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Hello English learners. Welcome back to Englishpod. My name is Marco

and my name is Catherine. So Marco you’ve been shopping a lot lately.

I have and this dialogue or this lesson today is one of my favorite pieces of furniture, maybe appliances that I’ve bought recently and it’s a TV.

All right, so I’d even go for electronics with that one, the electronics department is somewhere you like to hang out.

Well, I mean, I think every guy loves, like a big screen TV, and the home theater systems, so you just go deaf after watching—

Why is it? Is bigger really better when it comes to like a 70s TV?

I don’t know. I think, yeah. The whole experience of just seeing this movie on this huge TV and like having all the sound. It’s just something about that. Or watching a football game with your buddies and you can actually—

Okay, that I can appreciate. But we’ve got a couple of great words for you on a preview in today’s vocabulary preview.

Vocabulary preview

Okay, so on vocabulary preview today, we’re gonna be looking at two words. The first one is to appreciate.

Alright, so this basically means to like.

Yeah, you appreciate someone, but in this context, to enjoy or take advantage of something so—

maybe you hear this with a couple, two people who are fighting and the girl says to the guy, you don’t appreciate me. So, he doesn’t really care about her in the way that she wants him to. Or you could say this about a TV, for example, I can’t appreciate my PS3, my great awesome console, my gaming system because my TV is not good enough.

or big enough

or big enough. or big enough, so this means that it could be a lot better if I just bought a better TV.

Right. and if you buy a better TV then you basically are upgrading or to upgrade.

Okay, so this verb, to upgrade means to go from something that’s okay to something that’s better.

Exactly. So, in previous lessons we’ve seen to get a complimentary upgrade. For example, in a flight or a hotel.

I like that. Well, you can also get an upgrade on a computer. You say well, my computer’s from 1994. I really need to get an upgrade.

Yeah, for sure. So, to upgrade. Now, we’re gonna be listening to this dialogue for the first time. We’re gonna be buying a TV. So, let’s listen.

A: Seriously, I don’t know why we need to get a new TV.

B: Honey I told you already. I can’t appreciate the graphics level and detail of the games on my Playstation 3 on our old TV.

C: Good afternoon folks! How can I be of service today?

B: I’m looking to upgrade to a newer, bigger television set.

C: You’ve come to the right place! What size are you looking for?

A: Just a normal sized TV for our living room.

C: I see. Well this set here is on sale. It’s a forty six inch HDTV screen and has all the works. Three HDMI connectors, USB, VGA and S - Video ports.

It even has a DVI port so you can hook up your PC or laptop! This is without a doubt the complete home theater experience!

B: This is exactly what I need! Can you imagine watching movies or playing video games on this thing?

A: Honey, I think it’s a bit too big. I don’t even think it will fit in our living room.

C: Not to worry, we will deliver and install it in your home. It comes with a wall mount so you can just hang it on the wall like a picture!

B: This is great! How much will this set me back?

C: Lucky for you, this is the last one we have in stock so it’s half off!

B: I’ll take it!

All right. So, I am going to have to defer to you Marco on some of these words in today’s language take away because they’re all about TV specifics.

Language take away

all right, the first word that we’re gonna be looking at is graphics, the graphics level.

All right, so you might heard of this before with the phrase, graphic designer, someone who designs images. But in this case, we’re talking about graphic, so the way things appear on your TV.

So like basically the pictures, right? So, he wanted to appreciate the graphics of his PlayStation3 better. And that’s why he wanted a new TV.

All right, I could say my computer has amazing graphics. It means games are really fun because they look good.

Or this game has amazing graphics. So the game has places or scenery that looks really, really real.

Right. So, graphics, but some kinds of TVs are made to provide those wonderful graphics and those are called HDTV.

Right, an HDTV or that’s an acronym for high definition television.

All right, and I heard some actors and actresses were complaining about HDTV because the picture quality is so good that you can see all the little problems on their face, the little wrinkles and the pimples and the scars. So, be careful because one day we’re gonna be able to see way too much.

exactly. So, on high definition television, that’s basically what you get, is better definition, better level of graphics.

So, more pixels per inch. You can see a lot more clarity.

Right. so an HDTV.

