Robot Claw – Page 843 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

The Very Last Thing I Want To Do Right Now

July 18, 2006

Our yard needs mowing badly, so it seems I must brave the 91 F heat to do just that.

My back still hurts, but a lot less than last week. I find that when I sit still for long periods the pain abates, only to return when I move. I expect mowing will trigger it for a bit, so I think I may take some pills before I start. I’m very sick of the pain by now (it’s a dull ache at this point, only sharp when I move something heavy)…it could stick around for another week at least according to the doctor…

We got digital cable yesterday. Of course Time Warner didn’t supply the HDMI cable for the DVR so I had to go buy one ($80!!). Talking with the salesperson at Tweeter (a local electronics store) I found the upgrade from component to HDMI from the cable box/DVR would be marginal since the DVR’s “don’t support it very well”. So I actually bought the cable for a new DVD player I also picked up, which can upconvert from the 480p signal that typical DVD players do to the 720p or 1080i our TV can display. However upconversion requires a HDMI cable (solely for copy protection purposes), so now we have the DVD player using that slot. Furthermore, some DVDs are apparently encoded in 720 resolution, and without a new player we wouldn’t have been getting the best of them.

Digital cable is cool. I feel compelled to mention that neither KLS or myself knew about the large amount of (free) on demand programs available (this in addition to the 200 or so channels). Given that at least two readers of this blog have had digital cable for a while now, I’m surprised no one ever mentioned this to me!

And the HD transmissions look – as expected – impossibly sharp and clear. We watched a documentary on tattoos last night in glorious 16:9 1080i HD resolution and it was breathtaking. Can’t wait till some of the shows we like to watch (Smallville, Supernatural) return so we can start watching them in HD 🙂

Here’s a shot for Joyce of our flowering Hosta

< Hosta

Latest FF acquisitions…

July 18, 2006

Just a quick note to say I’m still actively seeking every Fighting Fantasy book (and spin off). Amongst my latest acquisitions are the following:

Spellbreaker is FF 53, which also happens to be the first book that was published after I came to America. It is the highest numbered original book I now own (I do have the 2005 reprint of Legend Of Zagor, FF 54, and the 2005 new release Eye Of The Dragon).

Demonstealer is the second FF novel. It is the sequel to The Trolltooth Wars, which read a lot better than I expected.

Dungeoneer is the first of the ‘Advanced Fighting Fantasy’ series. This is basically a fully blown RPG set in the FF world, much more complicated than the rules set forth by the RPG guidebooks Fighting Fantasy and The Riddling Reaver (both of which I have). This book is particularly impressive, not least because it is trade format and over 400 pages in length!

My collection now includes every book from FF 1 – 54 in one version or another, and Eye Of The Dragon. I also own the full Sorcery! series (original prints, excluding spellbook), all USA Dell imprints (FF 1 – 21), and various others mentioned above.

From here on completing the collection will be tough! Some of the higher number books (notable FF57 Magehunter) fetch well over a hundred on ebay in the rare instances they are offered. The two followups to Dungeoneer (namely Blacksand! and Allansia!) I have never seen for sale, and the same applies to the third novel (Shadowmaster). I’m also frustratingly unable to find any hardcover versions of Titan or Out Of The Pit (the atlas and monster guide respectively).

But I shall perservere!

Introducing: Bravia!

July 16, 2006

We got a new TV yesterday.

Sony Bravia KDL-V40XBR1

It’s a 40 inch LCD model, and here’s a shot:

< KLS with her new toy

The TV replaces our old 32 inch XBR picture tube model. The upgrade is significant. Our old TV was merely ‘HD ready’ in that it could display a maximum resolution of 720p (that would be 1080×720 pixels) in a 4:3 aspect ratio.

As you can see the new model has a native 16:9 aspect ratio, but it also has a maximum resolution of 1366×768 and – much more importantly – a HMDI input (up to 1080i) which is essential for HD media signals. It is an LCD model, and the picture is alarmingly sharp and vibrant (to those of us used to picture tubes).

The TV has three component input jacks, one S-Video, 2 composite, one RGB, one USB and one HMDI slot. Right now I am using component inputs for the PS2 (which outputs at 480i), the Gamecube (480p), and the DVD player (480p). The S-Video is used by our TiVo, and the composite by the X-Box (both are, of course, sending an NTSC signal due to the limitations of their connections). It quickly became apparent that we needed better signals to get the most out of this new TV!

There is nothing we can do about the PS2 and Gamecube – both are displaying at the best possible resolutions for the systems. (The PS2 can ‘fake’ a widescreen signal, but it is still in 480i resolution maximum and simply squashes the image with a very fake result). Both my PS2’s (yes, I own 2) are older than fifth generation, which is where progressive scan output was added. So 480i is the best I can do with that (which, incidentally, looks great). The gamecube looks amazing at 480p anyway (By the way, the little letters ‘i’ and ‘p’ mean interlaced and progressive scanned (double the scan lines) respectively. The numbers mean the vertical pixel count. So 720p would be 1080×720 progressive scan).

The DVD player is an obvious weakpoint. Our player is probably five years old, outputs at a maximum 480p resolution and cannot upconvert to 720 or even 1080 signals. Newer models, including some for under US$100, can do exactly that.

However upconverting requires the use of the HDMI slot, since progressive scan cables have a limit of 720 resolution. And tomorrow I am going to Time Warner to pick up our brand new HMDI, HD-DVR. Yes that’s right – a true HD digital cable tuner with an HDMI output. These are brand new apparently, and will actually transmit a pixel-pixel 1920×1080 signal to the TV (not to mention record programs in this resolution). I can’t wait to see how it looks!

Anyway, since the DVR will be using the HDMI slot, that means I must find a DVD player that can upconvert to 720p via a component cable. I know for a fact Samsung makes one, and I’m sure others do. Since the prices are amazingly low these days for such things (I doubt we’d need to spend over maybe US$130) we may pick one up today at the store where we bought the TV (Tweeter).

Of course down the road we’ll probably have an X-Box 360, which can output at a maximum 720p resolution through component cables. A Playstation3 (maximum 1080i resolution which requires HDMI) and a Nintendo Wii (720p component). I’ll work out just where I’m going to be plugging these things in at a future date.

About the picture above. Astute readers may note that the TV is displaying a 16:9, very high quality image. Look in the lower right corner and you will read WMHT-HD. That is our local public access TV channel, but transmitted in HD. It turns out our local cable company transmits a few HD channels unscrambled, which means non-digital subscribers can pick them up. Of course tomorrow we’ll have access to all the non premium (monthly fee) HD channels, and I can’t wait to see how they look!