End of analog TV

No, I am very happy with Knoppmyth. My wife and kids use it as a playback device for downloaded files, DVD's, etc.

I added an old Packard Bell serial remote control.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm@mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM

Oh I see! I thought it was just easier for the TV to get its timing from the mains frequency.

Don't you mean "Never Twice the Same Color"?

Why on earth not? Mind you it would more likely be our thieving BBC chasing after them for not paying the license fee...

A very slow flicker?

Oh I dunno - look at that stupid region encoding rubbish!

CloneDVD removes it though :-)

--
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A lady come home and caught her husband in the act of cheating on her.
The rural housewife went to the back of the house and returned with the family\'s
.22 caliber rifle.  
Aiming the weapon at her husband\'s balls she said, "I\'m gonna turn a bull into a
steer, Jon!"
"No no!" pleaded Jon.  "Not like this!  C\'mon, Judi, give me a sporting chance,
darlin\'!"
"All right.  I will.  You can set \'em to swinging . . . "

they're on. And I can skip adverts and pause.

What?

--

There is a Space Shuttle mission to the moon with 2 monkeys and a woman on board. The control centre in the US calls: "Monkey number 1, Monkey number 1 to the television screen." He sits down and he is told to release the pressure in compartment 1, increase the temperature in engine 4 and to release oxygen to the reactors. So the monkey does the pressure, temperature, and releases the oxygen. A few moments later the control centre calls again: "Monkey number 2, monkey number 2 to the television screen." He sits down and he is told to add Carbon Dioxide to room 4, to stop the fuelinjectionto engine 3, to add nitrogen to the fuel compartment and to analyse the solar radiation. So the monkey does the carbon dioxide, the fuel injection, the nitrogen and the analysis of solar radiation. A little later on, headquarters calls again: "Woman, woman please approach the screen." She sits down and just as she is about to be told what to do she says..... "I know I know!! Feed the monkeys, don't touch anything."

when they're on. And I can skip adverts and pause.

I don't bother. There are so many films on the "free" channels, I don't need to pay for film channels anyway.

--

There is a Space Shuttle mission to the moon with 2 monkeys and a woman on board. The control centre in the US calls: "Monkey number 1, Monkey number 1 to the television screen." He sits down and he is told to release the pressure in compartment 1, increase the temperature in engine 4 and to release oxygen to the reactors. So the monkey does the pressure, temperature, and releases the oxygen. A few moments later the control centre calls again: "Monkey number 2, monkey number 2 to the television screen." He sits down and he is told to add Carbon Dioxide to room 4, to stop the fuelinjectionto engine 3, to add nitrogen to the fuel compartment and to analyse the solar radiation. So the monkey does the carbon dioxide, the fuel injection, the nitrogen and the analysis of solar radiation. A little later on, headquarters calls again: "Woman, woman please approach the screen." She sits down and just as she is about to be told what to do she says..... "I know I know!! Feed the monkeys, don't touch anything."

The problem with that is in the late 1940's there wasn't a "grid" as we know it today. Power throught the US, or England, Scotland and Wales was provided by unconnected generating stations they were not synced.

When did the UK standardize on 240 volts, 50 Hz? I know at one time there were 5 different systems in London alone and I thought that it persisted past WWII.

That's one of the nicknames the system was given because slight phase variations caused by any number of things shifted colors, mostly twoard green.

Beats me, but it was gthe way people thought in the 1950's. Off topic, that's why the GSM system uses SIM cards. You could drive your French rental car to the German border, take out your SIM, walk across the border and pop your SIM into the phone in your German rental car, and still get your calls. When it was designed, cell phones could not be taken across borders and there may have been problems with bringing rental cars too.

It's more than a flicker, the audio looses sync.

That's something that is optional for the program producers. I have seen commercial DVD's that were not region encoded, and others that were multi zone, for example UK, EU, Russia, South Africa and Austrailia. Just about any country that uses PAL, and a few SECAM ones too.

It's completely ignored here.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm@mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM

It wasn't rounding error, it was done to keep the difference between the

4.5 MHz nominal (no modulation) sound carrier frequency and the color subcarrier frequency an odd multiple of half the horizontal frequency to mimimze video artifacts.

