when bigger wasn't necessarily better

Then, color TV didn't have to be big to be good.

Now, color TV needs to be big in order to be socially acceptable. Gone are the days of cathode ray tube (CRT) TVs. If your are an adult and your boob tube still uses cathode ray tubes, then you are a boob who is most likely still living in the basement belonging to your parents. If you are an adult who is still living in your parent's basement, the chance that you will ever have the opportunity to fertilize an egg from a woman's fallopian tube let alone see a real life boob is slim to none. In this day and age, blurry CRT has been replaced by HD 1080p. If 1080p is considered the sliced bread of television imaging, CRT is nothing more than a bucket of soggy grain.

Gone are the days when a television set was viewed as a fuzzy piece of furniture with an antenna on top. Television sets nowadays are crisp contemporary masterpieces, not mahogany monstrosities that you could eat a TV dinner on. The space on your wall where you would at one time hang a painting or a family portrait has now become prime location for a piece of Japanese wall candy. You could purchase Van Gogh's 45 inch Starry Night to hang on your wall or you could opt for Panasonic's 50 inch Starless Night for millions of dollars less.

If you are still a sucker for your parent's behemoth television set despite all this, my only advice would be less of a tip and more of a plead-- disassemble that mother fucker and take all of the mahogany wood that's salvageable and give your basement lair some nice hardwood flooring. Then google "Van Gogh painting". Print out some of Van Gogh's art. Maybe some of Monet's. Salvador Dali's got some decent work too. Hang them on the wall in your basement. Tidy up the place. Charge art aficionados a small fee to come and tour the worlds first basement art gallery. Maybe serve some toothpicked cheeses. Do that for awhile. Save up money. Take your earnings and buy yourself a nice big plasma screen TV. One with HD. Treat yo self. It'll be worth it. Seriously, because you weren't planning on moving out anytime soon.