I wanted to come back and let you know what finally happened with the Sony Vaio. The rep who wrote to her manager regarding replacement or refund wrote back after 10 days to say I had to return the laptop for the 5th repair. Since Sony had already stated their repairs do not include hardware it was obviously just another waste of time. I had contacted a TV news consumer group and they had a long list of complaints about Sony products. Unlike most other electronic manufacturers they had no contact info for any rep at Sony and had great difficulty finding one. When they were able to make contact with a Sony rep he immediately authorized the replacement of my Vaio. However, the other complaints the group had with Sony products were not resolved as of mid-December b/c Sony refused to honor their warranty on those products, one of which was a Play Station, insisting the products could be repaired (even after they had failed to do so previously). As for those who believe an extended warranty would have been of use in this case, the Vaio was under its original warranty from Sony, the extended warranty would not have applied. Since I had to purchase a second new laptop b/c the Vaio was in for repair or not working for 2 full months out of 5, we gave the new replacement Vaio to a charity and are hoping it works. We will never consider any Sony products again. Even the FedEx driver who delivered the return boxes/picked up the packaged up laptop/returned the unrepaired laptop has said he will never buy Sony. Buy Sony at your own risk.

It is probably the best LCD TV you can buy today.

Sony still makes their own tubes. For now. Sony has said that they will make tube tv's for a few more years but then they will stop. So will almost everyone else. The best Sony tube tv's were the XBR models. 2005 was the last year of "real" XBR tube tvs. This year the only XBR tube set is last year's 34" HS series redone with an HDTV tuner built in. It is rebadged as an XBR. It is still a nice tv but not built to the same performance level as last year's. Of course it is also a lot cheaper, too.

Here is what I would try: If you have them, use HDMI cables from the TIVO, the Blu-Ray player as inputs to the Sony DH800. (otherwise, component cables will work) The Cable TV cable still runs to the TIVO. You shouldn't need the extra set of component cables on the TIVO (where do the connect to?) I can't think of any way you would wreck anything playing around with it. It will either work, or not (but no smoke will appear). If you havent finished the walls yet, I would strongly advise running a CAT-5 or CAT-6 data cable to the area where your receiver sits for future use. There will be a mad scramble for providers of streaming HD programming delivered via the internet (Netflix, Amazon video etc.) Expecting a wireless network to deliver the bandwidth needed to stream an HD picture is usually asking too much. Good luck!