HDTV is here

HDTV is here now at only $200.00, but there is some drawbacks. You have to do your watching on your computer, you must and I can’t stress this point enough, a very good UHF antenna with a amplifier in the line. You must have to have a very fast computer and a large hard drive. You need to have a full head of hair as you will pull most of it out before you get it working the way it should. This is no exaggeration; I had 16 hours invested before I got it working correctly. Don’t expect any help from the manufacture. I emailed ATI customer service and their response was a canned prerecorded email that was no help at all. I had to upgrade the motherboard drivers, the video drivers, and download the software from ATI that was suppose to be included on the install CD. I also had to download Direct-X 9.0 from Microsoft. It is a good thing I have a broadband Internet connection, as I would still be waiting on the software to be downloaded if I were on a dial-up.

I can’t wait till I can watch the Sunday NASCAR race on it. I am sure it will look a lot better in HD TV. By the way this PCI card will not work with cable or satellite, it will only receive over the air programming that comes from UHF signals. This is not too much of a drawback though, as 9, 5, 12, 19, 48, 52, 64, and some that I have not figured out where they are coming from. Channel 48 has about 5 or so and some others has 2 to 5 to watch. PBS is by far the one with the best programming.

Here is the moral of the story. Do not run out and lay down your hard earned money for this ad on card unless you have a week or two (may be never) to get it working. Figure on upgrading your UHF TV antenna and lead-in, also you will most likely have to buy a pre-amp unless you live close to the transmitting tower. A TV antenna rotor may be on your shopping list also. This was a fun project for me. I love a challenge when it comes to state of the art computer gadgets like this, but I think you would throw your hands up and quit before you have it working. I learned that I am not going to shell out $1000.00 or more for a HDTV for the living room till I have to.

More Google is Cool

As you know I'm a big fan of the search engine Google.
More Google is a nifty little ad-on to the OE browser.
The below text is from the More Google Web Page.

Why MoreGoogle is cool even though it's not from Google! :-)
See page preview thumbnails
"Open in New Window" Button
Not a Toolbar, saves screen real estate cool!
Live Amazon.com product information
Get accurate site access statistics
Retrieve older versions of a site
Find more related web sites
It's free :-) (as in "free beer" and "no spyware")
Read more about MoreGoogle in the help pages.
Get it here:
http://www.moregoogle.com/

Versailles Pumpkin Show

The Little town of Versailles, Indiana is located in the Southeast of the state where not much happens and I suppose the people that live there like it that way. One thing that does happen each year in the cool late fall days of September is a homecoming event called the Pumpkin Show.

This event has been ongoing for the past 102 years and seems to grow larger each Fall. I did a search with Google and came up with very few facts concerning the past history of the event. Perhaps I can look up some information and do a page on it in the future.

I did take a few photos this year and decided to put them on a Web Page so all could see.

Check out the photos to see if you are in any, if you did not attend, see what you have missed. See the page at http://wb9otx.com/parade

DVDs are a bargan

I’ve found that most people do not need a DVD read/write drive in their computer, as you do not have that much data to store at one time. Think about it, 4.7 GB is a lot of storage.

Now if you are into full-length movies from your TV, or you want to copy all of those VHS tapes onto DVD and may be you have a camcorder then you will need blank DVD media. The draw back of DVDs just a few months ago was the price. Now with dual layer DVD media just around the corner single layer discs have dropped in price seems like just overnight. Just a few months ago I purchased 100 for $100.00 plus shipping and this was a good deal. Now if you shop around you can get them now for 25 cents or less each, shipped free no less.

Here is one company that has some great deals on DVD +R and -Rs:
http://www.shop4tech.com/user.htm?go=view_cata&s_cata=88
Look on the left of the page for the type you need. This is just one page I found, but there are lots of companies with good prices.

DVD set top recorders are dropping in price very quickly and they are so much better than the old standard VHS recorder that we all have on top of our TV now. If your old VHS unit is wearing out, think of replacing it with a new DVD recorder, you won’t be sorry.

OE Address Printing

If you store all your important phone numbers and such in your Outlook Express address book, you may want to have access to it when you are sitting at your computer. If this is the case, you do have the option of printing the contents of your Outlook Express address book. You can print the entire address book or only information for selected contacts.

Open Outlook Express.
From the Tools menu, click Address Book.
From the File menu, click Print. If you want to print selected entries, use the CTRL button and click the contacts you want to print.
Then you can click File > Print.
Select the print style you want, and click the Print button.
There are three different print styles you can choose from when printing your address book: memo, business card, and phone list. The memo print style will print more information as opposed to the business card style. The phone list style will simply print contact names and phone numbers.