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MAR

29

2013

my father stopped by my place around 10 in the morning to help me set up my HDTV. i'd already been up for hours (since 7:30), a combination of aching arm muscles and my upstairs neighbors doing their tumbling exercises in their kitchen right above my bedroom. my father attached the pedestal to the bottom of the HDTV and put it on top of wooden footrest carved from a single chunk of wood that i use as a rustic tv stand. my old television i asked him to put in my room, needlessly scraping up the top of the wooden dresser in the process.

i showed my father how little electricity the LED HDTV uses (70 watts on bright, 30 watts on standard, around 100 watts when playing 3D), then dazzled him with its amazing 3D capabilities. we discovered that the 3D effect isn't dependent on distance from the television but rather the angle. the higher up one gets from the top of the HDTV, the blurrier the 3D gets. since the HDTV is sitting low to the ground, it's easy to leave the 3D sweet spot (like standing up for example), so at some point i'll need to raise the tv (although it would block at least one of the windows). i played him life of pi and he was grasping at the zoo animals during the introduction.

afterwards he gave me a ride to the post office so i could drop off frances' latest package. i was perfectly happy to take care of it on my own, but my father stuck around, worried i might have difficulties with only one free arm. fortunately there wasn't anybody else in line so i basically just dropped off the box and got a ride back to my house.

i spent the rest of the day either watching downton abbey or further exploring all the features of the HDTV. since i still only have a digital-to-analog cable box, i'm getting what i call "fake HD" which is an analog coaxial signal stretched to fit the widescreen format. it's watchable, but definitely not HD quality. i'm going to make an appointment with comcast next week to upgrade my services. the audio also seems to be really low coming from the cable box. there might be a way to adjust the cable box volume but i haven't figure it out yet.

i added some more apps to the HDTV by signing up for a viera account. apparently you can't erase the space for the advertisement but you can hide it on one of the lower screens she you don't see it when you activate the internet functionality. there aren't that many apps; i ended up adding some weather programs and an AP news app.

i tried playing some movies with SRT subtitle files but the built-in media player didn't seem to recognize them. close-captioning on broadcasted shows work, but i don't like the font, it's too narrow and too small. there seems to be a lot of settings to change the digital captions (color, background, font, size), but apparently that doesn't apply to analog captions.

one cool thing i didn't realize you could do is convert 2D content to 3D. i sort of accidentally ran across it last night, then got a chance to really play with it today. i saw the 3D conversions on movies, but i didn't realize the technology would also work on 2D images as well. it's kind of interesting how they're extrapolating the data to turn it 3D, sometimes the effect is very subtle while other times it's pretty neat.

in the afternoon my lasership delivery guy dropped something off at my place. "oh, what happened?" he asked when i greeted him at the door in my sling. i told him about my broken collarbone. he said he never broke any bones himself, but as a young man he did a lot of dirt biking and have friends with shattered shoulders. the package was a new cover ($8) for my father's ipad and a non-contact voltage tester ($17) for myself.

my father brought a bag of meat buns in the morning, which i had for dinner. for lunch i heated up some duck broth my mother left here a few days along, combined with some rice noodles.

finally, i tried the built-in QAM tuner on the HDTV with the coaxial cable connecting directly to the television. it took a while to scan through all the channels, but it found about 301 free channels, including all the local networks i could receive over-the-air (but they're a lot clearer via cable). i could get rid of my cable and cut by comcast bill by half ($120 to $60 for just internet, a savings of $720 a year). something to consider if i can't get a good package deal next week when i deal with comcast. it's funny that i should get a brand new HDTV but thinking about cutting my cable ties. if anything, shouldn't i be wanting more channels than what i have now?


1 25 channels to be exact: 2-1 WGBH HD, 2-2 WGBH WO, 4-1 WBZ HD, 5-1 WCVB HD, 5-2 WCVB Me, 7-1 WHDH HD, 7-2 WHDH TH, 25-1 WFXT HD, 27-1 WUNI HD (univision), 27-2 WUNI-TV, 38-1 WSBK HD, 44-1 WGBX HD, 44-3 WGBH CR, 44-4 WGBH KI, 46-1 WWDP46, 48-1 WYDN48, 50-1 WBIN HD, 50-2 WBIN LI, 50-3 WBIN CO, 56-1 WLVI HD, 56-2 WLVI-CN, 60-1 WNEU-HD (telemundo), 60-2 EXITOS, 66-1 WUTF-DT, 68-1 WBPX HD. i think i'm also supposed to channel 62 which is a local spanish language channel based out of lawrence. i think i got that channel when i used the paperclip antenna trick so i might do the same to see what additional channels i can get over-the-air. these clear (free) QAM channels don't include any cambridge access channels nor NECN.