Sometimes I feel sorry for our lonely, little big-screen TVs.
Not long ago, jumbo flat-screens were our BFFs, remember? They were beloved for their acres of high-definition pixels, adored for their arrays of surround-sound speakers, and hung lovingly in a place of honor above the mantel.
Mark KennedyBut much as the silver screens of American cinema gave way to console TVs in the 1950s, our family-room big screens – which grew from 32- to 50-plus vertical inches in a decade – are no longer objects of wonderment. Instead, we are in the midst of a regression from these flat-panel giants – first to laptop computers, then to tablet computers, and finally to smartphones.
Oh, manufacturers continue to hawk large-screen TVs – they are now trying to hook us on the newest generation of high-definition 4K clarity. But if our middle-class family room is any measure, the big screen is just an overgrown appliance that supplies background noise while we all diddle away on our iPhones and iPads.
What we’ve lost in the process is a sense of community, the shared experience of watching television together. It’s the difference between gathering as a family in front of a roaring fireplace or retreating to our own little spaces with our own little space heaters.