Quickie vacation post

[thistlechaser]

1) Walmart is everything everyone says it is. I went there for the first time today (my mother loves the place). I had no idea there were that many poor/white trash people in all of California. Very overweight women wearing things three sizes too small. Dirty kids running wild drooling on everything. Just the lowest class people I've ever seen around here, and tons of them -- we went at 11 AM and the place was packed. (My first thought was 'Don't these people work?!', then I laughed at myself.)

2) Sometimes I really hate tech. Since my new TV is HD, I got a new HD cable box so I could watch HD stuff. I've spent six hours so far trying to set up these damned things, and it's still not all working. Forget about the Wii or PS2 or any other pieces, I can't even get the TV/cable box/Tivo working together. Irony that I've gotten all this new crap for the Wii and I'm back to not being able to use it...

3) Apparently my new TV isn't as big as I think it is. My mother saw it and said "Oh, that's small!". Ha ha. I think it's big and still love it. :P

4) I now own a sofa! Big and leather, very soft -- lay down on it and you might never be seen again! Shock and amazement, I've lived alone for well over 10 years and this is the first time I've owned a sofa.

5) MISSING RP! Arg! *twitches* But other than that, vacation is going well.

Comments

[citizenbleys.livejournal.com]

Have you tried going directly from the dstb to the TV? What kind of cables are you using? (Options are YPbPr aka component, HDMI, or DVI--anything else is SD onry)

I work for my cable company, but we have PVRs, so I don't know squat about TiVO (caps correct?)--however basic theory still applies. Is your TiVO device HD-compliant? If so it should have YPbPr, HDMI, and/or DVI inputs as well as outputs. If it's not HD-compliant you can't daisy-chain it and still get HD. If it is, you can use YPbPr from the dstb to the TiVO, then another set of YPbPr to the TV. (this is an example--I actually prefer HDMI since it does audio and video in one cable, whereas YPbPr is one 3-pronged cable for picture and requires a separate 2-pronged RCA audio for sound).

You should connect your Wii, PS3, 360, &c. in parallel rather than in series. Game consoles cannot make use of any input from a dstb. Just change inputs when you want to game instead of daisy-chaining everything together so that if any one link in the chain fails, the whole thing goes to shit.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I'm using mostly the ones with the yellow/white/red connections, I'm not sure what kind those are. Thanks for the info! I need to poke at it again today and give it another try.

[citizenbleys.livejournal.com]

That's composite, you won't get HD with that.

HDMI looks like a USB cable (sort of); it's capable of going up to 1080p, which your Wii should support, but your cable box won't. (I think Comcast tried to do 1080p broadcasts and fried billions of dollars worth of customer equipment that they had to replace somewhere in the US). HDMI cables are expensive, but since they do audio and video with one cable, it doesn't contribute as much to the FSM-like mass of wires behind most tvs.

DVI is the same kind of cable most computer monitors use these days; it looks like a bigger, squarer VGA connection done up in white plastic; it'll go up to 1080i, which is Cable TV's version of high def.

YPbPr/component looks exactly like what you're using now, except there's a red, green, and blue connections for picture and red/white for audio. You can keep using the same red/white as you're using now without any impact on your sound.

What you're using now will work--but since it won't do HD, you're not getting what you paid for.