Best Buy, San Diego.
We needed a new TV because the one we had didn’t fit in the armoire we’d gotten. I’d measured. The TV was 28 inches tall, the armoire just over 28 inches. Try again, no joy. Apparently “just over” and “28” are different numbers in furniture but the same number in television.
We liked the armoire better than the TV, so I had to buy a new one.
I was going to buy a Sony, just because. Becke liked the Toshiba. But as I walked toward the checkout I started thinking about what Sony actually does with DRM and proprietary formats. The CDs with rootkit code was just the most recent example. Sony makes genuinely great devices with good ergonomics and visual appeal, and then they cripple every one of them in the interest of protecting their content revenue stream. Their boomboxes didn’t have a place to plug in an iPod. Their cameras used proprietary memory. They kept trying to foist off ATRAC and MiniDiscs. Even their Palm series used special sync software that didn’t work with Mac.
The TV had none of these problems. It was just a TV with standard connections. But I decided: f*** 'em. Got the Toshiba.
Sony doesn’t care about my money. But at least I wouldn’t have to look at the thing every morning and think about helping finance their war on their own customers.