O/T: Folded Dipole

"Leon" wrote

-- I will add these remarks to Leon's comments.

As my wife says, "Thank God for fast forward." Thee is somg good programs that would be unwatchable if you had to endure the commercials. Recording them makes it possible to watch it.

If you find a series that you like, and it is available in repeats, the DVR allows you to "catch up". And if you really like the series, catching up can be fun.

If you are a movie buff, there is gold in mining some of the offerings on odd hours on obscure channels. I regularly score a good scifi, golden oldie or foreign flick this way.

As for my better half, she loves anything about animals and geology (earthquakes, volcanos, etc). There are literally hours of programming each day on these topics. Hell, there is a whole channel devoted to animals. There is also the National Geographic channel.

Me, I am a history, technology and military buff. And, of course, I like woodworking too!! I like the discovery channel.

There is no doubt that there is a great wasteland on TV. But if you search for some good stuff, it is there. It is like the internet. Lots of stuff out there. And there is that subset of good stuff that you like. You just got work a little to find it. And WANT to find it.

You can not function well in a digital environment withut some basic search skills.

Mythbusters, Keith and Rachel, Daily Planet, Formula 1, Entourage... that's about it...

To sum up Leon's (snipped) remarks:

DVR has changed the way we watch TV. Rarely do we ever watch anything live. On the odd occasion when we do, we can't stand it and typically pause at an opportune spot and go kill 15 or 20 minutes doing something else (no, that would be 10). Then we'll come back and pick up where we left off, fast forwarding through the commercials as we go.

Of course we also have the option of saying, "this sucks," deleting the recording thus far, and then pursuing something else--TV or otherwise.

To repeat: we virtually never watch live TV. DVR makes that possible.

And by the way, among the treasures I found was a series called "The Mechanical Universe" which airs a couple of times a day on the University House channel (or something like that) on our Dish satellite. I saw it back in the '80s, remembered it as outstanding, and see now that I was right. I have about 32 of the 52 episodes on the hard drive and will convert all to DVD at some point.

Period. Full stop. :)

For main backbone and ring feeds AT&T the cable is located using two very low frequencies referred to as "CD" and "ACID". Anomalies such as water and power lines can skew the locating receiver.

New York State laws gives me a 3' buffer on either side of the cable before it's considered a mis-locate. Usually the marks are within a few inches but I'm not going to tell that to the contractor. I've been on one dig where my marks were 5' off as the cable was running parallel to a buried 25 KV power line. The indication I got made me suspect the locate was not accurate and I worked with the contractor to resolve the problem.

On the long distance (trans-continental) cables a technician is required to be on site if the dig is within 5' of the cable.

In my area no phone company that I'm aware of locates POTS (Plain Old Telephone Set) lines to a building.

Around here you either get begging of 5-7 year old reruns in those time slots.

With 24/7 news cycle NBD, it will repeat in 20 minutes.

If the movie is on a 3:00AM, it wil run again.

Agreed, but what's to watch?

Agreed.

I miss several weeks of "crap" on a regular basis with no ill effects.

I can selectively ignore most anything, especially commercials.

"Mute" is a great function.

If the program it will run again, it's a matter of filling time since there is so much total trash being broadcast.

I have a great deal of difficulty finding more than a couple of programs a week that I'm willing to sit down and watch.

If I miss one, it will rerun soon enough.

Lew

So much so, in fact, that I've found the difficulty to so outweigh the benefit that it's been years since I've suffered through any TV offering at all. If my wife didn't have a couple of "police procedural" shows that she enjoys, I would be quite content without a TV in the house.

Tom Veatch Wichita, KS USA

Most all of your responses to TV programming would improve with a DVR. Until you let "it" do the hunting you really don't know what you are missing. I have heard all of you responses time and again from those that "thought" the same way. Now they actually like watching the TV. LOL

When the Uverse guy comes they are going to want to switch you to VOIP phone instead of your land-line. I think the unlimited LD package is $30. It doesn't really affect your Internet and TV package price from Uverse but does affect the initial rebate by $50 I think. Some people don't want VOIP for various reasons but that's where the most savings are....at least in this area.

