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This is an archive collection of entries from  my main personal blog, My Mundane Mid-Life.


This particular entry is from July 05, 2005.



The long journey to HDTV

This has been a long journey...

Back on February 19th, Carol & I were at an appliance store in Kenosha, waiting for new tires to be installed on my car (now, that is a long story...) We were tucked away in the corner of the store, watching their HDTV's.

That's when it happened - a guy's dream came true: my wife fell in love with a big screen HDTV!

Now, other than the cost of the TV (which Carol was pretty damn close to actually buying on the spot before we had to leave that day), we're DirecTV customers, so this just isn't something we could do quickly.

First, you need the TV. But, to get the HD signal from the DirecTV satellite, you need an HD Receiver. Now, the DirecTV HD channels are on a different satellite, so we need a new dish that will pick-up signals from multiple satellites simultaneously. To get the signal from the dish to the receiver means that we need a new amplified multiswitch that will take the multiple satellite feeds and pump-out the signal to the receivers in the house.

Fortunately, you can take all of these steps one at a time and gradually rebuild your infrastructure to get HD signals.

Last Thursday, we took the first step - buying the TV.

After a lot of research, and even though we were sucked-in to the quality of DLP, we opted for a Sony LCD 55 inch projection system (KDF-55WF655). It's going to be a while before it shows up - it's coming from Los Angeles.

The second step we took today. I purchased and FINALLY received today a Sony SAT-HD300 receiver. I got it off eBay and saved hundreds of dollars (though this particular auction was one of the worst I've ever been involved with). The receiver has not only component outputs, but regular S-Video and composite outputs, so we could hook it up to our existing 27-inch TV. The picture quality seems even better than the original (a Sony SAT-B55).

This receiver not only has satellite inputs, but antenna and cable inputs as well. There are internal tuners to accept off-the-air signals, both analog and digital. So, on a lark, I hooked up the antenna that I installed in our attic 20 years ago.

Before I knew it, I was pulling-in the DT signals from the local TV stations!, Now, I can't see them in HD yet (since we don't have the HDTV yet), but I can see the 4:3 version of the signal! I had no idea that the TV stations in town had these "other" stations! For instance, both Channel 5 (local NBC affiliate) and Channel 7 (Local ABC affiliate) have separate channels for broadcasting local weather info and radar - in HDTV - 24 hours a day! Also, Channel 7 and 11 (the local PBS affiliate) broadcasts their own HD programming on still another channel. This is so damn cool!

Next step: Replace the multi-switch (which I already own). I can do this any time and need to do this soon.

The final step is replace the dish - I'm getting a replacement dish off of eBay, so when that comes in, I will need to find an installer.

posted at 06:57 PM | Link | Mundane | § |


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That's it for the entries in this particular Archive of my blog. If you want, you can look through other entries by selecting the links in the right-hand column of this page under either Archives by Month or Archives by Category, or you can search the site for specific keywords by using the Search page.

This Blog was last updated Friday December 18, 2009 13:03:12 CDT (-06:00 GMT)
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