televisions

CDN_VT

Re: televisions

I took my Kill-a-watt & measure myself after I took the LED off store/display mode.
I bought a 40" samsung , 350.00 from wally world , many would'nt let me use the "tool" , had NO idea.
Next store, those yellow EPA power stickers are not even close as I figured after the day's lookin.
I got a good sample from a gent/salesman @ wally world that also wanted to know, got many readings , plaz=heaters & can be a fire hazard ,LED were the least , mine is 8W running , .03 off and it's not an instant screen when turned on.

VT

That with the new Digital antenna ,amp,rotater, I should get ET's signals now!

Ralph Day

Re: televisions

Good luck VT. The atmospherics play havoc with digital reception here. If it's clear and cold you can get lots of stations, cloudy and rainy you only get the line of site (close) tower signals. Sometimes if it's clear here, it's rainy there and the signals suck. No sense.

Before the Yanks pulled the analogue transmitters their digital signals were really strong too. Once the digital only date arrived the daily reception of digital stations dropped off to weather dependant status. I figure the transmission power level was dropped once we were all hooked on American programs .

I make do with watching less tv over the air than I used to.

Ralph

RandomJoe

Re: televisions

Telco wrote: »

What do you use for a projecting surface? This is something I'd like to do in my next house when I can wire everything needed into the ceiling during the build. And, how far from the wall does it have to be to project a 60 inch or so picture?

I went really cheap! Bought a couple "arctic white" bedsheets at Wal-Mart, stacked them on top of each other (the wall is painted a dark color) and tacked them up with push-pins! :cool: Went that way when I looked at "real" screens and had heart palpitations over the prices.

It isn't perfect - I have to smooth the ripples out now and then - but it sure is easy to clean my screen. Just pull the sheets down and stuff in the washer!

One major advantage arose a couple years later, when I got my cats. They are highly attracted to some things onscreen - especially the mouse cursor if using it as a computer monitor. They occasionally climb the screen! They ripped one of the sheets, but who cares. Put it on the bottom and continued on.

So the cats entertain me at times, and I don't worry about damaging an expensive screen!

Done again in the future, I think I too would put up smooth drywall and paint white. I've seen that in a number of places and it works just fine. I don't think I'd ever bother with a real screen - the cost is just too high. Although I suspect I'd need to hire someone to do the joint work, which would run my cost up some. I've never had much luck getting perfectly smooth, invisible drywall joints and they don't make a single drywall sheet large enough for my screen here.

Distance from the screen depends greatly on the lens in the projector. Some can do an incredible width in just a short distance. Mine is about 1:1, it's about as far from the wall as the picture is wide - maybe a bit farther.

Eric L

Re: televisions

An a somewhat related note, we replaced our DVR and satellite service a few months ago with a Roku ($59 at Amazon) and Amazon Prime streaming service ($79/year). Our program quality went way up (thousands of movies and programs, no commercials), while our t.v. bills went way down (from about $55/month for satellite to $79/year for Amazon Prime).

Power use measured by my kill-a-watt:

The Roku draws between 1.4 and 4.5 watts (oddly, the draw seems independent of whether you're using it); so around 60 watt-hours/day, if you leave it on at all times.

The DVR drew about 950 watt-hours a day. With a timer to shut it off at night it was still around 500wh/day.

Unfortunately, the Amazon Prime video service is only available in the US right now, but if you're in the States and have a 3Mbps or faster internet connection, it's really worth looking into. I'm very happy we changed over.

BB.

Re: televisions

The digital stations are now (as far as I know) all UHF frequency which are more line of site vs the old channel 2-13 of VHF.

Also, I see to notice that the new installations in our area have a more directional radiation pattern.

As they were converting from digital to analog, I had varying reception. Started out great for some stations, then when south (even though I was not that far from the main San Francisco Mt. Sutro tower)--And some came back strong again (temporary antenna in some cases while stripping and replacing main antenna).

