A Collision of Technology
Tuesday, 14 August 2012 01:42![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dr_phil_physicsUpgrade
So back in February I mentioned that we had to get a new TV, a 32" Sony 720p HDTV (DW). As noted then, installing the TV was pretty easy.
One oddity was having hooked it up to our old DVD player, where it had only one option for viewing which spread the image full width. But the aspect ratio wasn't quite right. Close, but not perfect. Despite how good the only analog channels looked on the TV, the DVD experience was not as good. Nothing wrong with the player, only the software in how it was rendered on the new TV.
The first time I saw a movie on Blu-Ray was in one of the ballrooms at WindyCon a couple of years ago. They had a player that could do both Blu-Ray and that other system which hadn't yet lost out, and projected with one of the newfangled Texas Instruments movie mirror chips on a big screen. I think that's when I saw Eragon. The image quality was impressive.
Fast forward to 2012 and I looked up Blu-Ray DVD players on Amazon -- again going with Sony, because Bravia Sync will interlink the HDTV and Blu-Ray. Found a unit, but didn't order it. Then Mrs. Dr. Phil was playing with Hulu Plus on her Kindle Fire and I pointed out that there were models of Blu-Ray players with WiFi. Could have gotten a USB WiFi unit for $40 plus the Blu-Ray player, or pay only $20 more and get the model with WiFi built-in.
With some summer birthday money, we finally decided to order the unit and it came the other day, with an HDMI cable coming a few days later. Tonight we decided to hook the thing up. As expected, the Sonys talked to each other right away -- turn on one and the other one comes on as needed.
Trying to input the WiFi password using the remote is a pain. But... the unit has a USB port and it does connect to a standard 101-key keyboard. I've got things jiggered up in a typical Dr. Phil way, so the easy connect method didn't connect. But doing it the manual option got us connected. The unit has a web browser. As you can imagine, it's pretty limited. But it works. The photos from yesterday's blog entry look pretty good. (grin)
Put a DVD in and it looked good. Next test will involve streaming something from the Internet and seeing if the DSL can hold up. Will have to buy an actual Blu-Ray disk to check out that function. I hear that Hunger Games is coming out this weekend and I have a B&N gift card for just about that much, so...
Technology Creep
We're too cheap to be early adopters of new television technology and have been. We didn't get our first color TV until 1985 or '86, when the cable expanded in Laurium and they announced we were going to get WGN-Chicago. And that's when we bought our first VCR, to timeshift Cubs day games all summer long. Put off CD and DVD players for a long time. In fact our DVD player itself works fine, it's only because we have an HDTV that I was at all interested in getting a Blu-Ray player -- and we're not going to duplicate all our old movies. VCR works, too.
It's funny, because a SF writer I know recently dumped his VCR and all his VHS tapes -- and a Pioneer Laser Disc player and laser discs. Ah laser discs. I actually own a couple, because Physics educators were using laser disc players a lot and there were a couple of movies I wanted to show clips in class.
There's a part of me worried about the changeover in technology and the ability to eventually find players for many types of media. And I suppose eventually we'll run into the problem of too many things connecting to the WiFi all at once. Then there'll be another upgrade.(grin)
Dr. Phil
So back in February I mentioned that we had to get a new TV, a 32" Sony 720p HDTV (DW). As noted then, installing the TV was pretty easy.
One oddity was having hooked it up to our old DVD player, where it had only one option for viewing which spread the image full width. But the aspect ratio wasn't quite right. Close, but not perfect. Despite how good the only analog channels looked on the TV, the DVD experience was not as good. Nothing wrong with the player, only the software in how it was rendered on the new TV.
The first time I saw a movie on Blu-Ray was in one of the ballrooms at WindyCon a couple of years ago. They had a player that could do both Blu-Ray and that other system which hadn't yet lost out, and projected with one of the newfangled Texas Instruments movie mirror chips on a big screen. I think that's when I saw Eragon. The image quality was impressive.
Fast forward to 2012 and I looked up Blu-Ray DVD players on Amazon -- again going with Sony, because Bravia Sync will interlink the HDTV and Blu-Ray. Found a unit, but didn't order it. Then Mrs. Dr. Phil was playing with Hulu Plus on her Kindle Fire and I pointed out that there were models of Blu-Ray players with WiFi. Could have gotten a USB WiFi unit for $40 plus the Blu-Ray player, or pay only $20 more and get the model with WiFi built-in.
With some summer birthday money, we finally decided to order the unit and it came the other day, with an HDMI cable coming a few days later. Tonight we decided to hook the thing up. As expected, the Sonys talked to each other right away -- turn on one and the other one comes on as needed.
Trying to input the WiFi password using the remote is a pain. But... the unit has a USB port and it does connect to a standard 101-key keyboard. I've got things jiggered up in a typical Dr. Phil way, so the easy connect method didn't connect. But doing it the manual option got us connected. The unit has a web browser. As you can imagine, it's pretty limited. But it works. The photos from yesterday's blog entry look pretty good. (grin)
Put a DVD in and it looked good. Next test will involve streaming something from the Internet and seeing if the DSL can hold up. Will have to buy an actual Blu-Ray disk to check out that function. I hear that Hunger Games is coming out this weekend and I have a B&N gift card for just about that much, so...
Technology Creep
We're too cheap to be early adopters of new television technology and have been. We didn't get our first color TV until 1985 or '86, when the cable expanded in Laurium and they announced we were going to get WGN-Chicago. And that's when we bought our first VCR, to timeshift Cubs day games all summer long. Put off CD and DVD players for a long time. In fact our DVD player itself works fine, it's only because we have an HDTV that I was at all interested in getting a Blu-Ray player -- and we're not going to duplicate all our old movies. VCR works, too.
It's funny, because a SF writer I know recently dumped his VCR and all his VHS tapes -- and a Pioneer Laser Disc player and laser discs. Ah laser discs. I actually own a couple, because Physics educators were using laser disc players a lot and there were a couple of movies I wanted to show clips in class.
There's a part of me worried about the changeover in technology and the ability to eventually find players for many types of media. And I suppose eventually we'll run into the problem of too many things connecting to the WiFi all at once. Then there'll be another upgrade.(grin)
Dr. Phil