You'll be able to record 4 feeds 2 in HD and 2 in SD. That's the normal initial bandwidth when they move into an area. Plus you can record or watch recordings from any of your set top boxes.

Mike O.

I think you have that backwards - they currently only claim two simultaneous HD channels (whether recording or watching, it doesn't matter). However, you may not even get THAT. The first thing the tech did when he came to install U-Verse was to check the signal quality, and he immediately said it was very borderline and that I'd only be able to get ONE HD channel at any given time; apparently, my house is at the very fringe of the distance limit from the box where the signal originates. At the time I thought "No problem, I only have one HD TV and no immediate plans to get another", but it didn't take long at all to discover that my wife likes to record EVERYTHING, and while she's got an HD show recording I have to watch my 52" LCD in standard definition...

Didn't I say 2 in HD and 2 in SD..??

Here they claim you can get 4 simultaneous channels but only 2 in HD and the other 2 in SD. The service guy also claimed that the number feeds will increase over time as the network is developed in a specific area. In a nearby larger market (KC) where this guy normally works he said that some areas there have up to 6 simultaneous channels.

Mike O.

This is the problem that TiVo has had from the beginning. It is very difficult to explain that TiVo (or DVR's) make a fundamental change in a viewer's relationship with television. I've had a TiVo since 2001 and would never go back to regular TV.

Now, I'm in control of what I watch and when. Before, I could control what I watched, or when I watched it, but not both.

-- Doug

Well By Golly Gee, I guess you did! Sorry about that, I don't read so good sometimes. :-)

Your basic assumption is that there is something worth saving to watch at a time of your convenience.

Not necessarily an accurate assumption.

I must be in the minority, but IMHO, the bulk of TV is little more than white noise.

Lew

I don't think I understand your problem with making TV watching convenient. Your own statement, "...the bulk of TV is little more than white noise," logically parses to mean that there is something more substantive than white noise in at least some TV (which, by the way, does indeed make Doug's assumption accurate).

That's the whole point of DVRs. YOU pick what (if anything) YOU want to watch. YOU pick when to watch IF YOU picked something. YOU get to FF through the unwanted stuff (ads are essentially white noise). What's the problem?

The beauty, as stated in several different ways, is that YOU can easily ignore the TV as much as you want. But if some gem crops up (and there are some, by your own admission), YOU get to enjoy it without having to sift through a lot of white noise.

I don't have a problem making TV watching more convenient.

I start with a personal filter:

No sitcoms. No CSI anything No Reality TV. Forget Trump and all his derivatives. No American Idol. No fake hospital shows. No made for TV sports broadcasts.

After that, take a look at what's left.

If I had cable, probably leave set tuned to C-Span and forget it.

As it is, have local station doing a CNN type broadcast.

Usually leave TV set to that channel and the sound becomes white noise while I do something else.

If something happens, "Flashes" across the screen.

Plenty of time to look then to catch the endless repeats.

Lew

"Lew Hodgett" wrote in news:fZPIl.2870$b11.977 @nwrddc02.gnilink.net:

How about woodworking shows? If your PBS station is accurate with their program guide information, a DVR could catch the occasional episode of NYW or TOH. (I've got my mother's DVR set to record the Woodwright's Shop. We don't get it from the PBS station here.)

I don't watch local networks very much... They show what's basically on your list. If we could pull in Fox 43 for the occasional baseball game, I wouldn't see any reason to give Dish $5/mo for locals. (Especially because they don't have the digital sub channels!)

Puckdropper

That is about when we got out first TiVO also, the first DirecTV DVR's were

And then we switched to HD and the new DirecTV DVR's were no longer TiVo units and the reliability went out the door. Almost 4 years later they have made enough software upgrades to the DVR that it is tolerable.