| November 2020 |
Lost the signal on KRCB, so waited a couple of days for their work to be done, as had happened on so many past occasions. As the signal has not returned, emailed KRCB but no answer. After a week, replaced the bowtie antenna with the boom antenna and the signal is back. So what did the station do to the transmitter to cause these outages. We still lose the signal a few hours every now and then. They should have used taxpayers money to fix things. Another.
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| Summer 2020 |
I finally filed a case for incorrect guide in December 2019 after many, many years of bad guide data. The guide data switched from Tribune to Rovi when Tivo was bought by them in mid 2016. Frequently, the episode, times, and even the program name is incorrect for the S.F. Bay Area. In 2020, Carlos had been calling weekly asking and telling me the guide had been fixed. To the contrary, it gets fixed for a couple of weeks, then breaks again. He stopped calling after 4 months. I told him as long as Rovi is the guide provider, nothing will be fixed - he understands that is the problem. I double-check guide accuracy by using the Comcast app, which is generally correct. |
| April 2020 |
KRCB TV Channel 22 (PBS, Create TV) changed transmitter from Sonoma Mountain 73 miles away to Mt. Sutro in San Francisco 39 miles away. Not only that, but the frequency change from RF23 to RF5 requires swapping out the 8 bay UHF bowtie antenna, which works with signals greater than RF7, to the old yagi VHF/UHF antenna. That's a lot of work with 2 masts and 2 sets of guy lines, so we will see what signal can be obtained. What a big surprise that it works, but borderline. Atmospheric conditions will cause the signal to breakup more often. |
| November 2019 |
Comcast has started to encode local broadcast stations to MPEG4. Originally these were MPEG2 on the Bolt. Sometimes when the encrypt flag is set, audio plays with no video when downloaded to the PC. Even without the encrypt flag, video may lose sync and breakup within the recorded program. All plays fine on the Bolt’s and HD3. |
| June 2017 |
Purchased another Tivo Bolt 500GB. This was to replace the old Tivo HD, which Tivo decommissioned a couple of months later. It is now ewaste. I have streamed baseball and ice hockey to tablets, while watching basketball. |
| January 2017 |
Purchased a Roku Premiere+. This can output 4k video. After exploring what content is accessible, it does not get used much. |
| December 2016 |
Got a 4 tuner Tivo Bolt (series 6) with RF remote. Since cable stations are known for starting and ending late, adding an extra minute concurrent programs does not interfere with a watched program. I swapped a 1TB drive for the existing 500GB. With most cable channels getting a low quality 3.74Mbps encoding, it will fit 2.5 times as much content on the Bolt. OTA channels are still over 10Mbps. Either Comcast cable or Over the Air (OTA) antenna goes in. It transfers shows to PC about 20 times faster than our old Tivo HD. Searches, content streaming, program recording can be scheduled with the iPad app. Tivo killed these functions for our older Tivo HD. |
| August 2016 |
Purchased a Samsung 4k LED TV UN50KU630DFXZA from Costco when our 8 year old Vizio 42” LCD backlight died. Both Fry's and Costco kept dropping prices. Out of the box, tennis ball tops are a bright fluorescent yellow-green. Seating, supposedly a smoky blue was neon blue. It needed Movie mode, lower dynamic picture and brightness, tone down color, and a lot of other adjustments.
The software keyboard is always there even when a physical keyboard is present. Putting in a URL and a Return does nothing - you point to Done on the software keyboard to send. Samsung designers obviously never use their products or perhaps that is their design intent! |
| June 2015 |
After having brought a 10.1” IPS 1280x800 LED panel for video astronomy, I switched the Tivo 8” PIP from the Gateway monitor to this panel. |
| January 2015 |
Finally renegotiated a lower price for Comcast TV, Internet, and Voice. With 3 previous annual increases of $3, we dropped AT&T local phone service. |
| August 2009 |
First anniversary for Comcast TV and High Speed Internet. There have been many more glitches such as freezes, pauses, breakup of signal, and macroblocking. They would not sell us Triple Play, but we got HBO and Starz for free and our total bill dropped by $10+ for the next 6 months. Also we get every Giants and A's televised game shown in HD, compared to 1 of 5 over DirecTv. Win some, lose some. HSI eliminated the 768kb DSL ceiling which we constantly exceeded resulting in streaming content pausing or just dying. |
| January 2009 |
Built an HTPC capable of playing Blu-Ray and HD-DVD at 1080p. It is housed in a spare mid-tower case while a smaller one is being built - pictures in right column. It runs Windows XP SP2 64 bit. Windows 7 RC 64 bit has been installed but seldom used, only because Vista was never adopted. Since it is hit and miss at the Sunnyvale Public Library, we may get a few movies. As it’s only a week to view feature films, it gets ripped to the hard drive so we can view them at our leisure. After viewing, they get erased as sizes range from 21 to 48GB per disc. We have three $4.99 HD-DVDs - Bourne Identity, Galapagos, 2001 from Fry’s.
Some parts of Galapagos drop frames and is jerky. There have been reports of this even with standalone HD-DVD players.
