Entering the big screen world

I've thought about getting a big screen tv for months but not obsessively - it's been easy to talk myself back out of it. Then we did dinner & a movie at my brother's so he could show off his monstrously big new tv. Mine looked so much smaller than before after that. And then the replacement for my stolen tax refund check (a story for another day) came in the mail.

So I bought one last night. It was delivered this morning. After work, I tackled the connections -- cable box, Tivo, and DVD.

Unfortunately, I also swapped my cable box today for the HDTV version, and it lacks the serial port that the digital box had. Without the serial port, the only other option for communication between Tivo and cable is IR...ugh! (Slow and only works sometimes.)

Off to Fry's. Surely there's a serial-to-USB adapter (because the cable box does have a USB port). Well, Fry's had the adapter but the serial end is male. So is the connector. So I hunted for a gender changer. Finally found a female serial gender changer (is Fry's known for terrible floor service or is it just our store where they hide from the customers?). Get home...damn, forgot to count the pins. The connector is 9-pin, the gender changer is 15.

Back to Fry's tomorrow.

Oh, and only now do I discover that Tivo can't handle HDTV. Could have kept my old cable box. (Hmmm, that's a solution...return the HDTV box...)

posted by Schaz @ 9/20/2005 08:49:00 PM