Pixilated

We've got a DVR. We used to have a Tivo, but we decided to go with the machine that the cable company allows us to purchase movies and other shows on-demand. We used to have a VCR and a DVD player. Now we have a VCR/DVD burner combination. We've got a Wii. We've got an XBox and an old Playstation. All of this stuff can be pumped through surround sound speakers so when Lassie barks or Mario leaps we can hear it in "big movie sound." In our bedroom, we have a DVD player and the on-demand DVR box. We have three or more boxes helping us watch TV on any given day.
That's why I flinched when my son got this wild notion about hooking up a PC in our living room. We have almost as many computers as we have TV contouring devices. The idea that we should adopt another one came from an incident earlier in the week when he and his friend were playing a Star Wars game on my laptop. His little friend was bemoaning the relative size of the laser rifles and Wookies, compared to the screen he was used to playing on. This got my son's creative juices flowing, and when he was left alone again with his old man, he asked me if we couldn't figure out some way to connect that laptop to our TV.
We tried a dozen different inputs and cables, and eventually we got an image from the computer on the TV, but we couldn't get the game to play. There was mild satisfaction in being able to project lolcats on the big screen, but we left it as unfinished business. Until Saturday morning.
That's when the call came in from our breathless twelve-year-old that he had our problem solved. His uncle was giving up his Gateway entertainment center PC, and was willing to let us have it for free, providing we lugged it home. Away from his house. Where it was mysteriously no longer of any use to him.
These questions didn't slow us down. We unplugged some things and plugged others, we gathered our collection of possible cables and connections and we set to work. Permutation after permutation yielded the same result. No picture. No sound. We had better success with the laptop. Grumbling set in, and we began to consider our options. One of these was not ignoring the box that had been brought into our living room. It was far too big and full of electronic potential to simply let it go. By now, hours had been invested in this seemingly simple operation of hooking up a monitor to a PC. A very big monitor, but a monitor nonetheless.
Finally, we reached an impasse: lunchtime. The need for food outweighed the need to fly an X-Wing fighter across the living room. That's when my son made this suggestion: "Maybe we've got too much." I didn't need to ask for clarification. We unplugged, cleaned up, and went to the kitchen for a sandwich.