Our next purchase may be a 7.1 receiver as our 2nd generation Blu-Ray player does not provide anything but an optical output for multi-channel audio. Depending on the disc, output will be Dolby Pro Logic, Dolby Digital 5.1 or 2.0. My choices include Harman Kardon, Onkyo, and Denon. |
| November 2008 |
We just purchased a Panasonic DMP-BD35K Blu-Ray player because it was $200 no tax, free shipping and got Ratatouille and Nightmare Before Christmas sent to us as a bonus. This is our first product that upconverts DVDs to 1080p and really helps with the Vizio and the 58” rear projection Pioneer, but obviously its strong suit is playing high definition Blu-Ray discs. The ATSC tuners in both the Vizio and Tivo HD are more sensitive than the one in the older Hughes HTL-HD and Pioneer TV. We are able to get PBS stations 22-1, 22-2, 22-3 in Marin County over 70 miles away! |
| October 2008 |
Purchased several Gateway FHD2400 24” monitors which do 1920x1200. This is the smallest LCD that will do 1080p and has HDCP (High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection) on HDMI and DVI so Blu-Ray and HD content will display. It has a 1:1 pixel mapping mode so it does not stretch the output from the Comcast HD DVR or Tivo. I can use the monitor as an extended desktop with an 8½” HD PIP from the Comcast or Tivo boxes. Nancy has one on her PC to view DVDs/Blu-ray in 1080p as well as computer stuff.
The Samsung 2343BWX (2048x1152) is inferior for playing HD content as it scales 1080p to 1152 because it has no 1:1 mapping. |
| January 2008 |
Finally replaced the old VHF-UHF-FM long boom antenna with a Channel Master 4228. This is a UHF only 8 bay bowtie system that comes highly recommended for its long reach. They have redesigned this antenna for 2009. |
| TiVo HD DVRs vs. others |
Tivo HD (series 3)- content downloadable and playable on PC, can generate DVD or blu-ray. Upgraded to a 750GB hard drive. When this started to get errors, replaced it with a 1TB drive. Can schedule recordings through tivo.com.
DirecTv and Comcast DVRs - Stuff stays there. DirecTv is 500GB; Comcast is only 160GB. Clunky and buggy interface.
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| Current stuff |
Getting good reviews are the Panasonic BD35 Blu-ray player (replaced by BD60)- it has a much better remote than the DVD player we have. The A/V receiver is a Harman Kardon AVR80II THX Dolby Pro Logic with Sony SDP-EP9ES Digital Dolby 5.1 processor. Input sources include a Technics SL-1500 direct drive turntable - Chris ripped the stylus off when he was a baby. The Shure V15 type III stylus, from eBay, got replaced in December 2007. There are Pioneer CLD-D704 laserdisc player, Sony DVP-S3000 DVD player - 2nd generation used now only for audio CDs, and Panasonic RP56 progressive (480p) DVD player. Speakers include NHT 1.5’s, Cambridge Soundworks surrounds and subwoofer, and a Mirage center speaker. Since the AVR80 does not have a phono input, the turntable gets preamped through a Kenwood KA7300 65W/ch integrated stereo amp. I’d admit that's a bit of overkill.
Our Pioneer SD-582HD5 widescreen High Definition Ready (no ATSC tuner) TV from February 2000 is still going strong. By the time this breaks, 55” and bigger LEDs will be less than $1000. It was still operational in 2014 when we dropped it off at the high school ewaste drive. |
| Dead stuff |
DBS stuff include an RCA DirecTv TiVo 80GB and Hughes HR10-250 Directv High Definition Tivo with 500GB storage. These DTivo’s have 2 tuners each and are networked so that searches to record shows can be performed from a web browser from any computer. Shows can be downloaded to a PC, commercials edited out, and then burned to DVD. This was deactivated in August 2008. The hard drives has been relegated to PC backup use. |
| ... |
Hughes HTL-HD high definition DirecTv receiver outputs to a 27” in the other room. I got rid of the newer Directv H20 HD receiver attached (runs hot, buggy and unfriendly interface.) There is a Coby DVD-215 player hacked to play DVDs from all regions. These are not used anymore. |
| Sony Baloney |
We had a Sony 53XBR35 rear projection TV purchased in December 1994. The factory manual was ordered from Sony Parts 1-800-488-SONY (7669). This was the best $15 spent to date. Most people turn up sharpness or Scan Velocity Modulation too much - it should just be turned off for maximum detail. You can check how this with Video Essentials laserdisc and Avia Guide to Home Theater DVD, so in a fairly darkened room, this TV really looks good. On January 23, 2000, the main power supply bit the dust and let out a strong sulfuric smell. Due to problems across many Sony product lines, we will never buy another Sony product again. |
Need cables and accessories? Forget Monster. Monoprice, Amazon, or eBay has always been the places to get them. Monster Cable takes advantage of uninformed purchasers with dubious marketing practices. When you run a company, you need to make profits. For regular runs, any cable will do. For longer runs, get a heavier gauge cable with better shielding from Monoprice.
Now Monster has 5 different types of cleaners for different screens. Huh? I just use distilled or filtered tap water and a microfiber lens cloth or a normal microfiber cloth. It is down to one, but still $16 for 2 ounces
PC World cable tests
Other sources of cables - Blue Jeans Cable or Firefold Cable
Green HTPC case constructed of old antiquated parts (this has been recycled)
pictures
52” widescreen 16x9 LCD
45.3” wide x 25.5” high screen |
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