Paul's Down-Home Page

The cable guy came today. Remarkably, my appointment time was between noon and 5pm, and he showed up at 12:00 on the nose. Too bad I was at Rotary. After 45 minutes or so of head-scratching, cable-swapping, and complaining about how complicated my setup is, he isolated the problem: the satellite installer used diplexers to save himself from having to run another set of cables. The installer is convinced that the fact that the satellite receiver sends 18V to the LNB is the problem, but I think it’s much more likely that the diplexer sends 2-856MHz to the TV output and 950-2250MHz to the satellite output. The DCT-5100 FAQ says to make sure that you have full 2-1000MHz signal from pedestal to cable box, so I think the diplexer’s bandwidth is at fault. To fix it, I’ll have to run another cable through the basement, then add a port to the wallplate so that I have a clean run from the cable service entrance to the box.
I must say that the Discovery HD picture was stunning, for the few minutes I got to see it while installer-man was doing his thing.

So far, I’ve learned a number of things about HDTV. First, if you watch a crappy movie in HD, it’s still crappy. (Disclaimer: I didn’t watch the whole thing). Second, for some reason the HD signal from the local CBS affiliate isn’t showing up as HD here; when I tune in something that is supposed to be HD, it’s still 4:3. Third, and worst, I’m still not getting a watchable picture on Discovery or HBO. It may be that the splitter is at fault, or it may be a bad box; a Buckeye tech is due out tomorrow to check.
The bigger issue: Buckeye is going to require subscribers to buy a box; they’re not going to rent or lease them. In that case, I almost certainly will buy an over-the-air and satellite tuner combination instead– that way, I can be guaranteed that they can go where I do, and I’ll get more channels.

If you don’t like boring technical details, you may as well stop reading now. Go here instead.
I just bought a Samsung TXM3097WHF TV. It’s a 30″ widescreen, one step up from the low-end 3096WHF that Best Buy sells. This particular model adds 3:2 pulldown and a two-tuner picture-in-picture circuit to the base model, and I lucked into one for $792 at Sears– about $300 off the best normal price. Of course, I got a floor model, and it’s been discontinued by Samsung, but it met my objective of providing an inexpensive widescreen HD set. (The nearest model I could find that didn’t say “Samsung” on the front is an $1800 Toshiba 34″ widescreen, so I’m prepared to put up with a lot for the $1000 savings.)
Problem #1 is that the TV is too wide to fit in the entertainment center– the flare at the back of the case is about 1 1/4″ too wide for the precut opening. A little saw work will fix that right up, as soon as I get some saw blades.
Problem #2: the TV has two component inputs, which is great. It also has two RCA-style inputs. However, you can’t use all four at the same time. Oops. Somehow Samsung forgot to mention this in their marketing literature.
Problem #3: there’s one S-Video input, and it’s on the side panel. I knew about this one ahead of time, but it’s still aggravating, since the TiVo and VCR are both fed to the TV via the receiver’s S-Video out.
Problem #4: the TV uses two separate buttons to cycle between the inputs. Button 1 goes RF->component1->component2; button 2 goes RF->RCA1->RCA2->S-Video. That makes switching (say) from DVD to TiVo a finger-stretching exercise not unlike a concert pianist’s warmup.
However, for $1000 in my pocket, I’m prepared to put up with a lot. (After all, I’m getting off much easier than this guy did.)
The HDTV feed installation went well, since I did all of it. The installer had 15 minutes of training on the DCT-5100 cable box this morning, before his first install. He’d never seen a component video cable or optical SPDIF, and he was leery of disturbing any of my wiring. I ended up doing the work while he struggled with Buckeye’s call center to get my box authorized. After a three-hour wait, I can now receive two of the four HD channels: Showtime-HD (currently showing a 4:3 movie) and WTOL-DT (currently showing Oprah, which is bad enough in standard definition.) No Discovery Channel or HBO yet, which is too bad; it looks like there’s some good stuff on later tonight. More when I have time to dig into the stack of paper the installer left, much less actually watch something in HD. It’s hard to imagine that I’ll want to watch anything on CBS, but hey, maybe I will.