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	Monday, June 28, 2004

Where's the Auntie Em Cellar?! As I type, it is thundering, lightning, pouring, the skies are very dark and Clemmie is very worried! Thunder and lightning are not very common in Anchorage. We usually don't have hot enough air for the cold storm air to bump up against. But we do tonight! Mom says it's not quite a "frog strangler" yet, but it's on its way. Poor Clem - first the Blue Angels and now this. 8:54:30 PM    comment []

The Techie Slat Rat I sort of overdid it Geocaching on Friday, so I spent the weekend taking it easy on the physical activity front. Instead, I spent our sunny Saturday and Sunday doing techie kinds of things. On Saturday, I hooked up our new HD cable box and our new Toshiba Flat Panel LCD HDTV. In the Partnow Manse's little world, this is actually a significant undertaking. We have the following TV-type equipment: A TV (brand new!!!). HD cable box. TiVo (not HD capable - which makes things a little more tricky). A DVD recorder/player. A VCR. A component video switch - allows you to switch among all the various options such as DVD player, TiVo, and VCR. All this is organized in a very kludgy fashion in an old entertainment center that is not really configured for easy access or flat panel TVs. After multiple trips to Frigid North (the world's greatest electronics store) everything is now up and running - the new TV is great. And HD is beyond amazing! But all is not beer and skittles: TiVo is not HD capable. Actually, that's not quite right. If you're a DirectTV customer, you can get a TiVo HD box made by Hughes. Rumor does have it that TiVo may be developing an OpenCable compatible HD TiVo. That would be a good thing. However, right now, if we non-DirectTV TiVo customers want to watch true Hi Def, we have to bypass TiVo. We need an HD capable component A-V switch. Right now, our little manual video switch is only capable of passing analog sound and non HD component video. Which leads to the kludge issue when trying to easily switch from digital TV to HDTV. One has to pull out the HDTV remote and select the HD input. A real pain in the patootie. Especially when one is trying to greatly reduce the ridiculous number of remotes. I'm lusting over the Zekor HDS4 switch. It's pricey. But the folks on the TiVo forum love the switch. And it would sure make life clean and simple. We need to do something about the entertainment center - either retrofit it for the flat panel HDTV. Or even more drastically - pull it completely out. I'm actually beginning to lean towards the latter option. However, it could end it up leading to a remodel of that area. So, the retrofit is probably the better part of valor. If we ever want to toss in Dolby surround sound and the accompanying speakers, sub-woofers, and tweeters, life will become infinitely more complex. However, the picture on the TV is absolutely fabulous and Hi-Def is really amazing stuff. It is certainly a killer app! 8:48:31 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 Stephanie A. Kesler. Last update: 3/5/2005; 8:45:01 PM.