HDTV Arrives

Second time lucky or something like that.

I was scheduled for a visit from the folk as at DirecTV Saturday morning between 8 and noon. Noon came and went and no one had shown up. Around 1 PM or so I called them. Now DirecTV is franchised out so the people at the 800 number are not the actual people doing the house calls. My guy at DirecTV puts me on hold and calls the local company in charge. Before this he reconfirms all of my information. There’s a lot of back and forth. The person locally is checking with her dispatcher. Then my guy comes back and asks well was there someone at the house all the time during the morning. I lost it at that point. I said in no uncertain terms that I’d been at the house the entire day and this was the second time I’d waited on someone to get the job done. I’d gone so far to open my front door and leave the storm door closed that way there would be no question that someone was at home. Finally all three of us are on the same line and I’m told someone will there in 30 minutes or so.

I hang up and think I’ve been told that one before. About 10 minutes later I get a call from the person who’s going to do the installation and he says (with a mouth full of food) he’ll be there in 5 minutes. And five minutes later they did indeed show up. They actually had a ladder that was long enough to reach the roof. Half an hour later I had HDTV. Yeah.

Well yes and no. I still have the old receiver which I’m pretty sure they were supposed to take with them. The remote that came with the HD receiver only partially works. I can access all of the menus and change channels but I can’t change the volume or turn the set on or off. There is a way to program the remote. I tried that but HP is not listed as one of the 162 televisions. Harely-Davidson is but not Hewlett Packard. Go figure. Thankfully the old remote will do everything so for the time being I’m using that one.

My DVD recorder now only plays DVDs and is not set up to record anything. The installers didn’t set that up or surround sound for watching the TV. I’m still trying to figure out where all the wires and cords go. This should be wayyyyyy simpler. The technology of plugging things has not changes all that much. I hooked up my new DVD player which has the HDMI connection which is supposed to boost the video signal of DVD to make them look like they are in HD. I tried it on one movie but really didn’t notice that much of a difference. They I tried it on another one and there was a noticeable difference. I did get an error message about some wrong audio signal coming from some where and to check on that. My problem is I’m not sure what device the error message came from.

As to the picture quality of the very few stations that are broadcast in HD, it is amazing. I watched a basketball game and it felt you were actually there. It looks like someone could step out of the screen into your living room or you could walk into the set and be on the court. I'm looking forward to seeing what the Super Bowl will be like with it.