Probabilities

We are definitely going to get the audio system we saw at Best Buy unless we get the TV we saw at the same place. Definitely probably most likely.

The TV, if that's the way we go, will be a 46 inch, probably LCD, probably HD, probably Samsung. Possibly with Blu-ray though probably not.

The audio, if we go that way, is a much more complicated story. It will likely be a Bose Acoustimass, even though the audiophile consensus appear to be "Bose is substandard from a technical perspective, but they excel from a marketing perspective. You can put together a much better system yourself." Well, yeah, but I don't want to 'put a system together'. I want a fire-and- forget solution; I don't want to have to learn a new language. I found this on one vendor's site:

• CD player with 8 times over-sampling digital filter
• Plays CD-R/RW discs, WMA and MP3 decoders
• 22 watts per channel x 2
• AM/FM stereo tuner, with 40 station presets and Radio Data Services (RDS)
• Subwoofer preamp output
• Super Dynamic Bass
• Optical digital output

And that means -- what? Oversampling? x2? RDS? Superduper Dynamic Bassomatic? Optiwhat? This is the magic of Bose, I think: it may not be the best you can build, but you don't have to spend a lot of time thinking about it. The damn thing works. So, Bose.

All of this is subject to change. That's definite, too.