> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of John Almberg > Sent: Saturday, November 08, 2008 3:38 PM > To: Ted Mittelstaedt > Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org > Subject: Re: Question on creating a video server > > > > On Nov 8, 2008, at 1:40 PM, Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: > > > Hi All, > > > > OK, I'm just asking for opinions here on some application > > software. > > > > Like most people we have a nice big 21" TV set that will be > > obsolete in Feb. I have been thinking about replacing this with a > > big screen TV set but the prices on them are still way, way > > way out of my budget (I just can't see spending $500 for > > a TV set, sorry!!!!) > > > > Why not just get a digital converter and keep using your nice TV?
I had considered that. Currently my 21" TV has an RF input only, no composite, no S-video. I'm feeding it from a VCR that does have composite input/RA jacks, but no S-video. I have a DVD player feeding the VCR with composite output/RCA. I have a Toshiba laptop that has a composite output & DVD player. I have used this to watch DVD's and also AVI files. The quality is noticably worse than watching them on the laptop LCD screen. Of course, sitting 8-9 feet away from the TV set that is hard to notice. I had originally thought in building the video server to just feed the VCR with composite output from a video card - in fact, I have a vga card in the video PC that has composite output. Then, buying one of the really cheap HDTV converters and feeding the composite output of that to the VCR - or maybe picking up a composite-input video switchbox. But then I started thinking about how ugly such a solution would be. Worse, the DVD player itself is getting old - it's an Apex - and I've had 2 other Apexes and both have failed due to old age, now. Also the VCR is getting old too. That is why I was thinking maybe just go with a cheap VGA monitor instead of a TV set, use a HDTV usb tuner, and get rid of the DVD player and the VCR. Really, the idea is that this isn't a permanent solution. Ultimately I am planning on going to a LCD tv set. This is just to tide me over for maybe a year. About the only thing that we actually watch on broadcast anymore is the Late Show with Jay Leno. And even that is very trying. The simple fact is that if there was a TV show that I'd like to watch, I'm no longer willing to sacrifice my time to commercials. For example, take Sara Conner Chronicles. We loved all the Terminator movies and I'd love to watch that TV show. But, we are going to wait until the entire TV show is finished, (most shows don't last more than 8-9 seasons) then we are going to wait until they release the entire run of shows in one large boxed DVD set. Then I'll watch it. Consider for example Babylon 5. We bought all 5 seasons of that in one fell swoop - $250 for the set I think it was. There's 110 episodes there. Each one when aired was an hour - with 20 minutes of commercials. That's 36 -hours- of commercials for the entire season and we aren't talking the movies. Well, I don't know about anyone else, but my time is worth a lot more than $6.94 an hour. ($250 / 36 hours) Now it is true we watched Bab-5 when it aired. But, that was a decade ago, we didn't have the option of paying to opt-out of commercials. And we also missed a few episodes anyway. Watching them nowadays, without the commercial interruptions, it's the way TV should be. Far more enjoyable way to spend some time. We are doing this with Star Trek Enterprise. Both my wife and I are ST fans and we tried watching Enterprise the first season. But we just couldn't do it. Having to deal with setting the timer on the VCR (since the air times were never convenient) was a pain to have to remember - as you know shows will go to repeats without warning in the middle of a season. And then watching the show and having to fast-forward through the commercials was an even greater pain - you just start getting into the story and it breaks for commercial. Well, neither my wife and I suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder where we need that commercial break to reboot our brains. It really ruined the stories. So we gave up and just waited. Eventually, as all things in life do, Enterprise ended. This Christmas we will get the boxed set and start watching it from the beginning. Also, more and more of the shows these days are on the web. If there's a show we want to watch, why would we want to watch it on network TV and suffer through all the commercials when we can just stream it off the same network's website -without- commercials? Take Saturday Night Live, well that's not a show I'd really want to bother archiving - it's really not classic TV - but it is sometimes fun to kill an hour watching it. The web is great for that. And once more, the 1 or 2 national commercials you might have to deal with watching the show over the Internet are far better than the local network affiliate which inserts a lot of really crappy commercials from local car dealers and whatnot. Anyway, I am a supporter of over-the-air broadcast TV, it was a great invention. I was born in '66 so I grew up pre-VCR and I remember how it was. I remember how everyone would plan their lives around the special TV shows, and how everyone the next day would be talking about a particular show. Remember Roots? I think a good case could be made that Barak Obama would not have existed as a politician if it hadn't been for Roots. Remember Shogun? Remember Centennial in '78 & '79? Unless you lived through those days you don't understand the effect on American culture that broadcast TV had. But, videotape changed everything. And today, I feel that the television networks really have nothing to offer beyond immediate things such as news, or sporting events, or election returns, or something like that. Ted _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
