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pseydtonneI have been saying "I'm going to build a Tivo kinda thang" for months. I finally got all of the equipment I needed -- TV tuner, fast enough chip and mobo, decent video card with S-video ouput, big hard drive, and some spare time. The chip was the linchpin: on Saturday I bought an AMD Athlon Barton core 2800 for $110.
Then![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
hakamadare called me yesterday. He'd given up on his old ReplayTv and bought a new Tivo. I couldn't resist buying it. It's a 3020, meaning it's only got a 20-gig hard drive and requires a dialup line. I have a land phone, so this isn't a problem. It also has the ability to upgrade the hard drive to a 120-gig, thus I am planning to upgrade that drive to at least an 80-gig.
I brought it home, spent about an hour and change untangling the mess behind the stereo and TV, plugged the ReplayTv into the S-video input on my TV and letting it set up a fresh schedule. Then I watched Adult Swim and some dippy crap before going to bed.
I came home from work and started watching stuff I'd scheduled for the pup. Now I see why television watching has changed in America. You sit down and find everything you wanted to check out for years is waiting for you.
I made the mistake of recording everything at "standard" quality (the lowest of the three settings). As I played back a couple of shows, I found myself wincing from the lack of resolution. Then I realized "oh, this is VCR quality -- and not quite SP, either." Things looked artifacted and the sound was a little fuzzed from saturation. This made watching an antiques show a bit ass.
Oh wait, I'd better explain: my mom has warned me that gramma's house got to be the victim of an episode of Find! This is a PBS program where two guys (I'm told they're escapees from Antiques Roadshow) bother someone's house and drool over or appraise their crap. I wanted to see an episode of this and decided it cranked the tension of Antiques Roadshow from 3 to 8 and added the smarmy sensibility and production values of a makeover show. The hosts are brothers with this swishy antagonism. You're supposed to think they're gay because they dig antiques but they're really asexual -- no man of the fabulous would admit to being a shitty dancer (one of them did during the episode I saw). Maybe they schtup the Hepplewhite.
My mom had written to the show saying "hey, I've got these pieces you may wanna check out". They did! They came by a couple weeks ago, did a prelim with her, and then shot the episode with my aunt Dorothy as the person to do the speaking. My mom ran around the outside of the house, keeping my father from entering gramma's and keeping gramma's creepy-ass stalker neighbor from being half his usual nuisance. We'll get to see the result some time in December.
Anyway, back to my new addiction: I starting watching an episode of Good Eats. This is my favorite cooking show and it is the reason I've wanted a video hard drive box. Alton Brown just rocks my OCD world. I noticed the problems with the rez and immediately changed the settings for my permanent recording of anything on the show from "standard" to "medium". I then tested that setting by recording an episode of Family Guy and comparing that to the live TV version -- it was lower than TV but so much higher than VCR that it'll do until i upgrade the drive.
Then I got bored with experimenting and sat down to watch The Surreal Life. Flavor Flav! He's a character and I needn't say how much I relate to characters. Damn if this ain't captivating! It's supposed to be dumb television but you wind up wishing they'd skip having an omniscient perspective and only follow Flav around.
Yeah, I'm still addicted to television. Now I have a robot to babysit the boob tube for me -- oh, and I have two fully-mod computers to beat around.
-about to take out massive attack garbage, Ps/d
Then
hakamadare called me yesterday. He'd given up on his old ReplayTv and bought a new Tivo. I couldn't resist buying it. It's a 3020, meaning it's only got a 20-gig hard drive and requires a dialup line. I have a land phone, so this isn't a problem. It also has the ability to upgrade the hard drive to a 120-gig, thus I am planning to upgrade that drive to at least an 80-gig.I brought it home, spent about an hour and change untangling the mess behind the stereo and TV, plugged the ReplayTv into the S-video input on my TV and letting it set up a fresh schedule. Then I watched Adult Swim and some dippy crap before going to bed.
I came home from work and started watching stuff I'd scheduled for the pup. Now I see why television watching has changed in America. You sit down and find everything you wanted to check out for years is waiting for you.
I made the mistake of recording everything at "standard" quality (the lowest of the three settings). As I played back a couple of shows, I found myself wincing from the lack of resolution. Then I realized "oh, this is VCR quality -- and not quite SP, either." Things looked artifacted and the sound was a little fuzzed from saturation. This made watching an antiques show a bit ass.
Oh wait, I'd better explain: my mom has warned me that gramma's house got to be the victim of an episode of Find! This is a PBS program where two guys (I'm told they're escapees from Antiques Roadshow) bother someone's house and drool over or appraise their crap. I wanted to see an episode of this and decided it cranked the tension of Antiques Roadshow from 3 to 8 and added the smarmy sensibility and production values of a makeover show. The hosts are brothers with this swishy antagonism. You're supposed to think they're gay because they dig antiques but they're really asexual -- no man of the fabulous would admit to being a shitty dancer (one of them did during the episode I saw). Maybe they schtup the Hepplewhite.
My mom had written to the show saying "hey, I've got these pieces you may wanna check out". They did! They came by a couple weeks ago, did a prelim with her, and then shot the episode with my aunt Dorothy as the person to do the speaking. My mom ran around the outside of the house, keeping my father from entering gramma's and keeping gramma's creepy-ass stalker neighbor from being half his usual nuisance. We'll get to see the result some time in December.
Anyway, back to my new addiction: I starting watching an episode of Good Eats. This is my favorite cooking show and it is the reason I've wanted a video hard drive box. Alton Brown just rocks my OCD world. I noticed the problems with the rez and immediately changed the settings for my permanent recording of anything on the show from "standard" to "medium". I then tested that setting by recording an episode of Family Guy and comparing that to the live TV version -- it was lower than TV but so much higher than VCR that it'll do until i upgrade the drive.
Then I got bored with experimenting and sat down to watch The Surreal Life. Flavor Flav! He's a character and I needn't say how much I relate to characters. Damn if this ain't captivating! It's supposed to be dumb television but you wind up wishing they'd skip having an omniscient perspective and only follow Flav around.
Yeah, I'm still addicted to television. Now I have a robot to babysit the boob tube for me -- oh, and I have two fully-mod computers to beat around.
-about to take out massive attack garbage, Ps/d
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no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 06:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 06:49 am (UTC)As for the Surreal Life, I caught the first episode. The show is captivating. Yet there was something about the Bardot-Flav relationship that scared me, so I stopped watching.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 07:07 am (UTC)Brigitte Bardot: Favorite actress of French New Wave directors. Sexual fantasy object of every straight male film school graduate since.
Brigitte Nielsen: Big, bossy Aryan woman.
no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 07:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-09-21 11:37 am (UTC)/me scheming