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Always two things switching
Aug. 3rd, 2003 11:24 pmWe bought a DVD player this weekend.
Just a cheap one. I had talked to my dad on Friday, and he mentioned having looked at some under-$100 models at Sears. We'd priced a few out at A&B Sound a few weeks ago, so I knew that was pretty decent...and, just for icing, I still had a $50 Sears gift card from my uncle from Christmas. I had meant to use it a while ago, but it just never happened. We don't have a Sears that close by in Millwoods, so we have to drive to Southgate to use it.
We ended up with a compact model, I think it was an Electrohome, with few frills. It came to just under $100, which meant under $50 in real money(Merry Christmas!), and we even had a little box with a handle to carry it out of the store.
We tried to set it up that afternoon during Luke's nap. We cleared off a space on top of the entertainment centre, where previously our 2 VCR's had sat, but which had in the intervening months of course been overwhelmed by detritus--this is our house, after all, and we are slobs with children.
First obstacle was plugging it in. I had to go unplug the VCR's(where we had moved them downstairs, into a room whose cable outlet, if any, we have not yet found)and take their three-plug extension cord. I will try to snag a power bar from work on Tuesday; we supposedly had some extra after dumping some old equipment before the move.
Then, of course, hooking it up to the TV. Our TV, the new one my Dad got us for Christmas(when he could get it wholesale through the furniture store he was working at)is a 20" JVC model with a built-in VCR. And no plugs on the back, except for the cable. I eventually found them on the front, behind the little swing-out panel, whatever you call that. Apparently they're designed for connecting camcorders, so they put them conveniently at the front. You've got a VCR--why would you need to hook up a DVD?
There were also only two plugs, one for video and one for audio. The DVD manual, which was less than clear, seemed to imply that you just leave one of the audio plugs dangle. Whatever.
Then I was supposed to go to some "SETUP" screen. So I tried my damnedest to make the screen show up. I pressed the button on the remote, nothing happened. I could make the little tray go in and out with it, so I knew the remote was working. I flipped to Channel 2, then 3, then 4, on the TV, in case it was going in one of those, like a VCR. Nothing. I put in a music CD("1" by the Beatles, first that came to hand), and nothing. No response whatsoever. Thoroughly frustrated, I called it quits for the day.
Today, I decided that there must be some problem with the front-panel hookup, and I'd go out to Radio Shack and try to get an adapter so I could plug it into the cable. It might be a pain to have to switch the cable from the wall line to the DVD, but they might have a way to make that easier.
Instead I found a helpful Radio Shack employee(which may have been a first!)who told me that I just needed to find a special channel on my TV, possible called "A/V" or something, and then everything would work. He also recommended buying an adapter to merge my two audio lines into one.
So I brought that home, plugged it in, and still got no response. But I hadn't found the special channel yet. I vaguely recalled having seen that channel somewhere, though... I did everything I could to find it on the TV, even rescanning all the channels to see if it would find the DVD somehow. It did find three high-numbered channels which, for some reason, seemed to consist entirely of what looked like oscilloscope waveforms with HP logos on the corner of the screen. Not sure what those were about. No A/V channel; I think it was one of the VCR's that could do that.
So I flip through the DVD manual, and the TV manual, because I was pretty sure that the TV was the problem. Then I went to the JVC websites online...first the Canada one, and then jvc.com when that proved less than informative. And there I finally found out that the button called "INPUT" on the TV's remote, which was merely one of many buttons that I never used, would switch to the input on the front panel. I went and tried it, and SHAZAM! A little screen for the DVD player, with a SETUP menu that I could call up and everything.
Hallelujah! Another triumph of man over manual.
That done, of course we had to test it. The Beatles CD played just fine, but we had to get a movie. So after supper, we made a quick pass through Rogers and found out that "Phone Booth" was already out on video. Score! We took it home, and(after Simon finally fell asleep)watched it. No problems whatsoever, though I still can't really operate the remote by touch--I kept having to look back and forth when I was fast-forwarding or anything. But man, what a great "pause" image, for someone used to VHS!
Afterward, just to be complete, we turned on the "Director's Commentary" and watched the first scene again. Joel Schumacher seemed to be a bit uncomfortable doing his introductory spiel, but he loosened up a little bit after that. We didn't want to rewatch the whole movie, just with the commentary, but I thought the fact that they shot the whole thing in 10 days was pretty interesting.
The movie itself? I thought it was pretty good. As I've already said, I'm a big fan of "24", so I knew Kiefer Sutherland's voice intimately, even if you never saw him until the end. Maybe what happened was a little bit implausible, but it kept moving, and the tension just kept ratcheting upward, notch after notch, until the end. Colin Farrell did a great job, with almost all of the screen time, and Forest Whitaker was great as usual, too.
Just a side thought...Farrell's blonde wife was played by Radha Mitchell. I knew a girl named Radha growing up. Her father's name was Sukumar, and they were all Indian. (I've started using that now to mean "from India", since the "American Indian" meaning is passing out of vogue, and I've never been comfortable saying "East Indian", which should really be someone from the East Indies.) I guess her parents just liked the name. According to IMDB, she's Australian; no notes on the origin of her name. It also matches the titles of a lot of Indian-looking movies, and several Indian actors and actresses.
Anyway, yeah, good movie, and now we really have to get hold of Buffy Season 1. They had them on sale, not for rent, at Rogers. Which I suppose is not that surprising, because even 7 days is too short to watch an entire season of a show... Time to get in touch with our Buffyfan contacts, I guess...