The next thing that we’re talking about is actually kind of related to the back part of your TV where you plug things in. Sometimes is on the side, sometimes on the back. Well, there are different names for different kinds of plugs. So, today we’re gonna talk about two of those, one of them is USB.

Right. this TV has a USB port, which basically stands for universal serial bus.

Alright, so a port is a place where you plug something in. Your computer has a lot of ports as well. But USB is maybe more common for people who have iPods or computers because this is how we normally connect things to our computers.

So, in this case, this television, you could connect maybe your iPod and reproduce videos or pictures onto the TV.

And the second case, we have a DVI port so DVI. You gonna have to tell me about this Marco because I’m not so sure.

Well, a DVI is basically a digital video input. So basically, you can connect your computer to the TV and see what’s on your screen.

Nice, and so if you have a bunch of movies stored on your computer, you can just plug it into the TV and watch.

Or you can even navigate the Internet on a big screen TV.

Cool.

Yeah.

All right, so what are these three HDMI connectors?

all right, well this is a new technology. Basically, you know how before you used to get your DVD player, your VHS and you have three cables, 2 for sound and one for video?

Yeah, the red, yellow and white cables.

Exactly. So, with this new type of cable or technology, with one cable, it takes all the information to the TV. So, just one cable for everything.

Nice, because my problem is I always used to put the wrong cable on the wrong port. So I had the red cable on the yellow port and then I’ve said, where is the video. I can’t see. All I can do is listen.

Yeah, it happens. So with this, now it’s easy and well it even, it’s a little bit more organized because I remember I used to have a TV and I had a lot of different things connected to it. It was just this big spiderweb in the back with all these cables. So an HDMI, high definition multimedia interface connector. And what else do we have?

The last thing we’re talking about is actually the place to put your TV. So people now are putting their TVs on walls like paintings because these TVs are so thin. So we call this a wall mount.

So, a mount. To mount something is also a verb, right?

Yeah, it means to put something up or to hang something up. So, many people like to mount their trophies to show off.

very good. So, this is what we’re doing with the TV. We’re gonna mount it on the wall, like a painting.

Cool. So those are our words for language take away, let’s take another listen to today’s dialogue. We’re gonna slow it down this time and really figure out what’s going on.

A: Seriously, I don’t know why we need to get a new TV.

B: Honey I told you already. I can’t appreciate the graphics level and detail of the games on my Playstation 3 on our old TV.

C: Good afternoon folks! How can I be of service today?

B: I’m looking to upgrade to a newer, bigger television set.

C: You’ve come to the right place! What size are you looking for?

A: Just a normal sized TV for our living room.

C: I see. Well this set here is on sale. It’s a forty six inch HDTV screen and has all the works. Three HDMI connectors, USB, VGA and S - Video ports.

It even has a DVI port so you can hook up your PC or laptop! This is without a doubt the complete home theater experience!

B: This is exactly what I need! Can you imagine watching movies or playing video games on this thing?

A: Honey, I think it’s a bit too big. I don’t even think it will fit in our living room.

C: Not to worry, we will deliver and install it in your home. It comes with a wall mount so you can just hang it on the wall like a picture!

B: This is great! How much will this set me back?

C: Lucky for you, this is the last one we have in stock so it’s half off!

B: I’ll take it!

All right. So, now we’re gonna be taking a look at three different phrases that we saw in this dialogue in fluency builder.

Fluency builder

This first phrase is definitely one that I use a lot. We can talk about food, we can talk about electronics, we can talk about most different things, but the phrase here is the work.

He’s getting the works.

All right, that means any option he could get, any possibility, he wants it all.

Right. So if you’re getting a new car, for example, right? You’re getting the high definition sound system. You’re getting nice tires, leather seats, you’re getting the works.

Right. Or if you’re getting a hamburger and you want the works, you’re getting it with cheese and lettuce and tomato and bacon. It means every option, you’re getting it all.

the works. So, I think this word is so versatile that we should maybe listen to some more examples.

Example 1

The bridegroom was wearing the morning suit top hat, gloves, the works.

Example 2

He spent over $10,000 on his home theater system. He got all works.

Example 3

I bought a new car with all the works, magnesium rooms, custom paint and leather seats.

So now that we’ve seen the works on the home theater system, he needs to hook it up.

