Digital TV Conversion Stuff

http://www.dtv.gov/

Ok. I wrote this up earlier and thought I posted it, but I guess I just didn’ t save it before closing the browsers so here goes again.

A lot of you know about the upcoming digital tv conversion happening on the airwaves later this month. Some of you may not know all the details and I’ve been doing a little research on the matter, because I happen to get my TV over the air. I just don’t watch enough to really explain paying $30 a month and I don’t really miss it. So anyway, thought I’d share some basic info and some lesser known info for anyone who may need it.

First of all, if you have cable or satellite you don’t have to worry about anything. The DTV stuff won’t affect you.

If you use an antenna to get your TV and you still have an older, thicker, analog TV then you don’t need to buy a new TV, unless you’re looking for a good excuse to get one.

You can buy a converter box to get the new digital signal and convert it to a standard coax connection to plug into your TV to get the new digital broadcasts.

You may want to go to https://www.dtv2009.gov/ to fill out a form to get $40 coupon to put towards your purchase of the Converter box. There may be a bit of a wait with the economic problem, but I would get on the list anyway just to get a coupon as soon as possible. For now you may have to get a box at full price. Around $50 at Wal-Mart will get you a basic setup.

If you already have your box connected and working here are a few things that you may not know or may help you out.

Your old antennas should work fine. If you have an old TV antenna with the flat lead coming down to a couple of screws on the back of your TV you will want to get an adapter to change it to coax at the antenna and run the cable down to your box. If the screws are the only connection on your TV they do have adapters to take it back to the twin lead again at the TV level. This will help you get the best signal possible on this type of TV.

Digital TV right now is currently only broadcasting on UHF and has been for some time, so some of the new HDTV antennas only have the UHF part. However after the final switchover, some of the stations are going to start using VHF again and so you will need a VHF antenna as well. If you already had an antenna with UHF/VHF to begin with, your old one should work fine.

Some of the stations are currently only running at 50% power so it is possible if you already have a converter box or a digital TV that your signal will come in better after the switch over. I guess this is really causing trouble, and it is also a problem for me. One week I might have a channel and the next I don’t and I thought it might be my box or my antenna, and then I heard on the radio others were having this same problem because of this.

For High Def TV owners:

HD content available thru satellite and cable is always compressed where you may see some blockiness on your new High Def TV. Before questioning your TV you may want to hook up an antenna to it to check it out. Over the Air signal is uncompressed and shouldn’t have any blockiness. If you still have blockiness then you may need your TV checked out.

If you have standard def cable and a new HDTV, you can hook up an antenna in conjunction with your cable so you can use the cable for the channels you don’t get over the air and use over the air to watch High Def. This can be done with a switch box or using different inputs on your HDTV depending on your setup.

Some Samsung High Def TVs have an odd problem. Some of them power themselves off after a while. One of my friends had a red ring on one of the buttons and Samsung told her to push that button and it hasn’t broke since then. The other had to send his into repair. Sorry, I’m not totally sure which models they were.

Finally, I don’t think I can cover every issue here. There is still talk of delaying the switch over which I hope they don’t do. My analog reception stinks and my digital could work a lot better or be more stable after the stations turn off their analog. But if you have any questions about this let me know and if I get enough questions about the same topics I’ll write up an entry to address them.

Sorry, I don’t know if I can answer all individual questions that may come thru the Blog so I won’t try unless it affect a lot of people.

I hope this helps.

later.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Ping.fm test

Ping.fm allows a one post per multiple social networks. This is a test Blog.

Later

Test Blog

Testing post from WordPress to Facebook and MySpace

Well, This could work better.  I was hoping the Facebook app would import Blogs from WordPress into Facebook’s notes section, but it looks like I get a WordPress box announcing my most recent entries from WordPress.

I’m going to keep looking for a way to post a blog to one spot and have it update both MySpace and Facebook Blogs so people can comment without having to sign up for new accounts at a different location.

If anyone knows such tools, please let me know.

Otherwise, I’ll blog my progress as it goes.

Later.

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Rant about Wal-Mart and DVDs

I had to go to Wal-Mart. It’s hard to find things that I want there so I usually try to just avoid it. Also I’m just letting off a little steam with a buyer beware thing that I just realized while piecing this together.

I have to go back for one more thing tomorrow and then I think I can ignore Wal-Mart for a while after that.

I got the movie Speed Racer which I really liked as a gift. They had an offer that consisted of the message “Get a Digital Copy” on the sticker and in the case it had instructions. I thought that would be nice to get before the offer expires since they are taking the work out of making a mobile movie for me, then I found they wanted $1.99 for the digital copy. Not a big price, but I already own the DVD. Why would I pay another $2 for the same movie I already own? The answer is, “I don’t pay another $2″

So while I was at Wal-Mart I noticed another sticker on movies that “include a digital copy” are $5 more.

