Moose,
I did not realize the parallels in our lives. Good luck with the TV repair.
We are true procrastinators. Our family room TV is a top of the line RCA
monitor unit from around 1987. It had some component problems in its first
few years, and I took it to an Electrical Engineer that I knew from work,
and he made the necessary replacements. He had a similar set and knew all
of its tricks. He and I both retired since his last repair, and he died a
few years ago, but the old RCA just keeps on truckin'. My enclosure will
accept a 32-inch LCD flat screen set, and my wife and I looked at some a few
days ago, but, until the old set gives up the ghost, we will wait for the
sets to improve in quality and come down in price. The pictures on the new
sets on display are beautiful, but sure vary from set to set.
As to the fiber to the home possibilities, I worry about the little things.
I have some hearing loss from years of exposure to noisy wind tunnel plant
equipment, and use an ancient desk phone that has a line-powered handset
with an amplifier. I wonder about its compatibility with a fiber phone
system, since fiber carries no power of its own. I read today that some
installations use a home interface box that picks up power from the house
power system to power ringers, etc, so maybe my worries are for naught.
We'll see what they offer.
Jim Nichols
Tullahoma, TN USA
----- Original Message -----
From: "Moose" <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <olympus@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2008 11:45 PM
Subject: [OM] Re: e330 question
> Jim Nichols wrote:
>> Moose,
>>
>> My problem is evolutionary. Up until about six months ago, my wife and I
>> used several VCRs to take care of our time-shifting needs.
> Much the same here. We use two VCRs and one VCR-DVD combo to time shift
> everything we watch
>> We like to watch recorded TV fairly late at night, and each has his/her
>> own idea of what to watch.
> We also watch mostly late, but have pretty similar tastes, so watch
> together most of the time.
>> When "my" VCR died, no one offered a simple VCR as a replacement. I
>> researched what was available and purchased a combination VCR/DVD
>> recorder with a built-in tuner, and used the VCR side as I had done in
>> the past. Then, recently, the tapes recorded on the 6-hour speed refused
>> to track correctly when played.
> The Sony combo we bought seems to be a good DVD player, but the VCR side
> is clearly of poorquality and much less user friendly than the older
> Sony VCRs we have.
>> The 2-hour speed still works, but this won't get a football game for me.
>> Consequently, I decided to buy a cheap DVD player for the family room TV
>> to replace the old VCR player, and to learn to record on the readily
>> available, but never used DVD side of my recorder.
>>
> Ah, my inexpensive combo doesn't record DVDs
>> The reason I have not considered a DVR is that I record in one part of
>> the house and play back in another. I have no interest in rewiring the
>> house, or getting into some other exotic means of connectivity.
> Since a DVR can record, often more than one program at a time, while
> also playing a program, there's no need to have separate record and play
> location.
>> Another complication is that our local power company will start offering
>> fiber-to-the-premises phone/cable-tv/internet in a couple of months, and
>> I may see what they have to offer. They may include a DVR in one of
>> their packages.
>>
> They will certainly offer at least one DVR option.
>
> Basically, I think I've been wasting a bit of money by dithering about
> what to switch to from analog cable - digital cable, DirectTV or Dish.
> The solution would be simpler if my telco could offer fast DSL in my
> area. I think I'm going to have to wait until they restring for fiber
> here. Because of service bundling for lower rates, there is no ideal
> combination of function and price here at the moment. so I guess it's a
> good thing that all our tape machines are still working. :-)
>
> Now I only have to get up the energy to pull the guts out of the
> Mitsubishi 55" projection TV and replace the convergence ICs - ick. I'd
> like a plasma, but can hardly justify it when the M is an excellent TV
> and the parts to get it working in top form again are a $50 sunk cost. :-)
>
> Now where's that soldering iron and solder-wick got to?
>
> Moose
>
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