Do you find that others in your home don't bond with electronics as well as you do? Do you get calls at work that start with "how do I . . ." and end with "your [optional expletive deletive] [brand and function of your last electronic purchase]?

I remember sitting in a CES press conference sometime in the year $149 D.V.D. listening to Toshiba whine about how no one was making any money selling DVD players any more. But moments later, they were announcing new models with new features and even lower price points. I guess you can't blame them. After all they had a lot of competition back then.

Well, DirecTv's new high definition channels are here and, er, what the heck were they thinking? On TNTHD, a station that existed as channel 75 before the hoopla and is now also shown on 245, "Save the Last Dance" is being shown in 4x3 stretch mode. Sci-Fi's high def incarnation is showing Merlin, a movie that was only shot in 4x3 (but at least they're not stretching it). USA is showing "Law & Order: CI" on their high def station properly, but in a weird-aspect challenged pillow box (black bars on all four sides) on their regular definition channel. A&E's has some high def shows that they're cropping and then stretching to 16x9 judging by the look of it. Only TBS's high def baseball game looks good enough that it gives me nothing to complain about – except that fact that the Yankees are losing.

Michelle Kessler who covers technology for USA Today has a great little (short) read on price sensitivity in today's electronics marketplace. It's not how high of a mountain you shout from after all. It's how far the people listening are willing to tilt back to hear you.

Some of my friends, otherwise upbeat and keen journalists to the man, have started passing around the Prozac. No, it's not some general malaise, but the news we hear on the sidelines about the disparity between Blu-ray and HD DVD sales. I can't get into specifics, so let's talk hypothetically.

A month ago, I wrote about how the HD side of the Stroker Ace combo disc didn't play in my brand new Toshiba XA2. Shane asked if I'd bothered to upgrade firmware levels, which, of course, I hadn't. When I did, supposedly to release 1.6, I still had a problem with the disc. I put in Children of Men, another combo, and that wouldn't play on the HD side either. A week ago, I ran the firmware update request again. It took a few minutes (as opposed to about 20 minutes the first time) and then, well, I forget what it did then, but my Toshiba still thinks it's at release level 1.6.

Well, I finally got an HD DVD player. Thanks Shane for helping me decide on a model. In the end, I got the top of the line Toshiba XA2 and I couldn't be more pleased. 1080p and one of the best upconverting DVD players around. What's not to like? Feeding my also new JVC DLA-HD1 projector and lighting up a 78" wide (89" diag) Stewart Screen (Studio Tek 130 – 1.3 gain), the picture is to die for.