Football and Thanksgiving go together like apple pie and ice cream (which, come to think of it, will push that meal over the top … of your belt). Gathering round the Turkey-day boob tube isn’t so tube-like these days, with flat screen television technology featuring nary a tube. Thin is in, baby. When the big game gets boring one-sided, talk of display technology peak a geek’s interest … but how big is too big?

Plasma or rear projection? LCD or Plasma? LCD or DLP? 61″, 51″, or 42″?

You wander into the upscale home entertainment store within a store at your local big box electronics emporium. The 61 inch plasma screen, surround sound, and theater seating beckons. You’re pulled in like a moth to a bare porch light bulb on a hot August night. (Of course, it’s late November and that Alberta Clipper is doing its thing in the parking lot.)

After taking a look at the price tag of the monster plasma television, you dislocate your thawing jaw as it hits the floor.

That jumbo plasma screen might look scrumptious, but so would the ten grand in your bank account.

You take a moment to consider the store’s “no interest until 2008″ and do the mental math on the plasma television purchase (without checking the fine print). Just 24 monthly payments of $416 and change and that impressive 61″ plasma screen could be yours … without incurring any interest (never mind the rate, should you fall short of your payment goals).

You pause to consider if it would be plausible to tap the equity in your humble abode to make the mighty purchase, using either a home equity loan or a home equity line of credit.

Could the financing charges on that home entertainment goodness really be tax-deductible? Do you really need 61 inches of plasma television or will 42 inches do just fine? How long can you live with your decade old 29 inch conventional TV until you save the money to buy that gigantic new flat screen television with cold cash? Could we buy a cheap projector and display a giant picture on the side of the storage shed and watch through the picture window? Will a huge television screen turn the living room into something other than a room for living, say a giant microwave oven for couch potatoes?