looking at whatever item it is. It’s peer pressure, really, except that I don’t know these people. I mean, how the heck do they know that I like Star Wars, Ginger Altoids, AND books on Wiki’s? WTH?? (oh yeah.. I bought all that shtuff there)

In my defense, though, Red Sox season is starting, and my ‘old’ TV never really cut it as a HD set, even though it was big (51" Samsung). So, when I was browsing on a Lenovo X61 Tablet I’m evaluating, and went to Amazon to buy some printer ink for our Canon MP960, I saw the Sony Bravia KDS-55A3000 taunting me. I tapped my tablet pen on the "buy me.. you deserve it! you’ve worked hard! Think of the children! They need to see the Sox in HD!" button and told Mary Lou (my wife) that I’d kinda/sorta, you know… bought a TV. She just rolled her eyes.

BTW, this set was one of CNET’s Highest Reviewed sets of 2007, and earned an Editors’ Choice award.

Mary Lou and I actually picked it up at a Fedex depot early, to get a couple of days use out of it before it was actually scheduled to be delivered. It was surprisingly light (151 pounds). Hooking it up was pretty easy and intuitive – I really like the placement of the inputs on the SIDE of the set, and not on the back where these things normally are.

The first ‘real’ show I watched was the Red Sox in Japan – live HD Red Sox at 6am is pretty cool…

The picture is downright amazing. I’m finding myself watching shows that I don’t even like (like Hockey) just for the 1080 signal. I can’t say enough about this set – I’m thoroughly impressed. I’m running everything through a Sony A/V Receiver using Component cables; it doesn’t support HDMI switching. But if I end up buying a Blu-Ray player, now that the HD DVD wars are over, I’ll probably upgrade the receiver too.