British TV power
For the longest time I thought the Cookie Monster had gray fur.
You see, I grew up in a house that only had an old Brand X black-and-white TV that took all of 30 minutes to warm up. Something wrong with the picture tube, I think. It was encased in an auburn wooden cabinet on top of which my father placed framed graduation pictures and decorative plates. Every day, I had an appointment with my gray playmates — Kermit, Grover, Ernie and Bert, The Count, and, occasionally, Big Bird’s “imaginary” furry friend. From that show I learned my ABC’s, my 123’s and endless shades of grays (which would come in handy when I started drawing with charcoal and graphite).
When my family got enough dough to buy a Brand X color TV, the unreal world that I tuned into every day became more, uh, “realistic.” It wasn’t an expensive state-of-the-art brand. The colors weren’t calibrated well. In fact, the humans in Sesame Street had a yellowish skin tone — as if they were suffering from hepatitis or scurvy. Sometimes, they looked reptilian and a bit greenish, as if they had been bombarded by gamma rays. The curious case of the incredible Mr. Hooper. But on that TV set, I saw my favorite shows: The Twilight Zone, The Hitchhiker, The Outer Limits, Tales from the Darkside, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, as well as sitcoms, concert specials and NBA games broadcast by the Far East Network (FEN). To this day, I couldn’t picture Rod Serling without being reminded of that red-orange TV set, which sometimes mysteriously changed channels by itself. Hmm, I think it deserves a Twilight Zone episode of its own. (Voiceover: You are traveling into another dimension...)
Those were different times. Television sets these days boast so much clarity and high-definition that you’d half-expect Sadako to crawl out of the tube after emerging from a well. That’s an exaggeration, of course, but I think you get the drift.
One brand that has created headway in Europe for its LCD TV sets is British Continental (Brico). The reps from Brico Philippines were kind enough to lend me a 47-inch Manchester series model during the yuletide break, allowing me to watch my favorite Luis Buñuel DVDs in a resolution ratio of 1,920 x 1,080 pixels. Imagine watching the bourgeoisie black-hole party scenes in Exterminating Angel with much clarity. It’s the closest you’ll be at that party that never ends, and where no one gets to call it a night (until the very end, that is).
Aside from the resolution, what Brico has going for it is the design itself. The Brico LCD TV has a contemporary minimalist look, with each set hand-built and hand-finished by Brico craftsmen, not something plucked out of the assembly line like other TV brands.
Brico even offers customization options, so that the customer can have his or her TV set personalized: choose the color of the panel or the text placed under the screen to match the color scheme of one’s home or office. Brico’s custom-finish service even makes the television set conform to the interior design specifications of a hotel or a resort.
William Morrison, production supervisor of Brico UK who works at the West Drayton, London production facility describes the process of customization: “(Our company) specializes in customization. The TV we make is based on an upgradeable platform. We first manufacture the shell of the TV. This is made individually by our craftsman according to the design and specification of our clients. Once the shell is done the electric components are installed and assembled by our technician with the shell to make the finished product. It takes five working days to complete the process.”
Brico LCD TV is available in several models named after well-known British cities such as Birmingham, Cambridge, Kensington, and Manchester. Customers may choose sizes ranging from 32-inch, 37-inch, 42-inch and 47-inch screens. And to elevate the viewing experience, Brico also offers a multi-media system compatible with the LCD TV, featuring a personal computer, a duo core processor, a Windows Vista operating system, an HDD and DVD player and recorder, a wireless keyboard, multi card reader and a high-end audio system, among others. The viewers can record their favorite Curb Your Enthusiasm or The Daily Show episodes. (I was supposed to record Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man on Star Movies, but it dawned on me that I’d already returned the Brico, and what I had in my room was my Brand X TV set, monolithic only to the waiters at Hobbit House.)
But for several weeks it was like a theater in my room: going on a hallucinatory trip with Kris in a space station orbiting around Solaris in the Tarkovsky movie, joining Whitnail and “I” in their booze-powered holiday by mistake which ends with a soliloquy from Hamlet, watching Soylent Green and making the faux pas of preparing cookies as a snack, and enduring every, and I mean every, Hellraiser movie ever made.
The resolution of the Brico was so good I half-expected Pinhead, Butterball, and the rest of the Cenobites to pop out from the screen and consume not just my cookies.
* * *
For information about Brico LCD TV and its customization services, visit the British Continental Philippines service center at 43 Scout Madrinan, South Triangle, Quezon City (411-2810 and telefax 411-8753), or the showroom at 101 First Midland Condominium, 109 Gamboa St., Legaspi Village, Makati City (666-4191 or SMS 0917-8531277), or visit www.britishcontinental.ltd.uk.
