Buying a new TV shouldn't be this hard

My parents bought our first TV around 1972. It was a black and white Hitachi and we operated with nothing but bunny ears and 3 channels until 1986. In 1986 my parents moved up to cable, and colour. The catalyst for the change was that we also bought a Radio Shack computer consoled that hooked up to our TV.

I don't remember when we bought our first VCR.

When my wife and I got married we ended up getting her Grandma's old 19" colour TV. We reverted to bunny ears for many years. We actually bought a nice "big" Sony Trinitron TV about 7 years ago. Then we moved back to cable because our old bunny ears wouldn't work in our new house. We even bought a DVD player.

Now we are looking at moving up to HDTV, flat screen LCD. Yikes, what an array of things to look at:

• TV
• PVR
• Blu-ray DVD
• Warranty
• Digital TV Box
• Sound System
• Cables

I tried to buy this all online. But, I've come to the conclusion that none of the big online sites (e.g. FutureShop and BestBuy) don't support this very well. I want them to have a check-list and shopping cart system that leads me through buying all. They have a great opportunity to provide a simple user interface that takes me through a cross-sell and up-sell.

Alas ... now I am going to educate myself as well as I can. Then, I'll brave the less then helpful salespeople at one of the big-box electronic stores.