Big Screen TVs: Still Tuned into Luxury?

By Rich Manning

Thirty years ago, long before the computer and digital ages came and revolutionized the way we consumed entertainment, the pinnacle of multimedia achievement was the projection television unit.  Massive, expensive, and not exactly conspicuous, these beastly two-piece ambassadors of amusement not only dominated living room space, they served as an ultimate reminder of technological luxury.  And with good reason:  Back in the early eighties, the notion of firing up a projection TV to watch a football game or a movie on one of those new-fangled VHS tapes was an event that seemed nothing short of being larger than life.

Fast forward to the present day, an era where opulent tech toys seem to be measured by how small they are.  The time of owning a projection TV has long passed, to the point that the notion of owning one seems rather quaint.  In their place, of course, is a slew of wall-stretching televisions that are sleek, slender, and less space consuming, all while bringing images that are sharper and more detailed than ever.  This is a good thing; unlike those who owned projection units, owners of the modern giant-screen TVs no longer have to worry about having an enormous, bland looking square plopped in the center of the room, all while enjoying a pristine, mind-blowing picture to boot.  Yet this grand advancement in televised technology begs an interesting question.  Namely, does the modern incarnation of the big-screen television symbolically carry the notion of luxury like the huge projection televisions carried from back in the day?

It’s a question that requires a little bit of thought.  Yes, a 128-inch, high-definition television still provides an unrivaled viewing experience – ask any football fan who has spent an entire Sunday afternoon in its presence, mesmerized by the likes of Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers.  However, we are now a society where the luxury tech items we ogle at the most are the ones that are hardest to see from a distance.  The more discreet they are, the more our interest seems to be drawn to them.  This would seem to be bad news for televisions, since the ones that generate the most consumer lust tend to be as subtle as a tornado. 

That being said, consider not only the innate purpose of a television, but the acquired purpose that it has cultivated throughout the decades.  Obviously, a TV is designed to be constantly looked upon; something that will always be constant.  However, since the age of television came of age some sixty years ago, we have inadvertently developed a long, storied history of making the TV the central focus of whatever room the machine happens to be in, as any seating implements and other furniture pieces used to accompany those features is almost always angled to the sacred screen.  Because of this phenomenon, the television is more or less the prime mover in sculpting its designated area’s aesthetic flow.  This is a key point, because it also means that it virtually requires the space surrounding the television to function as an area that either showcase other expressions of elegance, such as high-end furniture or accents, or feature other symbols of personal achievement, ranging from university degrees to that signed Joe Montana football that you bought in celebration of your business’s most profitable year.  The bigger the television, the more prominent this correlation seems to be; something that could very easily, in fact tied to the device’s sheer size. 

Because of this latter, slightly abstract reason, it is still safe to say that, even though current tech culture is infatuated with the teeny and the tiny, a big screen television still retains a mystique as being at the pinnacle of technological luxury, much like the projection TVs from a prior generation.  This tendency that we have to use the TV as a cornerstone to display other items of refinement or achievement gives it an unmatched indulgent quality that goes well beyond the awesomeness of seeing Monday Night Football strewn from one end of the wall to the other.  Considering how jaw-dropping said football game looks in that capacity, that is saying quite a lot.