So this is an important part and a very exciting part of the new purchase. So when you buy something, to hook it up, that means you have to plug things together. Okay, so we plug things in the wall for electricity but also hook up maybe those cords you were talking about earlier, that HDMI connector, that’s called hooking up or connecting.

So, you would hook up your DVD player to your television.

Right, I can ask you, did you hook up those new speakers to your big TV yesterday?

Very good, right? So, to connect, it’s another way of saying to connect.

And finally, the big event when you’re buying something is the end, when you have actually pay and this guy’s a little bit worried that the things he wants cost a lot of money. So, he asked a really great question.

Yeah, he said, how much will this set me back?

Okay, this sounds a little weird at first because you could just say, how much will this cost. But he’s speaking in a very colloquial way, very familiar, and he says, how much will this set me back?

right

so, how much will this cost me?

So, how much you might actually going to spend. So, it’s just a different way of saying how much does it cost. But it’s like you say, more colloquial. It’s a lot more native like.

exactly. And so, if you’re writing on your paper, you don’t want to write this. This will set you back $500 in economics, but we’d say this in spoken language, in our normal daily lives with friends.

So why don’t we listen to a couple more examples of set me back.

Example 1

This unexpected expense’s gonna set us back a couple thousand dollars.

Example 2

That fancy dinner at the restaurant last night really set us back.

Example 3

I feel guilty about buying this coat. It set me back over $300.

All right, great. So now that we’ve taken a look at those great phrases and with some good examples, why don’t we listen to this dialogue one last time.

A: Seriously, I don’t know why we need to get a new TV.

B: Honey I told you already. I can’t appreciate the graphics level and detail of the games on my Playstation 3 on our old TV.

C: Good afternoon folks! How can I be of service today?

B: I’m looking to upgrade to a newer, bigger television set.

C: You’ve come to the right place! What size are you looking for?

A: Just a normal sized TV for our living room.

C: I see. Well this set here is on sale. It’s a forty six inch HDTV screen and has all the works. Three HDMI connectors, USB, VGA and S - Video ports.

It even has a DVI port so you can hook up your PC or laptop! This is without a doubt the complete home theater experience!

B: This is exactly what I need! Can you imagine watching movies or playing video games on this thing?

A: Honey, I think it’s a bit too big. I don’t even think it will fit in our living room.

C: Not to worry, we will deliver and install it in your home. It comes with a wall mount so you can just hang it on the wall like a picture!

B: This is great! How much will this set me back?

C: Lucky for you, this is the last one we have in stock so it’s half off!

B: I’ll take it!

Okay, so a big TV. I think it’s just a great thing to have at home. Not to spend too much time in front of the TV but it’s good to sit down and watch a movie.

It’s nice because you know, now there are so many different things you can do, you can hook up your computer, you can buy projector, you can play your PS3 or your V. So, I think there’s a lot to do and it’s just wonderful how great graphics have come in just like the last five years.

What do you think about having a television set, for example, in the bathroom?

I would say it’s a really bad idea, but I think I—well, if I have a bathtub, I think it’d be really cool.

What about– you know some people don’t like having a television set in their bedroom.

I agree with this. I agree.

Why?

Because I think it’s really important that you have peace and quiet in your bedroom because it’s kind of like– for me it’s an important space where I can just relax and be quiet and I like reading a lot, so if I have a TV maybe I’ll watch more TV but I much rather read a book before bed.

True. Yeah, I definitely agree. But you know I’ve seen people that have TVs in their living rooms and their dining rooms, even in their kitchen so they’re watching something while cooking. And even in the bathroom, like you said, in the bathtub. Well, it’s nice but some of them I’ve seen, in front of the toilet or something like that.

I would say that the one in the kitchen is nice because if you spend a lot of time in the kitchen, you can watch the news while you’re cooking or you can actually watch cooking shows and try to practice.

Or soap operas

Soap opras. So, I guess it depends on the person. It depends on how much you watch TV, but I’m curious to know what our listeners have to say about TVs and big electronics purchases.

Right, so come to our website Englishpod.com. If you have any questions or any doubts regarding the lesson or any suggestions you can let us know.

Otherwise, we’ll be there to just talk and practice that English. And of course send us your suggestions for future lessons. We love to know what you’re interested in learning about.

All right, we’ll see you guys there.

Bye everyone.