Once my older analog TV dies--I probably too will be dropping my cheap cable TV plan (and saving a few bucks a month) as my over the air digital is clearer and has way more channels (and one or two cable only stations that even watch).

I am current using an ~$70 USB receiver for my laptop and it works great with DVR type functions too.

-Bill

inetdog

Re: televisions

BB. wrote: »

The digital stations are now (as far as I know) all UHF frequency which are more line of site vs the old channel 2-13 of VHF.
-Bill

Not completely true. The high end of the VHF TV band is still in use in some places.
You can get a very helpful view of the stations you may be able to see, their frequencies, and the location of their antennas (including temporary) at www.tvfool.com. This site takes into account detailed topography and the height of your antenna when mapping possible coverage. (It does not know about trees though!)

The new digital system does not use a fixed mapping between the channel number which shows up on your TV and the channel RF frequency. If you are in a marginal reception area, the information you get here can allow you to manually add channels to your set's tuner without having to find a time when the auto-scan can pick them all up at the same time.

BB.

Re: televisions

inetdog,

That link worked well for me... Pretty much I get everything in the green zone and none of the others.

I use a "bar" shaped antenna in my 2nd floor room and just rotate it on top of the stereo for reception (have to be pretty careful and point to within a couple degrees between works well and hardly working).

Could probably do better with an outside antenna on a rotor--but don't need one yet.

-Bill

ggunn

Re: televisions

On a side note, I just plain hate the way that digital TV responds to marginal signal strength as compared to analog. It looks like a bad science fiction movie.

Cariboocoot

Re: televisions

ggunn wrote: »

On a side note, I just plain hate the way that digital TV responds to marginal signal strength as compared to analog. It looks like a bad science fiction movie.

YES!
Instead of getting a slightly distorted version that your brain can actually make sense of you get a complete loss - frozen picture and no sound long enough to spoil the show.

I've solved the problem by getting rid of the TV service. No over-the-air channels here at all, but for the $70 per month the satellite TV was costing I can buy every movie and TV show I ever want and watch them on my schedule instead of 'theirs'.

Frankly I think the digital TV switch is a failure. More channels of poorer quality (both technical and aesthetic) which leads to further degradation of quality. Another example of "just because you can do something doesn't mean you should".

BB.

Re: televisions

In our area--The digital switch, on average, has been pretty good for me (right side of the hills in a major metro area).

We get a lot more channels. And, yes, most of them I do not watch. But there are couple channels where we get the old 50's and 60's black and white and early color TV shows (The Saint, etc.)--And it has been fun to watch (like the 5th channel on a Spanish language broadcaster).

But, things keep changing. Our "quirky" PBS station out of San Jose used to have a lot of SciFi stuff (Red Dwarf, etc.) but was taken over by the SF PBS station--And now we just get duplicate (boring) PBS shows on both (~7 channels of boring).

-Bill "getting old--the good old days" B.

ggunn

Re: televisions

Cariboocoot wrote: »

...another example of "just because you can do something doesn't mean you should".

Yes; it's what I call "The Jurassic Park Syndrome".

RadioGuy

Re: televisions

As part of the conversion from analog to digital TV they did move many channels to higher frequencies which are more line of sight. An additional part of this change is that they greatly reduced the output power of the transmitters. Since I have a self cleaning brain I don't exactly remember the numbers but it was something on the order of 100,000s of watts (some uhf transmitters put out over 1MW) down to 10,000s of watts. The reasoning was that you could get a perfectly clear picture (no snow) even with the lower power. Now you typically get it all or nothing at all. Ain't it wonderful how theory often doesn't meet reality (now you get cubes, broken up color blotches, delayed audio, etc).

As far as the discussion of LCD (actually CFL back lit) and LED back lit tvs go, I'm on board with the LED ones. The CFL units had to run the back light full on. The new LED technology is very interesting. There are a couple different versions (LEDs behind blocks on the screen and row of leds running down the sides. The REAL energy saver ones actually analyze the picture area the LED covers and adjust its brightness for the brightest element that it will be lighting. This saves a bunch of energy.

