HDTV Part 2

In our last episode, the TV and Tivo had been ordered and I was awaiting the glorious dawning of a new age of TV viewing. Well, some progress has been made so I figured I would fill you in on the state of HD at the Hudgins'. I'm not sure if I mentioned it back then but I actually bought the TV from Amazon.com. It's a little strange to think of buying a TV online - especially a TV that weighs 125 pounds - but I read review after review of how smoothly it went. Not to mention that shipping was free and I saved the sales tax that would have been tacked on if I purchased it locally.

I got a notice that the TV would be delivered on a Tuesday so I moved a vacation day I had planned for Monday to Tuesday so that I could be there to supervise the delivery. They were supposed to be there between 1 and 3 but actually showed up at 11. They brought it in, unpacked it, turned it on to make sure it worked and left - easy peasy. Now, due to chicken and egg issues, I still had only Standard Definition (SD) TV coming into the house. Basically, I couldn't have the cable company switch to HD until I actually had the new TV since the old TV wouldn't play it. Thus, the new HDTV could only display SD TV which actually looks worse on it than it does on a regular TV. It's like enlarging a low resolution photo - the bigger you make it, the crappier it looks. Anyway, it was still a nice big picture but I had to schedule the cable company to come out and install the HD cable service - and configure the new HD Tivo.

The new Tivo is actually kind of weird. Normally, when you get cable, you need a set top box from the cable company that connects to the cable from the wall, decodes the signal and then sends the output to the Tivo, which records the show and/or sends the show to the TV. With the new Tivo, the cable comes out of the wall and goes directly into the Tivo which then hooks up to the TV. The cable company has to come out and install "Cable Cards" into the Tivo that allow it to decode the digital/HD signal that comes from the wall. In the dreaded support forums, I had read countless tales of tribulation about how the cable cards don't work, the techs don't know how to install them, they have to keep coming back, blah, blah, blah. Needless to say as the installation day approached, I was pessimistic about how many tries this was going to take or whether it was going to work at all.

This feeling was not helped by the first words out of the mouth of the installer when I opened the door and reminded him that this was a Tivo install - "I hate Tivos" was all he said.

Well, there were a few moments when it looked like we would have problems but after about an hour or so, I was fully up and running in HD Tivo goodness.

Of course, the HD from the cable is only 720p (720 lines of resolution) and the TV is capable of handling 1080p. Currently, the only way to get 1080p video into the TV is through either HD DVD or Blu-Ray "DVD" players. Turns out that the Xbox game console is a "relatively" cheap way to get an HD DVD player and that was the next purchase. I had sold the other game consoles we had accumulated on eBay so that helped take some of the sting out of this addition. Well, I went to Circuit City to get the HD DVD drive (it's a separate part from the actual Xbox console) and they didn't have any. I stopped over at GameStop and they had a new one and a used one for $50 less. Hmm...

So I got the used drive home and went to hook it up to the console. Did you guess that there was a cable missing from the box? Of course you did. Now, I have so many USB cables laying around that I figured that I surely had one that I could use. I examined the ports and determined that I needed a USB male A to male A cable. No, I did not find one in my jumble of USB cables that come with every other piece of electronic gear. Hmm... I knew GameStop wouldn't have it so I didn't bother going back. I checked on line at Circuit City and Best Buy - nobody had these things! How can that be! I even *went* to Radio Shack. Not only did they not have it in the store, they didn't even have them in their catalog! WTF!

I finally found it online from some obscure web site with a warning that these cables are not normally used and may result in short circuits of the devices that they plug into. I swear I heard ominous music playing from that website as I clicked the "checkout" button...

A week later, the cable came in and I was all excited to hook up the player and watch my first HD DVD movie (I had bought Transformers back when I had bought the player and it had been sitting there, mocking me for cheaping out with the used player). So, I hooked everything up, turned on the Xbox and the player, and - it sat there politely telling me to "Please connect the HD DVD player to the Xbox Console". Yeah buddy, I *did* connect the player to the console. That's what that freaking cable that I just waited a week for is doing! If I would have purchased the Xbox Web Cam "To enhance your gaming and online experience" I could point it at the connection and maybe this stupid machine could "see" that it was connected. Unplug, replug, power on, power off. "Please connect the HD DVD player to the Xbox Console". Arrggh!

Well, I guess there was a reason that it was a used HD DVD player. I'd have to take it back to GameStop (and pay $50 more for the new one). Optimus Prime was now smirking at me from the cover of the Transformers DVD case I swear.

The next morining, I awoke thinking about the player and had a hunch. During my attempt at diagnosing the player problem, I noticed another connector on the back of the player. I hadn't thought much about it at the time since these things often have unused connectors that are "Reserved for Future Use" and I figured it was just that (since I didn't actually have a manual for the player, seeing as it was used...). Stop me if you know where this is going.

Come to think of it, that connector actually looks like a mini-USB connector - like the kind that you use to connect a digital camera to your computer. Yeah, like the 5 or so that I pushed out of the way looking for the USB male A male A cable that I didn't have. Really, just stop me if you know already.

So, I hooked up the cable (yes, one of the ones I'd had all along), and turned on the console. "Please conn... Your HD DVD player is now installed. Enjoy your movies."

After touching up the chip in the wall left by one, now useless, "USB male A male A cable", we fired up Transformers, which by now had actually peed it's pants (or whatever the hell they wear) it was laughing so hard, and basked in the glory of 1080 HD.

It really was quite impressive.