Riding the bus to school was always a drag, so it felt great to be able to slide behind the wheel of my new car and drive there on the morning of my 16th birthday. Each day after that I'd wake up late, then get halfway home before all the losers who didn't have wheels even got on the bus.
The flat-panel plasma form factor represents the aesthetic ideal of TV design. That inches-thin, "all picture" look coaxes men and women alike to open their checkbooks and pay significantly more than they would for a bulky rear-projection TV with the same size screen.
Dreaming about a great big box under the tree this year? Sure there'll be rectangular boxes containing new shirts and maybe a bigger one with a jacket. You'll unwrap packages from the kids filled with golf tees and ties, and maybe even a nice-size box containing a new DVD player. But those miniature thrills just can't compare to what you really want: a big-screen HDTV.
The words "flat-out huge" come to mind when I try to describe Samsung's HPN6339. This massive panel claims the title of the world's largest plasma TV - at least until the Korean electronics giant begins selling its 70-inch model, announced last spring.
Photos by Tony Cordoza Television is here to stay, but the days of the tube are numbered. Admittedly, cathode-ray tubes (CRTs), the devices that create the entertaining, enlightening, and sometimes mind-numbing images in nearly every American living room, will likely remain for many years in direct-view sets with screens that measure 40 inches or less (diagonal).