The color subcarrier frequency (227.5*H) is defined in terms of the horizontal frequency, likewise the vertical (H/525), So it was easier to shift these than to change the sound demodulators in the ten million or so black and white sets that already existed. The horizontal rate was set to 4.5 MHz/286, setting the beat that was causing the trouble (286*H

- 227.5*H) to a frequency where the moire effects on the picture were minimized. (At a frequency that's an odd multiple of .5 the horizontal rate, you end up with the beat showing up as a checkerboard pattern. That's also why the color subcarrier is an odd multiple of .5H)

They simplified the math in the FCC regulations, I had to go back to the issue of _The Proceedings of the IRE_ from 1954(?) (that introduced NTSC color), to find the paper that described the reasoning behind this.

Mark Zenier snipped-for-privacy@eskimo.com Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)

And some mobiles won't take sim cards from other mobile companies! Crazy!

90% of DVDs I've seen have region encoding. The 10% weren't full box office films.

Still, the region encoding (along with the non-fastforwardable (what a stupid idea) copyright notice and various company logos), and the CSS protection, can be sliced off quite easily with the right software.

--
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During the weekly Lamaze class, the instructor emphasized the importance of
exercise, hinting strongly that husbands need to get out and start walking with
their wives.
From the back of the room one expectant father inquired, "Would it be okay if
she carries a bag of golf clubs while she walks?"

Per Peter Hucker:

A freebie analog of Tivo. Runs under Linux.

*Definitely* not plug-and-play... and I'd pay an hundred/two hundred bucks for something commercial that's more user-friendly

- but I'm warming up to it.

--
PeteCresswell

Per Geoffrey S. Mendelson:

I'm in the process of trying to get what is probably the same remote working. The lirc files are getting the best of me though....

--
PeteCresswell

I'll pay my bucks to Gates to get a proper OS.

--
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People who live in glass houses should fuck in the basement.

I thought they weren't allowed to do Unix !

--
Best Regards:
                     Baron.

Per Peter Hucker:

Been there done that. XP Pro is my bread-and-butter OS.

Have you found something like Tivo that runs under XP?

My agenda is getting ready for the digital switchover.

I spend a couple days fooling around with Microsoft Media Center, (the XP Pro version) but gave up on it and re-formatted my drive and re-installed XP Pro.

My take on Linux so far is that one either needs to devote themselves to it as if it were a serious hobby or, if they just want a tool to get things done; one needs a good support team.

I don't see Linux as something that the average user can just install and use like they can Windows XP.

--
PeteCresswell

A friend of mine has been doing it for years. He has had little or no success. He was using ATI cards and they don't do all of the functions at all of the resolutions. :-(

Try Knoppmyth. It's a packaging of MythTV under Knoppix, and the guy that does it is far better at it than the author of MythTV.

Last I read, the author of Knoppmyth was hired by Microsoft to provide them with the same level of function and useability that KnoppMyth had. Part of the deal was that he could spend a portion of his work time on KnoppMyth.

I think that was their logic too. KnoppMyth is a fun thing to use and work with, but it's not as easy as Microsoft would like their products to be. While it would be possible with a decent product to have PVR functions in Windows, and millions of people use them, no matter how good a job you do with a Linux based product it will never be more than a fringe product.

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm@mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM

I use a TV to watch TV.

--
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A blonde was playing Trivial Pursuit one night. It was her turn. She rolled the
dice and she Landed on Science & Nature.
Her question was "If you are in a vacuum and someone calls your name, can you
hear it?"
She thought for a time and then asked, "Is it on or off?"

You misspelled "poorly designed and excuted hack, incorporating over 25 years of mistakes piled on top of mistakes piled on top of mistakes, ad nauseum."

--
  Roger Blake
  (Subtract 10s for email. "Google Groups" messages killfiled due to spam.)

Per Peter Hucker:

That one flew right over my head.

--
PeteCresswell

Among other things, it's *ad nauseam*.

Agreed. But it's still preferable to anything else.

If they took all those profits and ploughed them into their software, I wonder where we'd be today?

--

The pretty teacher was concerned with one of her eleven-year-old pupils. Taking him aside after class one day, she asked, "George, why has your school work been so poor lately?" "I'm in love," the boy replied. Holding back an urge to smile, she asked, "With who?" "With you," he said. "But George," she said gently, "don't you see how silly that is? It's true that I would like a husband of my own someday. But I don't want a child." "Oh, don't worry," the boy said reassuringly, "I'll use a rubber."

TVs must not be used as projectile weapons.

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Never dive into deep concrete.