Front Porch: A little nudge can bring modern luxury

This is about inertia and technology, and how overcoming the former in service to the latter can sometimes be worth it.

To explain – we finally got a bigger television.

We have been watching TV on a small 32-inch screen for a whole lot of years now, and during the COVID-19 lockdown, we were watching quite a bit of it. The size has always been just fine.

Because my husband is hard of hearing, we had a soundbar to enhance the volume and quality of the sound. But because he and I have a different perspective on what is the proper volume setting, a number of years ago we also got him a headset (referred to as his “ears”), which he wears when we watch together. He can control the volume on his ears while I control the ambient sound. Life was good.

It had been pointed out to us, especially by our sons when they came to visit, as well as just about every guest we’ve ever had in our home, how much better our viewing experience would be with a larger screen. I always blew it off. Too much bother.

Not that I haven’t seen some megascreens at friends’ homes and enjoyed Super Bowl parties there, back in the day when we actually gathered in groups at other houses. Ah, fond memories. But, still, it didn’t seem worth the effort, since I wasn’t unhappy with what we had.

Earlier this year, our son Sam arrived for a visit and surprised us with an AppleTV connector box thingy and attached it to our main TV, giving us access, through his membership, to some streaming services we don’t have.

That expanded our viewing choices, which was very nice. We could have done it for ourselves, I suppose, but, you know … inertia.

We had a problem getting Bruce’s ears to work independently with the AppleTV attachment, and Sam couldn’t make that work. And then the ears died altogether. They had already outlasted their expected life, so it was time to get new ones.

But before we did that, Sam also offered us a 52-inch TV . He was getting ready to move, from one neighborhood in Seattle to another, which resulted in an extra and much newer-than-ours TV. Would we like to have it?

A kind offer, which I was about to turn down, but found myself saying “sure” and not quite knowing why. The real stopper for me was that I had no desire to engage in what I knew would be a bunch of effort, doing things I had no knowledge about (and Bruce couldn’t shade-tree-mechanic his way through) to make the new set up happen. For starters, the TV was in Seattle; we were in Spokane.

And, frankly, we could buy our own bigger TV right here. But, about that, you know …

We picked up the TV on a visit to Seattle in July. It was then that inertia really had to dissipate, at least for a while. We purchased a new set of ears, bought and installed a base for the TV (which had been wall-mounted in Seattle) and arranged for the expert team from Huppins to come to the house to make magic and turn this all into a working system, also hooking up our old Blu-ray player.

I should point out that the 52-inch TV is really too big for the space where we have now it – atop a frame Bruce made from an old door decades ago, which stands atop a file cabinet in a small room off our kitchen. The new-to-us TV has to sit at an angle so I can open my pantry door behind it, and it does extend out in front of some shelving.

Clearly, aesthetics were never part of the equation.

Magic was indeed made, though it did involve installation of a special gizmo work-around device so ambient sound and the ears could be controlled separately. The Blu-ray and AppleTV got hooked up, and the soundbar, which had been producing fuzzy and crackling sounds, was pitched.

Our 32-incher was relocated by the technicians to our bedroom, and the no-longer-operating, big boxy (seemingly) 500-pound dinosaur TV that had lived atop Bruce’s dresser was thanked for its service and dispatched to TV heaven.

Before inertia could roll in like the fog and settle down upon us once again, I had to learn how to operate the additional AppleTV remote, a rather stressful activity for this septuagenarian, especially since we had no owners’ manual and there are precious few labeled buttons to press. You just have to know where to press or swipe up or down – not great for us nonintuitive analog people.

But after some false starts and a bit of swearing, here we sit, proper old folks, in our respective recliners, watching amazing TV. Did you know you can see so much more detail overall, including the pores in the faces of people in close-up shots, that the colors are so much more vibrant, the sounds crisper and the images … well, just great?

Who knew? Obviously, everybody.

Overcoming inertia – for a whole lot of things, in fact – can enhance all sorts of things in life. I may try it again sometime soon.

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Correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached at upwindsailor@comcast.net.