Admiral Color -The neighborhood watch.

Televisions are currently ridiculously great and cheap right now. Standing in line a Target recently, I saw a pallet of name-brand 42" high def LCDs for about $400. What you get for your money now is just kooky, considering I can recall buying a 32" CRT in 1996 for something like $700. The crane required to get it up to my second floor apartment was not included in the price, or the cost of reinforcing the Earth's crust in the region, to keep the TV from falling to the center of the planet. Good picture, though.

What I do miss, however, is TV cabinets like this old Admiral.

See, now that we can make televisions with hardly any bezel (the "black frame" part of the TV around the screen) and thinner than anyone really needs them to be, we absolutely are. This is cool and makes product managers all moist in the trouser region, but I think I have space in my house for some kind of hilarious hybrid, like this Admiral with a big LED-backlit LCD in there, instead of the old glass tube screen. Sure, you'd have to cut out some of the vertical slats on the sides, due to the wider screen aspect ratio, but that's not horrible, and it would still leave room in there for some great speakers.

Of course, there's not enough of a market for this to be worthwhile for any real company to do. It will have to be pulled off by one of the insane hobbyist proletariat to pull off. If I came into possession of an old console donor TV like this one, I think I have the carpentry skills to totally make this happen. The LCD implant wouldn't have to be modified in any huge way. I'd just need to build into the console a kind of wooden bracket to hold the LCD in there without its stand on. The trick would be including an amplifier to drive the speakers without it needing to be separately controlled via remote, which would require line-of-sight for the infrared to work, and, hence, visible to look at. Hmm. Fun to think about.

Anyway, what's on tonight in the Admiral ad? Looks like Weird Head Scarf and Hat Lady again. Damn, it's a rerun. I saw this one before. It makes you wonder why we bothered to drag our Admiral out onto the driveway to share with the whole neighborhood. Oh no. Those headlights coming in from the left. Dad's back from the bar and can't see straight! Noooo! Not the Admiraaaallllllll!

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