Lawrence "The Dreamer" Chen's Blog

Today, I came home late from work...and found sitting on my doorstep that FedEx has left the TiVo HD DVR there. Odd, when I ordered the Cox HD DVR, they wouldn't do that...and even though I waited at home all day by the front door, they claim that I wasn't there to make the delivery (ignoring that it was the first K-State football home game of the season...or perhaps the real reason?)

Anyways....I just moved the box aside, since I intend to hook it up digitally and not knowing how quickly the woot order would ship, I had put off buying DVI and/or HDMI cables. Though I had a good idea of what would be needed, since the TV is DVI and the TiVO HD is HDMI. What I hadn't worked out full is placement of it and my Zektor DVI switcher. Or what pieces of tech that have an input on my TV need to move onto the DVI switcher, because I'm out of digital audio inputs on my receiver.

The plan is that I'll likely move my Momitsu V880N to using DVI. The OTA HD tuner will probably be retired as a result of the TiVo HD DVR (and not because it only sees one station and poorly)....but that digital audio output had already been bumped. Since unlike my setup in Columbus with TimeWarner, I have both an HD tuner and an HD DVR from Cox. Not ready to retire the HD tuner from my mix...but perhaps some day it'll go.

I suppose the only outstanding issue I haven't figured out is whether I need open return path for the TiVo's cable connection. I have a 4 way and an 8 way splitter....the 8 way has no return path and is off of one of the 4 way splitter outputs. I have my cable modem, Cox HD Tuner and Cox HD DVR on the other 3 outputs of the 4 way. 7 of the 8 outputs are my ReplayTV...the 8th has floated around a bit depending on what gadget I wanted to try....on the HDTV for using its internal tuner, a DVD recorder that I had to see if TVGuide data was available, the OTA receiver to see if I could do clear QAM....

Now that I think of it, I probably should've checked Amazon.com for an upgrade of the 4-way splitter...I think the next up is an 6-way (want to minimize the split loss at that 'tier'). But, I once again used Amazon Prime to order a bunch of DVI/DVI and HDMI/DVI and Toslink cables....discovered that the 3.99 upgrade to 1 day service is per item, not per shipment or order. In retrospect I might have scaled down the size of the order to just what I needed to get the TiVo HD going, and leave the rest for free 2 day service. But, I guess I'm not thinking clearly right now

Initial setup will be a weekend project, not sure how it'll go on getting the Cablecards.

Forgot to mention that I've switched back to using the Terk HDTVlp antenna with the Samsung SIR-T451.

In a moment of insanity, I saw somebody selling a 'new' Samsung SIR-T451 on eBay.

So, I threw in a bid and won it.

The timing was kind of poor as I was about to embark for LISA, so I knew it would be one big item waiting for me when I did get around to making a trip to the UPS store. And, I was worried that I might have too many big items waiting for me.

I was close. I didn't take into account that there would also be several pounds of catalogs stuffed into my box. I lugged those home, because I didn't want to sort through them and also plan to enter them at Catalog Choice....

Well, after processing all the other deliveries and mail...I set out to try out the SIR-T451 at receiving clear QAM. It would scan and the lock up and reboot. It made some progress at find HDTV signals, but I realized that it wasn't going to work. The channels are all weird (though making a custom channel guide using WiRNS might have been an option)...but there was also the use of subchannels...and they weren't on the first subchannel. Which meant that I wasn't gonna have anything usable via ReplayTV.

I was about to pack it up and give up, when I decided to see what would happen if I hooked an antenna to it. Largely because the signal light has been flickering lately on the SIR-T351 and there were a lot of bad OTA recordings...which was getting annoying. There was a mix from forums on which was better for OTA...the T351 or the T451. So, not having anything to lose at this point, I tried it.

Well, the T451 worked better for me. It had a fairly solid lock on WIBW-DT, but unfortunately no other HD stations. So, I set up on my ReplayTV.

That leaves the one open cable connection for something else....at least now I know that there are some clear QAM stuff in my area, perhaps I'll look to finally building that HTmac....

Link: http://www.hdtvsupply.com/zedv5in1oudv1.html

Oh yeah...during the blog move, I picked this item up from the UPS Store.

I got a black one.

I unpacked and placed it under my TV, though I don't have much in the way of cables to put it into service. And, I don't yet have much need for it....the TV can handle everything that I currently have plugged in to it.

But, if I do get that Mac Mini and/or add a PC to my setup....or decide on Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD (or get a universal)...then I'm going to have need more inputs.

I was originally planning to get a remote controlled Digital Audio switch, because I there is one device where its audio output is not connected to anything at the moment....the OTA tuner. Though its usefulness might have reached an end due to neighboring construction (too late to move to a higher place...)

But, I anticipate a need for some kind of switch...and I had been looking at a component video / digital audio switcher for some time. Though some of the things that I switch by component now, could also be switched using DVI...and the price/feature point was in the ballpark of what I would pay/get. So, I went for it.

As the impending start of the new fall season, I noticed that my OTA HDTV tuner wasn't getting a signal for some reason..... At first, because it was like 2am, I thought maybe it was because WIBW-HD was off the air. But, since it wasn't working this morning, I started to fiddle with the antenna. The Terk HDTVlp had served me well last fall thru spring....and there just hadn't been anything worth watching during the summer, so I don't know when it stopped working. Though WIBW-HD did go off air in the spring....apparently it had taken a lightning hit. So I hadn't paid much attention to it during the summer.

But, now there's lots of new shows to check out, and I not enough HD recording capabilities to keep up. So I need the ReplayTV with OTA HDTV tuner to supplement my recording capabilities again. I still plan to get the HTMac, but now I'm waiting for Leopard to come out before buying my first Mac. (though there might still be another computer in the future...so I can run Momitsu's V880N's MMC software somewhere closer and with more storage...).

