Thermostat screw up

I still have Radio Shack/Tandy battery club cards from the 1970s.

I'm sure they will be good again. My grandfather saved all his Confederate money, too, and he left it to me and I'm waiting until I can redeem it.

The toys remind me of one definition of "Silent Night": One night, a few days after Christmas, when all the batteries have died.

micky wrote on 3/12/2024 12:31 PM:

You need a time machine.

What I wish I could do with my TV is turn off overscan. I see nothing about in the manual or the menus.

I don't hear about C & D sizes much now, although a few years ago I did have a cat toy that used C cells. Also, during a power outage I went to a store for a battery-powered radio. The only one they had used C cells (which they were out of).

Flashlights have all switched to energy efficient LED bulbs. There is no need for C and D cells. Many power hungry devices come with rechargeable lithium-ion battery inside. Even the computer mouse I am using now has built-in rechargeable lithium-ion battery. It is definite a lot lighter than my old mouse using 2 AA cells. The 2 AA alkaline batteries are heavier than the mouse itself.

Mark Lloyd wrote on 3/12/2024 1:35 PM:

This feature might be in your set-top box, independent of your TV.

I found something that might help:

If you don’t see that setting, however, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not available on your set—it /probably/ means that the manufacturer decided to change the name to make it “easier to understand.” In that case, you’ll have to either keep digging and tweaking till you find it, or you can do the unthinkable: read the manual. Do you even still have the manual? Probably not. I bet you can find it online.

Since we're basically friends, though, I compiled a quick list of some of the most popular manufacturers and what they call overscan on their sets:

Vizio: Change the picture mode to "Normal" (if it isn't already). This automatically disables overscan.*

*Insignia: In the advanced options menu, it's surprisingly called "overscan."

Sharp, LG, and Philips: Unfortunately, we couldn't find a good consensus on these three brands, so you'll probably just have to Google it for your specific model.

These won't necessarily be exact for every individual model, but they should set you in the right direction. Once you’ve found the correct setting, you can just disable it (or tweak it, if allowed) and you’re done. Enjoy all that content you never got to see before and didn’t even realize it.

Check Your Set-Top Boxes, Too

So, once you've got your TV working properly, check your set-top boxes, game consoles, and DVD or Blu-ray players for any overscan or underscan options. Like the TV, it may not be labeled as “overscan,” so don't be afraid to experiment. And of course this will only apply to that connection. If you change the overscan settings on your streaming box, for example, it won’t have any effect on other inputs, like your cable box.

Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV (4th generation), and some Android TV boxes should all have options to adjust overscan in some way,

Overscan is archaic and outdated, but unfortunately as long as analog connections exist and content creators continue to use the overscan area, it’s not something we’re going to get rid of. At least you can disable it on most modern televisions though, so you can get rid of it in your own living room. Welcome to the new world.

An example. They were already selling battery-powered toy cars, with a cable between the control and the car. But I was given a mechanically powered jeep. To make it go forward or back, one turned a crank on the control, and to steer one pushed a lever. I'm not complaining. It was fun and it had no batteries to go dead.

On Mon, 11 Mar 2024 19:41:18 -0400, Ed P posted for all of us to digest...

Sneaking another one in, aye Ed?