Just a cheap one. I had talked to my dad on Friday, and he mentioned having looked at some under-$100 models at Sears. We'd priced a few out at A&B Sound a few weeks ago, so I knew that was pretty decent...and, just for icing, I still had a $50 Sears gift card from my uncle from Christmas. I had meant to use it a while ago, but it just never happened. We don't have a Sears that close by in Millwoods, so we have to drive to Southgate to use it.
We ended up with a compact model, I think it was an Electrohome, with few frills. It came to just under $100, which meant under $50 in real money(Merry Christmas!), and we even had a little box with a handle to carry it out of the store.
We tried to set it up that afternoon during Luke's nap. We cleared off a space on top of the entertainment centre, where previously our 2 VCR's had sat, but which had in the intervening months of course been overwhelmed by detritus--this is our house, after all, and we are slobs with children.
First obstacle was plugging it in. I had to go unplug the VCR's(where we had moved them downstairs, into a room whose cable outlet, if any, we have not yet found)and take their three-plug extension cord. I will try to snag a power bar from work on Tuesday; we supposedly had some extra after dumping some old equipment before the move.
Then, of course, hooking it up to the TV. Our TV, the new one my Dad got us for Christmas(when he could get it wholesale through the furniture store he was working at)is a 20" JVC model with a built-in VCR. And no plugs on the back, except for the cable. I eventually found them on the front, behind the little swing-out panel, whatever you call that. Apparently they're designed for connecting camcorders, so they put them conveniently at the front. You've got a VCR--why would you need to hook up a DVD?
There were also only two plugs, one for video and one for audio. The DVD manual, which was less than clear, seemed to imply that you just leave one of the audio plugs dangle. Whatever.
Then I was supposed to go to some "SETUP" screen. So I tried my damnedest to make the screen show up. I pressed the button on the remote, nothing happened. I could make the little tray go in and out with it, so I knew the remote was working. I flipped to Channel 2, then 3, then 4, on the TV, in case it was going in one of those, like a VCR. Nothing. I put in a music CD("1" by the Beatles, first that came to hand), and nothing. No response whatsoever. Thoroughly frustrated, I called it quits for the day.
Today, I decided that there must be some problem with the front-panel hookup, and I'd go out to Radio Shack and try to get an adapter so I could plug it into the cable. It might be a pain to have to switch the cable from the wall line to the DVD, but they might have a way to make that easier.
Instead I found a helpful Radio Shack employee(which may have been a first!)who told me that I just needed to find a special channel on my TV, possible called "A/V" or something, and then everything would work. He also recommended buying an adapter to merge my two audio lines into one.
So I brought that home, plugged it in, and still got no response. But I hadn't found the special channel yet. I vaguely recalled having seen that channel somewhere, though... I did everything I could to find it on the TV, even rescanning all the channels to see if it would find the DVD somehow. It did find three high-numbered channels which, for some reason, seemed to consist entirely of what looked like oscilloscope waveforms with HP logos on the corner of the screen. Not sure what those were about. No A/V channel; I think it was one of the VCR's that could do that.
So I flip through the DVD manual, and the TV manual, because I was pretty sure that the TV was the problem. Then I went to the JVC websites online...first the Canada one, and then jvc.com when that proved less than informative. And there I finally found out that the button called "INPUT" on the TV's remote, which was merely one of many buttons that I never used, would switch to the input on the front panel. I went and tried it, and SHAZAM! A little screen for the DVD player, with a SETUP menu that I could call up and everything.
Hallelujah! Another triumph of man over manual.
That done, of course we had to test it. The Beatles CD played just fine, but we had to get a movie. So after supper, we made a quick pass through Rogers and found out that "Phone Booth" was already out on video. Score! We took it home, and(after Simon finally fell asleep)watched it. No problems whatsoever, though I still can't really operate the remote by touch--I kept having to look back and forth when I was fast-forwarding or anything. But man, what a great "pause" image, for someone used to VHS!
Afterward, just to be complete, we turned on the "Director's Commentary" and watched the first scene again. Joel Schumacher seemed to be a bit uncomfortable doing his introductory spiel, but he loosened up a little bit after that. We didn't want to rewatch the whole movie, just with the commentary, but I thought the fact that they shot the whole thing in 10 days was pretty interesting.
The movie itself? I thought it was pretty good. As I've already said, I'm a big fan of "24", so I knew Kiefer Sutherland's voice intimately, even if you never saw him until the end. Maybe what happened was a little bit implausible, but it kept moving, and the tension just kept ratcheting upward, notch after notch, until the end. Colin Farrell did a great job, with almost all of the screen time, and Forest Whitaker was great as usual, too.
Just a side thought...Farrell's blonde wife was played by Radha Mitchell. I knew a girl named Radha growing up. Her father's name was Sukumar, and they were all Indian. (I've started using that now to mean "from India", since the "American Indian" meaning is passing out of vogue, and I've never been comfortable saying "East Indian", which should really be someone from the East Indies.) I guess her parents just liked the name. According to IMDB, she's Australian; no notes on the origin of her name. It also matches the titles of a lot of Indian-looking movies, and several Indian actors and actresses.
Anyway, yeah, good movie, and now we really have to get hold of Buffy Season 1. They had them on sale, not for rent, at Rogers. Which I suppose is not that surprising, because even 7 days is too short to watch an entire season of a show... Time to get in touch with our Buffyfan contacts, I guess...
