I forgot to mention a great night out we had with Tony and Paul and Linda when we went to a newly opened Thai Restaurant here in Caloundra on Wednesday night. The prices were very reasonable and being BYO (Bring Your Own) alcohol the home brew made it an inexpensive night out. Food was good, the little restaurant was homely and the company excellent.
My package of bits and pieces which will allow me to connect three devices to my older flat screen TV arrived yesterday from China. As I have said in an earlier post a DVI to HDMI converter costs $18 at the local electrical parts store while one from China costs $4. I received and set up my HDMI switcher on Friday so I can now connect three electrical devices to the TV with the best possible connection method and switch between them using my remote control.
The three devices to be connected via the HDMI Switch will be a HD Set Top Box, the WD TV Media Player (used for playing downloaded movies) and Pay-TV. Our Pay TV provider is releasing an updated High Definition box in the next week or so and when we have a new one installed it will have a HDMI connection. We should have the new Pay-TV box installed before Christmas. The HDMI Switch came with its own remote control which worked spasmodically. It has three buttons, one for each HDMI input. We use an all in one remote control (Logitech Harmony 880) which allowed me to 'teach' it the three signals for each HDMI input and it works perfectly. You can see the installed HDMI Switch in the photo above left.Modern TV's have up to 4 HDMI inputs built in. Our older set only has one DVI input so I needed to purchase a couple of DVI to HDMI adapters as well as the HDMI switch.
I bought the stuff from DealExtreme. Its pricing is all in $US and the electrical plug connections are usually US. I have bought some cheap US to AU plug adapters. I was a bit peeved when this one turned up with a UK plug! It cost me $10 to buy a UK to AU converter from K-Mart which gobbled up some of my 'savings' I had made in buying overseas.
If I were doing it again I would probably buy the HDMI Switch via E-Bay as then the unit would come with an Aussie power plug.
Last night we watched Julie & Julia on the WD TV Media Player through the HDMI Switch connection. The picture quality was certainly improved on what we had previously experienced through the 'composite' (red, white and yellow connectors) connection.I am very pleased with the way it has all worked out. I would have been disappointed though if I had had to use the supplied remote control!
Now I am off to clean the pool and get ready for today's Computer Club. Trish is spending much of the day at the Caloundra Arts and Craft Market helping out. She has handmade some Christmas decorations which are for sale. If she sells some that will be great, if she doesn't sell anything it doesn't matter!
1 comment:
My daughter Julie and I went to see Julie & Julia at a theater on one of our trips to Abilene about six weeks ago. We both enjoyed it as Julia Child was well known on TV here with cooking shows even into her very old age. She usually just stood beside and talked and stirred a bit with a guest cook for her shows. She was just too old to really do the performing anymore. It was a good movie.
Post a Comment