The Tenuous Link

I've been up in the loft trying to point a TV aerial in the right direction. I assumed that putting a great big (cheap) aerial in the loft would be better than the (cheap) little set top thing I was using. I looked at where the TV installer man had pointed the one that we paid him to put up, and pointed it in the same direction. Disappointingly I still wasn't getting any picture at night time.

The tricky thing about digital TV is you can't just move the aerial around and watch how the picture changes because there is either a picture or there isn't one, so it's hard to pick the optimum spot. So I had a look about for a program to show the signal strength in to my computers TV card. Even though I have an AsusTEK LNA tuner, this download from Haupauge worked fine (on Windows Vista 64-bit version): ScanChannelsBDA_UK. I think the real homepage is here: http://nate.dynalias.net/ScanChannelsBDA/ScanChannelsBDA.html

I had to use options 2 (Scan channels with offset) for it to find the local channels, and then option 6 to show a continuous display of "Strength" and "Quality" for one of the multiplexes. Quality and Strength both went up and down as I moved about, and if I take the numbers at face value my signal strength is now twice what it was before, so hopefully I can rely on my PC to record late night TV for me now. When I read the Hauppauge web page it suggested higher numbers were better for signal strength, it seems for my AsusTEK card lower numbers indicate a stronger signal. The problem I have now is that although I've been getting a perfect 100% quality signal during the day the signal seems to disappear at night.

// posted by Steven @ 11:19 PM 0 comments

I want to buy a couple of new monitors. One will be used for a little bit of TV watching and PC work, the other for photo editing and PC work. I was going to get two the same, but it seems that it would be best to spend a bit extra on the one for the picture editing ...

Monitors that are designed for video and gaming currently give fast response times (5ms "black to black" and 2ms "grey to grey") and typically have at best a 170 degree horizontal viewing angle. Monitors designed for photo editing seem to be a bit brighter (450 Cd/m2), have slower response times (greater than 8ms), have 178 degree viewing angles and are more expensive.

The faster response times and narrower viewing angles indicate a panel based on Twisted Nematic (TN) liquid crystal technology, and these do not have the ability to display full 8 bit-per-pixel (aka 24 bit) colour. They are often quoted to have 6 bit-per-pixel colour resolution. That's not ideal for picture editing.

The viewing angle specs (horizontal and vertical) are important for 2 reasons:

1/ When you sit in front of the monitor the different parts of the screen will be at different angles to your eye. I noticed this when I tried to set the gamma correctly for my monitor - when the test patterns looked good in the middle of the screen they would look wrong at the top and bottom. If my monitor had a perfect 180 degree viewing angle then that wouldn't happen.

2/ Viewing angle seems to be the best way to distinguish the different panel types at dabs.co.uk. The other specs are either not always quoted, or don't necessarily distinguish the panel type in the monitor.

Apart from the extra cost of the photo editing monitor it's slightly annoying that the 1600x1050 resolution isn't available in a 22" size, only 20". But I guess I'll be able to look out of the window more easily :-)

Also textblog.anands.net/archives/11: recommends Eizo, Apple, NEC or Lacie brands for photo editing.

// posted by Steven @ 10:28 PM 0 comments

I want new speakers and I need to be able to mount them on wall brackets (because stands are likely to get knocked over in my house, and speakers don't usually sound as good as then could on shelves). Even a small speaker can get quite heavy and some designs seem to be quite deep so they will lever themselves off the wall or bend a bracket that is too small, but most most of the big brackets look ugly and look like they will have trouble gripping speakers with curved edges like the Wharfedale 9.1 or Kef Q1 speakers.

The B-Tech Aviball range of mounts looks perfect for me - it is pretty much hidden behind the speaker, and you can set the speaker in any position (so, it doesn't matter so much if you don't get the bracket on the wall dead straight).

As recommended by real people: avforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=673643 but watch out, because there is a suggestion that you have to buy two of these, they don't come in pairs. Something to check before you click "buy" :-)

So now I can buy a speaker that Em likes the colour of, not just one that fits the brackets that I already have. Maybe I can get one that sounds nice too!

Labels: blatant advert, speaker mount, surround sound

// posted by Steven @ 9:26 AM 0 comments