So, when do you open your presents?

As I recall, my family did it more on Christmas eve, though I recall a combination sometimes. I think the eve works out better for little kids–sure, you have an excuse for getting them to bed early on the 24th, but then they drag you out of bed at 5 am, right? Better to end the suspense early and the kids can occupy themselves playing with the toys (at least the ones they did not immediately toss aside and disregard) rather than rousing their reluctant parents.

I mention this simply because Sachi and I will be getting our presents on the 24th–that’s when the new TV will be delivered. I just got through the hard part–selecting and buying. What we’re getting: a 42“ Sharp Aquos LCD, the LC-42DS5-B (the final ”B“ designating the black color). I had been looking at Toshiba’s Regza Z- or ZH-7000 with the ability to use USB or LAN HDDs to record shows, but there were just too many problems caused by (DRM-equipped) HDMI input preventing recording. Sharp has a better reputation (not to mention it’s the only TV that had English menus), and quite frankly, I have come around to the idea that gadgety draws like the HDD option often cause more trouble than they’re worth.

For recording, I broke down and went with an alternative: the Sharp Aquos BD-HD22, a combination HDD and Blu-Ray recorder. First, it allows us to watch Blu-Ray titles, which are conveniently not region-disabled–Japan and America are in the same Blu-Ray region, conveniently. We can also rent stuff from the local video stores, which are just beginning to carry BD titles. It allows us to record on the new medium as well, a nice option, now that 50 GB discs are commonly found in Japan. But the recorder also plays and records standard DVDs as well, which is very nice. And, of course, there’s the HDD recorder, so we can record after watching, if we want. (You know, I just realized that I forgot to ask if I would be able to edit out commercials and stuff. Hmm.) Since the recorder and the TV are the same brand, they’ll work a little better together–at the very least, having better utility with the same remote.

Our content options are limited to a few: cable, satellite, or building satellite. Building satellite means that the building has an antenna on the roof which then feeds the signal to everyone; we just plug a co-ax into the wall and presto, we got satellite TV. We’re not going to do that, however: the service has no HDTV channels. Cable is the middle answer: easy because we already have it, and our cable box is even HDTV-ready. However, the HDTV channels are limited to about six or seven HDTV channels, none of them specializing in English-language TV shows. Satellite TV–specifically, SkyPerfect–is the best option, with 15 HDTV channels now and a full spread of 70 promised by next October. Currently, Movie Plus and Fox are two of those channels, with AXN, Super Drama, and a lot of others–including a newly-added SciFi Channel–coming soon. The down side: our building requires us to fill out a form and wait a week or two before they let us put up the antenna. (One reason why only 2 people in this 250-unit-plus building have such antennas up–or at least visibly, as some people may have skipped getting permission and found a way to mount the antennas from within the balcony instead of over the balcony edge.)

But I gotta tell you, getting all this information was not easy–and language was not the only factor involved in making things more difficult. For example, I only lucked into finding out that HDMI prevented recording, something that helped to torpedo the Regza. I had heard that HDMI was DRM’ed up, but I had not thought that HDMI was more or less required (or at least considered the best way) to get the signal from tuner box to TV. That’s what led me to find out about the building satellite, though that was like pulling teeth. I kept calling and calling the TV manufacturer and the SkyPerfect people, asking if there was a workaround that would make recording possible–and though the answer was right in front of them–the direct-to-TV solution (no tuner box), I had to discover that myself. Once I knew, I asked them and of course they were aware of it. They just wouldn’t mention it before then for some reason.

I tend to go through this every few years when I make a big purchase of some technology or other; I spend hours on the phone getting the runaround. I have come to the conclusion also that Japanese customer support representatives are congenitally incapable of speaking simple, easy-to-understand language. I ask them, for example, if the TV’s internal tuner can be used, and instead of a simple ”yes,“ ”no,“ or ”sometimes yes and sometimes no,“ I get a full thirty seconds of complex Japanese of which I understand squat. I then remind them that my Japanese isn’t as good as they think, and to please speak slowly and using simpler language, to which they agree, and then proceed to say the exact same words I just told them I could not understand at all. Maybe it’s this freak talent I have developed myself after teaching English to non-native speakers for the past 23 years and simply assume everybody can do it, but truly I don’t think it’s so hard. Instead of saying, ”the internal tuner accesses either of two available broadcast satellite services, bypassing the need for specialized external tuner equipment,“ just say ”yes, you can use the TV tuner.“ It’s not brain surgery–that is, it shouldn’t be brain surgery. I dunno, there must be some rule with customer service that if your language is not complex enough then you aren’t respecting the customer enough, or something like that. But it’s damned frustrating.

Anyway, the delivery is scheduled for the 24th. They wouldn’t specify a delivery time, but in Japan, they use a nice system: they call you the morning of or the night before and set a more specific time range. None of this wait-around-all-day-and-maybe-we’ll-show-up crap. For a $10 fee, the guy will set up the entire thing. I am pretty sure I could do it myself–it’s the same as the Internet and other setups you get charged for–you just plug in the LAN cable here, add the splitter there, simple as pie. But it’s cheap and what the heck, maybe there’s something I don’t know–I am completely new to HDMI and the whole HDTV thing. Better to see how it’s done first, just in case.