hmmmm

Not much exciting going on. More anxious than ever. We just got back from visiting my Grandma, and dinner at the in-laws over the weekend. We had a good time at Grandma's; we got lots of pictures and stuff for our new house! (we don't have a house yet, but we want one, and are planning for it; more details will be available later). I learned something new this weekend: the new DVD/VCR combo units DO NOT have a TV tuner built in. That means you cannot record TV from them. You must connect it with composite. I suppose this is not a problem for Digital TV and DirectTV subscribers, however people like me and my Grandma who get our TV from the black coax line have issues. Luckily, my aunt's old VCR still has a good tuner, so I showed her how to pass the signal to her new VCR/DVD combo to record TV. I never thought that they would stop putting normal/analog TV tuners in VCRs. At this point, I'm really starting to think it is a conspiracy between the TV manufacturers, supported by the government to bolster the economy, to get people to buy more TVs. First (6 years ago) they have these crappy flat TVs, and only now are they starting to make good quality flat TVs with HD capabilities... But, they still have you by not making all the TVs 1080 lines... they sell 'em with less lines to confuse people and make them upgrade at a later time. Already the flat technology inherently will NEVER outpace the old CRT tubes in terms of viewing life, but they are still trying to slowly upgrade tvs with features just to keep people buying. It is like cell phones. And then there is February 2009.... the day analog TV will be executed (stop broadcasting). I still have hope that there may be a last hour reprive, and the switchover will be delayed; but analog tv will eventually go away. I still haven't seen these wonderful HDTV reception boxes for analog tvs...They'll probably want to sell them for more money than they should.

More about Digital TV Transition
http://www.dtv.gov/