High Definition, I don't hate you, but I was hoping to go a little longer without you.

I found excuse after excuse to put you off until later. First I was waiting for your thin CRT television sets to drop to reasonable prices. By the time that happened, all CRT TV sets were terrible.

Then I waited for your LCD sets to drop to then CRT price levels. That happened, but shortly before that I decided that I wanted an LCD television set with a CableCard 2.0 slot so I would be able to take advantage of two-way services offered by my cable operator such as on-demand video and an interactive program guide without a cable box.

After it became clear to me, HD, that the cable companies, consumer electronics companies and the United States Federal Communications Commission would not come to an agreement on a standard for CableCard 2.0 for years, I started looking at your LCD television sets again.

But then I decided that it would make sense to wait for sets compliant with HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) version 1.3. I didn't want to have what would soon be an obsolete version of something.

And when HDMI 1.3 became common, I was waiting for one of your good television sets to have four HDMI inputs. (Oddly, only your budget sets seem to have four now.) A PlayStation 3, upconverting DVD player and one of your cable boxes would take up three of those inputs. I wanted a fourth just in case I needed it in the future. Sure, there are HDMI splitters, but those things take up space and aren't as convenient as having enough inputs built-in.

A few days ago, all of my excuses became moot. Attempting to play Assassin's Creed and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune on my standard definition television set was just that: attempting to play them. These games were designed specifically for you, High Definition. Too many things in these games were barely visible in SD, making them frustrating to play and straining my eyes.

My vision was poor already. I didn't want video games to be the reason why I became legally blind. So on Friday I connected my PlayStation 3 to my computer monitor.

Much better. 1080i is a whole lot easier on my eyes than standard definition.

If only I didn't have to sit at my computer desk in my less comfortable than my bed computer chair to experience you.