Monday, May 05, 2008
If I Ever Had Time to Watch TV ...
I've been messing around up in my loft putting in a TV aerial to use for a computer that I have with a TV card in. I decided to be fancy and get a log periodic aerial (they look like the Imperial Star Destroyer from the beginning of Star Wars, which is nice, and I thought it might be useful to have a wide-band aerial at some point in the future. Unfortunately when it's in my loft it doesn't seem to provide a much more reliable signal than the indoor aerial next to the PC that I was using before. The signal is usually OK during the daytime, but usually disappears at night. Wierd, and annoying.
I could get a bigger aerial, or one that is tuned for Group A channels (instead of wide-band), or put another aerial on the outside of the house, but if I'm going to any effort, then I might as well check out what the other options are. So Freeview (Digital Terrestrial TV), Freesat (Free-to-air digital TV from a satellite), or Freesat from Sky ("soft encrypted" and free-to-air channels from a satellite)? Where we live the local cable infrastructure isn't up to high definition digital or fast broadband, so I've crossed that off my list.
The BBC have a couple of overview articles which talk about the TV options and costs:
Currently terrestrial (normal) TV in the UK is a mix of analogue and digital broadcasts. By 2012 all of the analogue signals will be switched off, and in my area the digital transmission power increased 10 times, so option 1 is to wait 4 years and see if my aerial gets more reliable then.
That's interesting to know, but what isn't mentioned on the BBC website is that the bitrate (which pretty much determines the quality of the picture and sound) is much higher from satellite than Freeview, and it's the bitrates will be reduced even more on Freeview when the High Definition channels are squeezed in. So pictures from satellite are less blocky, and there are more "red button" extras like News 24 feeds.
- Bitrates: terrestrial vs satellite
- ITV regions all broadcast separately from satellite, and some have/had higher bitrates on Freeview?
- High definition: terestrial vs satellite
- Satellite dish overview
- Freesat vs Freesat from Sky
And almost bizaarly, here's an estimate of the energy usage including transmitter power for the different ways to watch TV!
Friday, May 02, 2008
Oddly Depressing
I'm clearing out some old boxes and throwing stuff away instead of putting it in the loft. I'm not sure if I'm unhappy about what I'm throwing away, or what I decided to keep.
Lots of old invoices and receipts are in the "burn" box. The earliest dabs.co.uk order that I spotted was from 1999. Lots of old install floppy disks are in the bin, and instructions for X-wing vs Tie Fighter (I never got through the training levels) are in the recycle bin. There's an AGP graphics card with built in (analogue) TV tuner that has to go somewhere. I wonder if there are working drivers for it yet, maybe someone on Freecycle wants to find out?
For some reason I can't bring myself to bin the unused heatsink for a slot-1 Celeron CPU. To lessen the blow, I've designated a WEE (Waste Electronic Equipment) box, and I'll stick the heatsink and graphics card in there with the masses of old ribbon cables, and CDRom sound cables, and take it to the dump when my inner-hoarder isn't looking.
Other things to go, a Nikon Coolpix880 camera. Very expensive 9 years ago, took very nice pictures of the solar eclipse in 2000, but seems unusably slow now. Minolta A1 camera that might have a dodgy CCD in. Epson printer, probably has blocked nozzles. I think I need a bigger WEE box.