So what’s going on here? I mean the sticker makes it look like you’re getting an extra thing for free, but it looks like you are really paying extra for the same movie twice.

In case you’re wondering here’s what I think is fair pricing:

old movies 5-10 yrs at $9 or less
movies 2-5 yrs old at $10 or less
current movies $15 or less
$20 is pushing it unless they got good extras
Anything more than $20 better have some cool collectible or be a season of a tv series.
Full Screen Movies should have an automatic $5 deduction in cost unless they were originally made that way. (I don’t really want to spend full price for a movie that has the sides chopped off.)
Anything that includes a copy of the exact same movie in another form should not cost more.

I know I don’t get to pick the prices but I do get to pick what I spend money on. This is just what I think is fair and base my purchases on unless there is a rarity or collectibility thing involved with getting the DVD.

So when they pull this $25 for two copies of the same movie selling for $20 without the digital copy it smells bad.

They are already raising prices on movies and now they are trying to pull this crap on us.

I wonder if I could just buy the $5 digital version.

————

There is a possibility I missed something since I was a bit tired when I discovered this, so let me know. I just wanted to vent and warn of a possibly bum purchase.

*UPDATE*
It appears that the $25 DVD with Digital copy may be the Special Edition with extra content. The odd thing about this is I just did a quick check at WalMart.com and the movies were about $4-5 less on the site. Anyway the special edition contains 3 discs. 1 with extra content disc and the third disc with digital version of the movie and digital versions of some of the extra content.

Then it says the list price is $30, but they’re selling it for $21.86 so you get a deal. I’m guessing some of this is to make up for shipping cost, but I still think something is up with the price on these things.

Space Station … Yes it is a real plan

Below is a link to an article about some plans to build an elevator to go to a orbiting space station.  If this was being done in America (not to say this won’t happen anyway) I would expect to see a McDonalds and maybe a small version of Wal-Mart on the Space station.  Maybe even a Kum & Go or a Casey’s on the way up.

So is there a restroom in the elevator?  I mean that’s a long way up. People are either going to need to go, or get air sick.

Kidding aside, I think this is really cool, but I have a hard time picturing the elevator shaft itself.  Is it solid or is it flexible for the space station to make adjustments?  What exactly besides the station is holding up such a tall, skinny, vertical structure?

One last joke, in the event of a fire or power failure will there be stairs that go up along the elevator?

Take your pick.  I put up different links because some of the lesser detailed articles had better illustrations.  And another one just for fun.

http://www.techtree.com/India/Future_Watch/Japan_To_Skip_Stairway_Build_Elevator_To_Heaven/551-93524-505.html
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/theampersand/archive/2008/09/23/recent-progress-made-in-the-field-of-convert..
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/09/24/2372988.htm?site=science&topic=latest

CES/Macworld 2008

I love hearing news of new technology from CES and Macworld the first few weeks of January.

I’m still not sure I got to read up on everything. Some exciting things were the advances in digital photography and making ready to snap photos easier and nicer looking. I believe you can read more about it here News Release

Then Apple announced their Macbook Air which is really thin, but it has no built in Optical drive and only one USB port. I think if I traveled more, this would be nice, but a bit pricey… at least for lack of features. You’re really paying for new tiny tech.

I was more excited at renting movies thru iTunes since Netflix isn’t Mac Compatible yet with their streaming rentals, but I wish iTunes would follow a Netflix pricing scheme. I think it is

$3.00 for an older standard def
$4.00 for a newer release
$4.00 for older HD version
$5.00 for new HD version

You get the movie for 30 days to watch whenever during that time, but as soon as you start it you only have 24 hrs to finish.

—-

If it was up to me I would have done it like Netflix and charge a monthly rate, about $16.00 for 3 movies at a time.

Then you could just download 3 movies to watch whenever you wanted to, and keep it as long as you want until you download movie number 4 then the oldest one would self delete and so on.

Well those are the things out of what I read that stood out to me.

Sure they have some cool HDTVs coming out, but I really can’t afford those right now, and I’m not too sure I really need one now anyway.

Gizmo project

I found out something neat about Gizmo Project. Gizmo is an IP phone software that lets you use your comupter online as a phone.

You can use a headset and mic or one of those computer phone attachments at Wally World.

But the cool part is that if you and your friend both have accounts and you both put your mobile and land lines in your profile then you should be able to call your friends landline and/or mobile phone for free from your computer.

I don’t know too many ppl using it yet to try it out, so if you want to give it a try and need someone to help you set up let me know.

You can download it from here

http://gizmoproject.com/