8mm Forum: Installing an HD TV

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Topic: Installing an HD TV

Steve Klare
Film Guy

Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted September 02, 2014 12:02 PM

This weekend I installed an HD TV. Like pretty much everything else in life lately (except maybe driving a car...) technology has creeped in and drained all the familiarity from processes we didn't particularly have to devote a lot of thought to accomplishing. It used to be you plugged in the power, screwed the coax into the back, pressed "on" and you were watching TV!

Don't get me wrong here: the mechanical aspect of this is super easy: you plug into the AC and run an HDMI cable from the cable box to the TV and press "on", and it does basically take care of itself after that, but the on-screen goings-on are a little intimidating!

You get several minutes at a time of cryptic technobabble:

"De-flagellating corrugated exuberance files"
"Installing flatulent matrix codes."
"Updating logarithmic septic tank parameters"

-Now of course this isn't what it really said! I have no idea what it said, nor what it meant!

I see this as the failure of the marketing people to reign in the software engineers and allow this stuff out of the building. I'm sure it has some value for diagnostic purposes, but given the fact that most of us have no idea what this gibberish means, why not substitute something else that makes the rest of us feel good about using their product and give the technical people some kind of decoder ring so they can translate the fake messages back to their own language. (Everybody wins!)

Here's some suggestions:

"That shirt looks really good on you: did you lose weight?"
"This will take a few minutes, why not reward yourself with a nice cold beer?"
"Even through the box I heard what your wife just said: I'm on your side here."

Next: Your first day using a Smart Phone: What the hell????!!!

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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...

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Janice Glesser
Film Goddess

Posts: 3468
From: Sunnyvale, CA USA
Registered: Sep 2011

posted September 02, 2014 12:36 PM

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Janice

"I'm having a very good day!"
Richard Dreyfuss - Let It Ride (1989).

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Pasquale DAlessio
Film God

Posts: 3523
From: Bristol,RI, USA
Registered: May 2010

posted September 02, 2014 12:46 PM

That's what you get for buying a "smart" TV! [Big Grin]

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Steve Klare
Film Guy

Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted September 02, 2014 01:08 PM

What's interesting is we didn't actually buy it!

My wife passed 25 years at her job last month and this was the gift!

What's also interesting is it replaced a CRT TV with a smaller screen, yet occupies about 1/4 the space and weighs about 1/10 as much.

-and yet I'd still like a TV set to have knobs on the front panel! (I'm finally willing to let the antenna mount go!)

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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...

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Paul Adsett
Film God

Posts: 5003
From: USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted September 02, 2014 03:17 PM

My TV is a 36 ins Sony XBR Trinitron. It weighs a ton, but IMO it puts out a better picture than any LCD flat panels I have seen.

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The best of all worlds- 8mm, super 8mm, 9.5mm, and HD Digital Projection,
Elmo GS1200 f1.0 2-blade
Eumig S938 Stereo f1.0 Ektar
Panasonic PT-AE4000U digital pj

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Steve Klare
Film Guy

Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted September 02, 2014 03:50 PM

That's what we are replacing. It's dropping picture and sound intermittently. It seems to be determined to drop out at the absolute worst moment in a show as well. "The murderer is.........

Amazing beast! 160 Lbs of TV!

We didn't buy this one either: a friend went flat screen about five years ago and gave it to us.

My main gripe with the new one is the reflectiveness of the screen surface. There's a window on the dining room wall which now appears in the picture if you sit on one of the couches while the sun is out. I guess it's our signal to not waste sunny days watching TV!

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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...

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Dominique De Bast
Film God

Posts: 4486
From: Brussels, Belgium
Registered: Jun 2013

posted September 02, 2014 04:35 PM

I would also be pleased with buttons on the tv set and not only on the remote control. Sometimes I cannot find it anymore for a while, some times the batteries are empty and so on.

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Dominique

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Ken Finch
Jedi Master Film Handler

Posts: 543
From: Herne Bay, Kent. U.K.
Registered: Oct 2011

posted September 10, 2014 02:45 PM

My biggest gripe with flat screen TVs is the appalling quality of the sound. You pay all this money for it and then have to fork out more to improve the sound. The old cathode ray models were noted for the excellent sound quality even in the days of 405 lines.
Ken Finch.

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John Hourigan
Master Film Handler

Posts: 301
From: Colorado U.S.A.
Registered: Sep 2003

posted September 10, 2014 11:00 PM

Similar to my biggest gripe about the sound quality on Super 8 prints -- I could never understand shelling out a lot of money for a new Super 8 print, only then to shell out even more money to rerecord the sound (???). In my view, a new (expensive) print should be damn-near perfect, both print- and sound-wise.

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