Attempting to Join the 21st Century

Audio/Visual technology, once an area of expertise, has left me behind. In the bowels of my apartment building, I'm storing tangled masses of RCA cables, various adapters, switch boxes, ethernet cables, patchcords and speaker wire. I have no less than three boxes full of these accessories. 20 years ago, I was a video toaster guy. Then I was overdubbing audio on super-VHS dubbing decks. 15 years ago, I went through a turntable revival period and picked up any pair of oversized headphones I could find at garage sales. I rocked a Tascam 4-track until I could upgrade to my Fostex. I bought early on full-duplex sound cards and digital multi-track recording technology. And I bit hard on MP3 when it first appeared.

But now, I'm a dinosaur. I feel like one of those old college roommates of mine that needed help connecting their computer to their stereo. I've avoided iPhones, X-Boxes, and HDTV. My router busted, and I never replaced it... so I can't even offer wi-fi to my house guests. And I've never synced my Outlook calendar to anything. I'm an embarrassment to A/V geekdom.

So this week, I'm taking a plunge. I just ordered a 40" LCD HDTV. They've been driven all the way down into the troposphere by the emergence of LED technology and the attraction of 120Hz and 240Hz models. To maximize its powers, I ordered a Blu-Ray player that also streams movies straight from Netflix. To enable this option, I had to purchase a wireless router. I guess I'm going to have to figure out an awful lot of stuff in the next few weeks. But I still haven't read the manual for my digital camera... so I'm hoping that 90% of this stuff is intuitive to an old A/V guy like myself.