Over the weekend, my wife and I bought our big Christmas present, a Samsung DLP HD TV. My goal had been to score a LCD TV in the 36-inch range, but after striking out at a Black Friday sale (getting there at 5 a.m. just wasn’t early enough), I came across this beauty on Circuit City’s website.

My wife’s position has been “get the big TV,” but given our small house and tight viewing space, I was highly skeptical that a 42-inch set like this would work out well. I wasn’t cheered by the initial picture when I got home, either — there were lots of MPEG artifacts in the SD picture supplied by the cable company.

Then I got the HD box from the cable company — just in time for “Monday Night Football.” Ohhhh, baby. Even at a distance of seven feet to the screen, this TV was great — and the component video cables led to a significant improvement in all pictures, not just the HD ones. I ordered a HDMI cable today from Parts Express (my favorite electronic parts supplier) and once I get that bad boy in place, I suspect we’ll see another big video quality jump.

This might be the best electronics purchase I’ve ever made.