Cables, Computers and Televisions

I'm glad it was a rainy weekend, because I feel less guilt about spending most of my time indoors working with my new electronic equipment. Yesterday, I didn't accomplish all I had hoped to. On Saturday I planned to go to Fry's and buy a HDMI cable (or two) and a DVI to HDMI converter (to connect my Mac to my HDTV). I couldn't find the converter I wanted, but did buy a 10 foot HDMI cable. HDMI is the interface used to connect new high definition devices together, such as a DVD player and an HDTV. It carries both the HD video signal as well as the audio. I wanted to see if the picture on my new Sony HDTV would look better if I connected it to the cable box using HDMI instead of component (RGB - Red - Green - Blue). Well, this experiment failed. The picture on my TV was all red and very "posterized", for you Photoshop fans out there. After reading some posts on various audio/video forums, I found out that the HDMI port on my cable HD-DVR box is not supported by the cable company. However, some people have gotten the port to work. So I don't know if the problem is my box, HDMI cable or TV. I won't know without doing some more experiments. I'll leave that for next weekend.

Earlier in the day yesterday, I was sweeping my garage and when I went to move my camping chair, I couldn't because a coaxial cable had been strung through it. How on Earth did this happen? There is a cable splitter in the corner of the garage with four cables going out, one of which was put through my chair and then through the wall which I share with my neighbor. No cable person has been in my garage recently. All I can guess is that someone accessed the splitter through a plate that sits on the outside wall of my garage. They must have pushed the cable through and somehow it ended up between the supports of my chair. Last year sometime someone painted various lines on the pavement that lead to this plate, so it must have some importance. I wasn't able to remove the coaxial cable by hand, so I'll try using a pair of pliers. Doing so, I'll probably disconnect someones cable TV for a few minutes. Hopefully not mine.

Today I continued my computer upgrade by installing my new graphics card. It wasn't easy, because to get to the card slot inside the computer you have to remove a ventilation tube, held in my five screws. Once I got the new card installed, I turned on the computer which beeped at me like R2D2 and then shut off. How rude! Then I tried powering on my computer again and this time it sounded like a fan was broken. So I opened up the case again and found a wire had fallen against the CPU fan. So I pushed it away and that fixed the problem. My computer booted and I was able to install the new graphics drivers. I really can't tell a difference in the picture quality on my Dell monitor, but I haven't tried playing any games yet, not that I have any. This graphics card is a medium end card made for gamers. High end cards go for up to $500! Low end cards are closer to $100. The BFG Tech Nvidia GeForce 7950 GT card has 512MB of GDDR3 video RAM and runs at a speed of 565Mhz. What do all those numbers mean? The card is fast.

Since I'm connecting the card to my monitor using the DVI port, I'm now able to use this monitor with my old computer (using the VGA port), which I moved to underneath the desk. This freed up room on my other computer desk once I removed the monitor and keyboard. So I moved my printer to that spot, making more room overall on my desks. Also, I then connected my printer to my network (it was connected to my computer via USB) and installed the necessary drivers to print from my PC using the network. This also allowed me to use the printer from my Mac Book Pro once I installed the printer software on it. Luckily I found the Macintosh installation disk, one that I never thought I'd need.

One more advantage to all this rearranging of equipment, I have more wall space. You know what that means? Room for more action figures! I had several Xanders and Buffys waiting to be displayed. However, if I decide to move soon, this will all be for nothing, as I'll need to pack everything away and start over in a new, hopefully bigger, home.