Anyways...I suspect the condo's new building outside my livingroom window is doing more than just blocking my view.... Turning it to off to the side a bit, I could some signal...but not enough for a stable picture. Probably just a narrow slit between buildings.... So I switched to the Terk HDTVa to see if I can get more directionality on receiving a usable signal.

It seems to be working now....

Meanwhile, I saw the Tivo HD was being carried by the local Best Buy...wonder if that means if I can actually get Cable Cards around here? Though I'm wondering when they'll be more than just Tivo with CableCards. Would like to keep my fleet of ReplayTVs going for as long as possible....

Actually, it is Zap2It that will be dead. And, with that deadline looming, I've been trying to decide when to make the leap from the very stable WiRNS 1.3.2.21 version to the Preview release of 2.0.0.0

I had been holding off for a variety of reasons, one the Preview wasn't distributed as a ZIP file...just an MSI, so I could just unpack and drop it into my less than normal setup. And, for some reason I couldn't do builds of this code on the same computer (Guess Microsoft is trying to kill Windows 2000).

But, I decided this this afternoon that I would make a quick try at getting the preview release going....even though I also had plans to be somewhere this evening. Well, I blew off those plans...and now it is quite late, and I have a job interview tomorrow....

Anyways....I made a quick backup and moved things aside on my computer and set about to install the 8.16 preview.

It crashed a bunch of times, but I eventually got it up....and then I set about to go through the configuration to make sure everything was reasonable. The hard part was updating the lineups for my ReplayTVs....since I have 7 of them, and it does a rebuild of the ReplayGuide each and every time I edit one.

Then I did an update guide....it went to build ToDo and kept crashing....I have Season Premiere/Finale and Series Premiere/Finale ReplayZones on two of my ReplayTVs...one for regular cable TV and one for Digital Cable TV....it had 155,xxx for the regular cable TV unit, and it would go for about 30 minutes on the Digital Cable unit and then crash. And crash was considered a good response....other times it would just hang and be unresponsive until I killed it. At least with a crash, it would eventually automatically restart (Windows Service setting).

Didn't I add a boolean option to decide if ReplayZones would go into Building the ToDo list? Well, I found that another developer had commented it out...saying ReplayZones works now. Ummm, I don't think so. So, I guess if I'm going to make WIRNS 2.0 work, I would have to figure out how to get it to build and go back to making custom builds for myself.

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Look at all the empty spots....what will I fill them with....

In my continuing quest to receive Fox in HD, I picked up this antenna....which says it can get signals up to 45 miles away (Fox-HD is ~43 miles away).

Unfortunately, this didn't work out. I'll switch back to my HDTVlp in a bit, because it works better at pulling in the one OTA HDTV station that I can get.

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During the holidays, I got to thinking again that I would really like someway to receive FOX HDTV (as well as any other OTA HDTV that I could get to help relieve the load on the Cox HD DVR)....

Before moving here to Manhattan, KS...some one had mentioned the Terk HDTVlp antenna as one that I might need to consider.

When I got here, I did set up on of my OTA HDTV Tuners...and try the non-amplified directional HDTV antennas (ZHDTV1) that I was previously using in Dublin, OH to receive OTA HD. It couldn't find any signal at all. Given that the nearest antenna is about ~32 miles away (CBS) and the one that I'm most interested in is ~43 miles away (FOX)...and in the opposite direction from all the rest (CBS, ABC, NBC, PBS).

Well, I finally scored an HDTVlp antenna...and set it up today. It didn't pan out....the only station I can pull in is WIBW-DT, which is the CBS stations that is ~32 miles away. I tried various orientations of the antenna, but it only affected how well it would receive CBS....

Now I'm trying to decide if I'll take the chance and buy another amplified antenna.... Perhaps something a bit more directional.

Meanwhile, I'm also trying to decide if I'll use the fact that I can at least get CBS....and take the load off of my Cox HD DVR some. It'll likely be to record HD content that I don't currently record using the HD DVR or content that I'm willing to sacrifice....

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I had started the quest to research what cordless phone I would get to replace my current 5.8Ghz one, since it doesn't get along with the Amphony 1520.

I had kind of narrowed it down to a 2.4Ghz phone that I had come across on eBay, a Uniden DCT646-3. Well, I bought it.

At first I was questing for a 900MHz phone...but there doesn't seem to be much (or any) in the way of *NEW* digital (DSS) 900Mhz phones. Making it even harder to find one with the features that I would want. Namely handset speaker phone, multi-handset capable or included, VMWI, CID.

I know that 2.4GHz and WiFi don't get along...but consensus is that WiFi doesn't prevent a 2.4Ghz phone from working and the 2.4GHz phone only causes performance degradation to the WiFi. And, in the congested 2.4GHz that is life in a condo, near apartments, near a major university....it is kind of something I'm stuck with. Plus it is still my plan at some point to replace the bridge portion of my WiFi network with something else.

Like the phone demarc is in the room where the DSL modem is, and the condo is wired with CAT5....so maybe I'll put the DSL modem directly on the incoming line? And, use the condo's CAT5 for networking. Though my Living Room is laid out wrong for this to really work right now...and no plans to move the main computer to the other bedroom. But, if I did move the computer, than it could be a definite possibility. Or the condo's CAT5 would only link the Living Room to the 'computer' room. And, I would keep WiFi for the stuff in the LivingRoom. On the basis that they are close enough to cope....plus I still want WiFi for my DPH-540 and my laptop(s).

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