Cats, pikey neighbours and gadgets

Regular readers will know how much I dislike my neighbours. It's bad enough that their growing tribe of inbred cats (just one generation away from finding them sitting on the porch, strumming banjos and brewing catshit moonshine) infest my garden.
Eskimos are said to have identified over a hundred different types of snow. By carefully traversing our lawn, I think I have achieved the same feat for cat turds. Previously indifferent to cats, I have since developed a deep prejudice against them.
This is because our neighbours are too sodding lazy to do anything about them. When I'm running the country, they'll be first off the benefits and down the yoghurt mines, doing something useful for the downtrodden middle classes.
You see, gentle reader, the neighbours are what I call the Plasma Poor. Neither of them have been observed going to work, and yet they miraculously appear to be materially better off than anyone else in the neighbourhood. Takeaway meals are delivered four times a week. Sky multichannel is available in all four bedrooms. Two of them are Chelsea season ticket holders. They have (at the last count) five multi-gened children clad in Nike trainers.
At the Future Foundation's State of the Nation conference last week, one of the speakers speculated as to why the middle classes haven't rioted over the apparent inequalities between themselves and the extremely affluent.
I'll tell you why: it's because the middle classes are in a state of permanent bewilderment over seeing their taxes being channelled to the Plasma Poor - Britain's secret underclass of workshy layabouts. By a counter-intuitive masterstroke from the god of improbability, the Plasma Poor are able to afford the sort of goods that the middle classes have to save for. They are the post-early adopters.
Think I'm wrong? Go to a Basildon Dixons on a Saturday afternoon and see who's in the queue.
Dammit, why can't these people be respectably poor, like my Northern grandparents, who were brought up on one lump of coal a day for breakfast, a piece of string for Christmas, and a deferential nod to the factory owner as he rode by on his white horse?
(Nostalgic sigh) It was therefore with mixed feelings that a fortnight ago, I observed the neighbours taking delivery of a 40-inch HD-ready plasma TV.
I'm not sure what to make of this technology. On the one hand, it's bloody amazing (having taken the decision to forego holidays for two years in order to buy our own Sony Bravia). A large flat screen somehow dominates a room in an understated way. Don't ask me how that works, but it does. And when you finally rig it up to High-Definition input, the results are staggering.
On the other hand, it's difficult to decide whether these things have the air of exclusivity that makes a new technology desirable. We've gone through the early adopter phase with flat-screen tellies without, say, the equivalent of the Apple iPod dominating the market. Sales volumes have hit that mass necessary to drive down prices, but which one do you buy? Which brand is going to give you that sanctimoniously smug buttock-tremble?
Sure, the Sony Bravia is probably the one brand name that sticks out because of the Balls ad (the Paint and Bunnies have been less memorable and I believe have somehow diverged from the brand; my own personal dinner-party research revealed that, at first, most people thought the Balls ad was for Hewlett-Packard).
Take this current crop of ads.

Philips' Aurea is an LCD TV with multi-coloured backlights. That's its USP. And its advertising suggests that backlights on a bloke's telly will dazzle foxy chicks into bed. It's a weird hybrid between Ikea-catalogue mood lighting and entertainment. You can achieve the same effect with a lava lamp. It's a lot cheaper too.
Now, I really do like this one from Toshiba. It's a boring picture, but the message is bang on for those wondering when to jump on the home technology bandwagon. The only problem is, the answer could just as easily be a telly from any other manufacturer. The ad might make me go to a TV shop where I'd end up buying a Sony instead.

OK, this is cheating a bit 'cos it's not a telly, even though it's a fine example of integrated technology i.e. all the bells and whistles and geegaws in the camera that are meant to help you make best use of your fancy new flat-screen TV. I can't be arsed to figure out what 3CCD is because, frankly, the image doesn't make me want to read the copy.
As Belinda Parmar (probably the most cheerful planner I've ever met) points out, it's not exactly feminine in its appeal, either. Do Panasonic only want men to buy this camcorder?
I spotted this ad in ES magazine, the Evening Standard supplement aimed at women, and it sticks out like a sore thumb.
Bored.
Rant over.