Being that I am attempting to go off grid in the not too distant future, and that I have someone living with me who, ahem, seems to like watching TV for 12 to 14hrs a day in the winter time I looked into this. I tried taking my kill-a-watt to the store but all I got was funny looks and no way were they going to let me check things out. I had to go by the energy star ratings to make my (un)educated guess.

My old 32" CFL LCD used 160w at full brightness and 94w at 30% brightness (where I always kept it). My new 32" LED uses 45w at full brightness and less than 30 (typically 25w or less) at medium economy mode. At full economy it can get down to less than 18w but the screen gets a bit dark at times. This is saving me a bunch of energy consumption to support at the worst time of the year and undoubtedly has already paid for itself ($350) in watt hour capacity that I will have to support.

CDN_VT

Re: televisions

My old CFL LCD TV was a 1999 Benq 36" .
Was the old digital but you cold get a Tan from it , im sure. Getting close to the screen , you could feel the heat.
Used 230 watt on , 45 watt off /standby.

Great post on the http://www.tvfool.com/ . inetdog / Fizzycist 8)

After I got all the new OTA TV stuff setup , tuning in was much quicker .
Our watching is for News , most of viewing of entertainment shows are streamed in using the cube PC.

We will see what the storm months bring us.

VT

inetdog

Re: televisions

CDN_VT wrote: »

Great post on the http://www.tvfool.com/ . inetdog / Fizzycist 8)
After I got all the new OTA TV stuff setup , tuning in was much quicker .
VT

It's the only way to go if you have to rotate the antenna between channels! I use an Armstrong rotator on my antenna. (The pole comes from the antenna on the roof all the way down to the ground where I leave a pair of vise-grip pliers attached to rotate the antenna and serve as a postion indicator. :-)

Cariboocoot

Re: televisions

inetdog wrote: »

It's the only way to go if you have to rotate the antenna between channels! I use an Armstrong rotator on my antenna. (The pole comes from the antenna on the roof all the way down to the ground where I leave a pair of vise-grip pliers attached to rotate the antenna and serve as a postion indicator. :-)

Oh wow: déjà vu. Or maybe déjà "view" .
I remember back in the '60's walking around the village of an evening looking to see who had the new and amazing antenna rotors for their aerials. A lot to go through for a choice of 3 channels. Six if you could get Buffalo's stations (channel 2 never came in well; low frequency and full of interference).

Rybren

Re: televisions

Cariboocoot wrote: »

Oh wow: déjà vu. Or maybe déjà "view" .
I remember back in the '60's walking around the village of an evening looking to see who had the new and amazing antenna rotors for their aerials. A lot to go through for a choice of 3 channels. Six if you could get Buffalo's stations (channel 2 never came in well; low frequency and full of interference).

Sounds like you might have been a Trawnto boy. I remember doing the same thing.

Cariboocoot

Re: televisions

Rybren wrote: »

Sounds like you might have been a Trawnto boy. I remember doing the same thing.

Worse than that: Raachester.
Couldn't get but ghosts of the Syracuse stations.
Reception was always best in the wee hours - just when the stations went off the air! Kids today don't have the joy of test patterns to look at around 5:00 AM.

BB.

Re: televisions

I remember Hight Flight when the stations would sign off:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoL-KCFbIpA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gillespie_Magee,_Jr.

"High Flight"

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air....

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace.
Where never lark, or even eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
- Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

-Bill

niel

Re: televisions

aw yes, our height of the cold war. it was a bit of our own government's pr (propaganda). enough said of this.

guys,
i love the slang terminology for the various cities. many here in pittsburgh long ago would call it picksburgh. not sure why though. it has been called worse and i won't put that in print here. now they save face by over simplifying it to just calling it, the burgh.

ggunn

Re: televisions

BB. wrote: »

I remember High Flight when the stations would sign off:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoL-KCFbIpA

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gillespie_Magee,_Jr.



-Bill

...and the home of the braaaaaave.... PSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSHSH...