TV

My wife and I like to watch crime dramas on TV: CSI, Law & Order, Without a Trace, Cold Case, etc, but the number of ads you have to sit through is annoying, to say the least. So last year I broke down and bought a TiVo. I do not like having to pay the $14 a month subscription fee, but the price of the unit was so far below anything else that could have done the job, that I went ahead and bit the bullet. I brought it home, plugged it in, and programmed it to record all the shows my wife and I like to watch. I came in a couple of days later to watch one of these shows and it was nowhere to be found. It seems that someone else had come in after me and programmed the TiVo to record the shows THEY wanted to watch. Gol durn kids anyway. Kathryn did have a legitimate excuse. The one show she really likes is on at the same time as the one show I really like, but she also has a dance class at this time, so she cannot possibly watch her show while I record mine. So I yielded and let the children rule the TiVo.

This fall, as my son John has a surfeit of computer systems, he gallantly allowed me to use one to build a DVR (Digital Video Recorder), for the price of a mere 22" LCD display. The TV tuner card that is an essential component of this project was only $60. It is also known as a "frame grabber" and a few short years ago they were horribly expensive, as in hundreds of dollars. Then there was the remote control from Microsoft and the receiver that plugs into the USB port. That was only $35. Lastly was the cable from the video card to the TV. The video card has an S-Video output, which is very similar to Y/C (Luminance / Chrominance (is Chrominance even a word?)). Unfortunately, I blew out the Y/C input on the TV a while back while fooling around hooking up video cables while the TV was on. Someday I intend to look into it and see if I can find the problem. It is a 36" CRT and weighs close to 200 pounds. If I can fix it where it is, it would save a major moving operation.

Anyway, back to the video signal hookup. I dig through my box of collected audio/video cables and pull out an S-Video cable, which I hook up, but as expected, it does not work. I find many other interesting pieces, including S-Video to component video (RGB), but nothing in the line of S-Video to composite, which was the standard for hooking up VCR's, and which my big CRT also has. I look on the web, but I am not really finding anything until I come across an $8 cable with an S-Video connector on one end and a composite connector on the other.

http://www.buyextras.com/6febuprsmato.html?gclid=CMnfzML92o4CFQEyYQodCTnoSA

This is weird, no conversion circuitry? Just a cable? Well, $8 is no big deal, let's give it a shot. It shows up in the mail a few days later, I plug it in, and lo and behold, it works! This is very strange. Someday I may even find out what is going on here.

So now I have all the pieces in place. Let's give it a whirl. Watching live TV, while not perfect, seems to be acceptable, but watching a recorded show is painful. The picture quality is significantly worse, even unacceptable. Perhaps there is a setting that can change this. I look but the recording format seems to be set to "Best", so maybe that is all it can do. Well this sucks. What am I going to do? Some more research perhaps, or maybe my son the whiz kid can find a crucial piece of information, or maybe I will try Linux. Sadly disappointing.

DVD's

We usually rent DVD's from the little Mom & Pop rental store (Wheels Video) next door to Hank's grocery close in to downtown Hillsboro. We buy a monthly pass for $25. They do not necessarily have the best selection, but it is adequate for us. My oldest son cannot tolerate the boundaries imposed by such a limited selection, so he has a subscription to Netflix. I do not want to have to wait for a movie, so the local rental store suits me better.

My daughter wanted (needed?) a couple of movies that the local store did not have, so my wife went to the local Hollywood Video store to rent them. The week goes by and they need to go back, so I return them to Hollywood Video. Later that night we get a phone call. Seems the movies have been returned to the wrong store, so my wife has to drive to the store on the West Side of Hillsboro, the only Hollywood Video I knew of, and take them to the store on NE 25th, which I did not even know existed. OK, I knew there was a video store there, but I did not know it was Hollywood Video. What kind of crummy outfit is this? Banks have branches, libraries have branches, but Hollywood Video stores are independent of each other? Just one more reason not to deal with big corporations.