I found a little joint called Signal Electronics over in Torrance. It reminds me of what electronics stores used to be, what Radio Shack used to be before they stopped selling the Tandy brand. It reminded me of the Heathkit stores. Still, I couldn't get an HDMI cable for a reasonable price, reasonable meaning 7 bucks which is what I think I should pay. Instead, I figured it was appropriate punishment for me not bothering to learn twisted pair crimping and all that hardware stuff back in my 20s. So I plunked down the 30, and promised that when I retire, I'll build the rack mounted electronics kits of my dreams.
If it weren't for computers, I'm certain I would be a ham. Pops was a radioman in the Corps and taught me how to read schematics back when I was a teen. The old sour chemistry sets they sold in the 'hood never turned 'water' to 'wine' by the time I could afford them, but electrons were much more reliable. My diode radio worked perfectly. I knew all the tubes in the Philco. Hmm. There's a word I haven't said in decades. Whatever happened to Philco? Hmm I see.
It occurred to me that Americans are not so interested in diodes and switches and capacitors and soldering irons as we used to be. That little logical slice of life is not so glamorous to a lot of us, not so much as it is to the Asian manufacturers who seemed to make most of the inventory at Signal. On the other hand, so what? I drove my BMW back home to watch my Samsung.
I remember Mark Cuban saying that once he started watching HD he could never go back. Of course you can go back, there's not that much HD out there to begin with. Right about now there's plenty available from FIOS including some movies that are several years old (Heist, fzample, one of my favorites which surprised me), but on his HDNet there aint much programming. I have about 8 categories of HD On Demand, including my favorite DiscoveryHD of course, and about 40 HD broadcast channels. But there couldn't have been that much last year and the BluRay battle is just only recently over. So I don't feel late to the market at all - the world hasn't gone HD without me, only a fraction of it is there. But that's OK because regular broadcast and DVD looks fine, mostly.
I must say that HD can even make watching Emeril interesting. So I watched him for 20 minutes adding pinches of essence to this and that. Watching otherwise tedious travel channels and the like have been actually uplifting. I actually watched tandem eight skiing yesterday - some Austrian bums telling stories about how they learned how to ski when they were 3 years old. Whooha. It was only halfway to Dumb and Dumber, but getting those HD cameras to the roof of the world was worth it. The excitement is reminescent of looking at National Geographic magazines and Jacques Cousteau all over again. So I'm still in gee whiz golly jeepers mode.
I have been told that most people cannot tell the difference between 720i and 1080p. I haven't really bothered to note the notices on my screen as I switch inputs between my XBox component feed and the one coming out of the FIOS DVR. But I have seen how ESPN switches between their HD feeds in 16x9 and 4x3 with their 'vertical letterboxing' logos on the far left and right of my widescreen. Other 4x3 signals come with just black on the borders. I've also seen letterboxed flicks inhabit a smaller rectangle inside my big screen. But Iam noticing that I cannot tell much difference between the component output and the HDMI output on the DVR. I'm going to put it to a closer test today.
The most annoying thing I'm dealing with now is that none of my inputs are known to my screen as 'TV'. And if I want picture in picture to work, one of the signals has to be TV. I've been wanting to game in the small window and watch TV at the same time. I know the Dell screens can do all that every which way but my PIP is only showing me snow. I've got to figure a way around that. I think it means that I need to hookup a coax.I'll figure it out, and I can live without it too.
On the whole, HD is great. Now I can fulfill my commitment to watching NASCAR. It's nice to know there are still a few places where high tech means something.
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