Television Challenge

We've been without a television for about two weeks now. Or at least, without reception. It was hard to believe that our 42" LCD television broke one month after the extended warranty ran out, but it did. Perhaps I should write up a review...

Ok, I lied a little. Until last night, we'd been without a television reciever. It still works as a monitor, and plays back DVDs. But since we don't have cable, when the digital tuner went in the set, we lost all of our stations. For a while, I was afraid I'd have to go out and get cable. There's something about paying for 100+ stations, 98% of which I have no interest in, that bothers me. Call me crazy, but I'm not into spending $50 a month for the Disney channel, 80 sports programs, 5 shopping stations, a handfull of other stuff, and the opportunity to argue with my daughter about how much Hanna Montana is OK to watch on a school night.

Fortunately, for about $45, I was able to purchase a digital TV tuner. The reception is even better than it was before. Now we get around 50 stations. I'm not really interested in most of them either, but at least I didn't have to buy cable... and I don't have to argue about Hanna Montana either. We ended up picking up a Digital Stream from Radio Shack. Probably the best part of it (aside from no Disney), is that we can now record to our VCR again.

Now I'm sure some of you are wondering why a computer nerd like me (who even used to produce multi media edutainment products) doesn't have a DVR or cable. (Well, the DVR part at least -- see above for my thoughts on cable). To begin, we don't have cable, so the DVRs are not quite as usefull. More importantly, it would just be one more gadget cluttering up an already too crowded table. There really isn't any need to add to burn a bunch of fossil fuel, dig up a buch of montains, melt some sand, add to the local landfill etc. -- all so that I can skip past comercials.

On a different note -- still no followers. Of course, I don't write often enough (or well enough) (or about interesting enough things) to be worth following. Oh well.

mata atode! (see you later!)