tumbledry

UHF

Last night, Mykala and I watched the Academy Awards in glorious high definition. During her eloquent acceptance speech, I did notice that Lupita Nyong’o’s elocution is so refined that if she were a violinist, my own speech would be that of a rubber band stretched around a kleenex box

“The gowns are really elaborate and beautiful this year,” said Mykala, “though I suppose we just couldn’t see them since the picture was so blurry before?”

This requires some explanation.

You see, our main tv was an old cathode ray RCA television wihch lasted from when Mykala got it from her parents in 2000, through her high school years, through dorms then apartments in college, through marriage, dental school for me, graduate school for Mykala, and then finally to this past July 8, when it began to exhibit what my expert diagnosis can only call “extreme dimness.” It was like you were looking at photographic slides with no backlight. We had to recycle it after a nearly 13-year run. Here’s how it looked at the end:

CRW_3329

That 27 inch diagonal screen required a depth of over two feet, which made for this giant uneven-weighted lunk of a thing that was quite hard to move. Though, who moves their TV much? We loved it: it was sturdy, reliable, and free. Resistant as I am to change, and sentimental as I tend to wax, it was therefore kind of sad to haul the old TV tube out the car, though we didn’t miss the input situation on the back:

CRW_3331

That is a single composite video input and a MONO audio input. Yep, 13 years, one speaker. Then there’s the coaxial input, too. That’s it. This thing also had a VHS player on the front which worked quite well; we watched Curly Sue on VHS as recently as 2012, I think. When you don’t know any higher quality, it’s all quite watchable. It just happened to be from late last century.

The tiny 19” LCD television we had upstairs came down to replace this huge thing, and though it was newer, it was worse in every way: terrible sound (I’d never heard stereo speakers sound worse than mono), dim weird colors, and 30% smaller picture. We used that for nine months until we moved last month.

The issue was that our new living room had a spot for a television, and when we put our TV there, it looked like this:

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I entertained the idea of continuing to use this teeny tiny television until I tried sitting at the couch 10 feet from the screen. Have you ever tried to watch a 19” screen from 10 feet away? I already was missing details in some movies when we were sitting 5 feet away, so I was sure I’d be missing entire plot points at 10 feet.

Sitting on that same couch a not long ago, Mykala pulled up the top rated inexpensive TV on The Wirecutter, and we bought the first television of our marriage. Folks, the future looks amazing! I’ve run out of superlatives to articulate how shocking it is to watch a modern flat screen television. It is huge and bright and accurate and contrasty and it makes me want to pull our every DVD from our tiny collection and re-watch it to see what exactly the filmakers intended when they shot it.

Of course, with a high definition television, you need high definition content. As I signed up for Comcast internet, I found that they were standing by, ready to charge us extra per room for each box that gave us their coveted high definition television signals.

However, two things kept us from shelling out the money to Comcast and accepting astonishingly awful equipment boogering up our new home in exchange for the privilege of paying exorbitant rates for packages of content of which we wanted only 5%. One, I had spent the past seven years storing a medium gain directional UHF antenna for terrestrial broadcast television for just this very situation. And two, I had also spent the past seven years nurturing a deep resentment at the requirement that I pay for a television signal that I knew was available for FREE and in high definition, simply requiring the right equipment to pluck out of the air and display on a television. Now was my chance!

I ruined a day and a half of Mykala’s life running up to the attic, puzzling things out, complaining about fiberglass insulation, and generally being horrible to be around while I tried to figure out how to get my antenna wired into the existing household RG-6 coaxial network. Eventually, I backed into a solution that involved sacrificing an upstairs coaxial outlet so I could tie the antenna into part of the coaxial wiring. I aimed the antenna to 317°N using Mykala’s iPhone, terminated the coaxial cables (after practicing not in the cold, dark, fiberglassy attic), removed the rat’s nest of splitters that previous installers had left, hooked it all up, and held my breath. Seven years of waiting, and I was running out of chances to show Mykala that free over the airwaves high definition tv actually had some advantages over Comcast “just pay us money for your problems to go away.”

It. Worked.

Around 28-33 channels of free high definition television, coming out of a cable in the wall, due to an antenna in the attic! Wahoo! $100s of dollars in savings per year, and we get better picture and more channels than when we were paying for it. Also, putting your antenna in your attic prevents the rather interesting problem of your-antenna-gets-struck-by-lightning and fries everything connected to it. Now, onwards to bigger things as we keep improving our house and moving in.

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Comments

John

Congratulations! I wish I had luck finding something like that in my attic. Nope just mold and mice, of course. I think half of those problems are fixed (I hope). For future reference, you get get bundled basic cable with high speed internet at the same price (they discount internet 10 bucks, but tack on 10 dollars for basic cable). You get the main network channels, no HD but most TVs do a good job making it look nice with the analog convertor boxes (that should not cost any extra money for equipment, per room, or lease fees). Just my experience. I miss regular cable HD but that’s what Blu-Rays and on-demand services are for!

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