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Jason Haslup
jason at haslup dot com

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Mon, 29 Sep 2003

More NBC Info
blog :: hdtv

More information on the digital feed from Butte that I've been receiving every now and then...

Got a couple emails from NBC Montana today, including one from their director of engineering which had all the good information. Their digital signal is, as I've seen, coming from Butte, but it's only being sent by a 500 Watt transmitter. Now, I don't claim to know much about that side of television, but 500 watts doesn't seem that big, so I'm kind of surprised that I'm receiving it in Bozeman.

Anyhow, Butte's digital station should be moving to high definition broadcasts by the end of this year, which is good news. But more importantly, Eagle Communications (licensee for NBC) has been pursuing a digital channel for their Bozeman broadcasts but they have to jump through some FCC hoops because of some low-power transmitter issues. I guess they weren't allocated a digital channel, but they're trying to get one. Then they need some other waiver, blah, blah, but he said he was optimistic and they should be broadcasting in digital for Bozeman in the spring!

That's awesome news for Bozeman... NBC and CBS have a great high definition lineup, including football on Sundays from CBS, and shows like Law and Order, and the West Wing from NBC.

In the meantime, I'm going to try out a long-range UHF-only antenna that I've read good things about. The ChannelMaster 4228 isn't all that huge of an antenna, so hopefully it won't look too bad up on the roof. Heck, compared with my internet dish, anything will look good...

In-line update... got another email from the engineering dude in regards to my antenna talk (I mentioned I was going to try a new antenna). Our local NBC has quickly leaped ahead as my favorite TV station!

He mentioned that my omni-directional antenna doesn't have any gain, so it's probably not doing a very good job. The more standard antenna (yagi type) with the elements at a 90 degree angle to the boom will do much better. Another interesting fact is that he said was that our PBS and CBS channels will be using VHF, not UHF, for their digital broadcasts. That kind of puts a damper on my choice of the ChannelMaster 4228 which is UHF-only. He did say, though, that I probably wouldn't need much of an antenna for those signals, so maybe I could keep the omni up and combine the two signals.

Ahh, sounds like fun! Ideally I'd like to find a good antenna locally so I can return it if it doesn't help... might have to make some runs to the stores tonight before ordering online...

Thu, 25 Sep 2003

Digital NBC!
blog :: hdtv

I sat down in front of the TV last night, looking forward to the season premier of The West Wing, but a bit sad because our NBC station here in Bozeman has just about the worst transmitter since the 60's. I've got a nice antenna on the roof (sticking up six feet, to boot... Mystique loves it), but NBC still comes in grainy, and it's even worse on the big screen because it stretches the poor quality.

Anyhow... the day before I had been checking out Titan TV which is a site that gives you a nice, customized tv guide, but more importantly, it knows what shows are in high definition. They also have a front-end to Antenna Web that shows what type of antenna you need to receive digital channels.

A little sidebar here... the FCC has mandated that stations switch to digital broadcasting by 2005 or 2006, I forget. But just because it's digital doesn't mean it's high definition... however, most production shows (such as the west wing) are moving to high definition. Local stuff will probably be standard definition for quite some time.

Back to the point... I saw on Titan TV that the Butte NBC station was listed as digital and already broadcasting in digital. It also listed the channel as 33 instead of its normal 6 or 42.

So, while The West Wing was rolling its starting credits, I set my HD receiver to channel 33 and had it search for a digital signal, not expecting one since I live in Bozeman, not Butte (and if you've been paying attention to my HDTV posts, Butte is the official market that the FCC requires be in digital, not Bozeman).

And of course you know what happened... channel 6.1 (digital stations use <channel>.<sub-channel> numbering) popped into my Sony receiver, and 'lo and behold, digital West Wing was being displayed on my TV.

I think I mentally lost it for a couple minutes... Mystique had to leave the room because of my child-like giddiness. I think she was embarrassed and thankful that only the dogs were in the room.

My excitement was tempered a bit when I realized that it wasn't in high definition, but the picture quality was near perfect for a standard definition broadcast. When compared with our crappy reception on channel 42, it was an impressive improvement.

So, within a month or so, our local CBS station will be up in true high definition, so the only stations left are ABC and PBS (we don't have a fox affiliate here, but they don't have any high definition yet, anyhow). What's interesting is that I'm not all the far behind Phoenix as far as digital stations go... they have a crappy CBS affiliate and won't get HD for a while. We've got a great CBS affiliate and a crappy ABC one, but we don't watch anything on ABC anyhow, so having CBS is great.

I, of course, tried to get the Butte ABC station, and even tried the CBS station (which wasn't listed as broadcasting), but neither came in last night. Antenna Web recommends that I get an 88-inch antenna and stick it up on my roof... I'll try to sneak that by Mystique, but even with that I'm not sure I'd get Butte's ABC. My little powered radio shack deal (which looks like a UFO on our roof but is only 14 inches in diameter) is doing a good job with NBC, so I imagine it'll be fine for CBS.

That's it... now I just need HD Tivo and we're all set... Hi, my name is Jason, and I'm a TV tech junkie...

Mon, 15 Sep 2003

Down for a bit
blog

My weather site is down for a bit... we're going through some server issues at the haslup hosting complex (our house). I decided to re-do my linux boxes and all of a sudden that involved a new power supply. Not sure how it happened, but buster, which was slated for my main file/web/db/everything server, won't power up. And of course I forgot to transfer my database files off of buster before he died, so now I'm stuck without weather.

So that's on order... I'm hoping to get the database files off the drives tonight or tomorrow night, so I might get some sort of weather back up and running soon. Until I do that, all my other installs are on hold because I was moving disks from one system to another... I don't know which physical disk the database files are on, so I'm stuck.

It's getting cooler here in Montana... you'll just have to trust me on that until I get the server back up. Had some snow on the mountains already, so pretty soon it'll be lots of fun. I feel a lot of indoor projects headed my way...

Sun, 07 Sep 2003

HDTV vs DVD
blog :: hdtv

Why am I so jazzed about HDTV?
Here's why. One of the best comparisons I've seen... and that's a DVD! You don't want to see comparisons of normal TV vs. HDTV!

Tue, 02 Sep 2003

Three professions...
blog :: starwars

My man Kagy is turning out to be a jack of all trades... here's the story:

For some reason, I decided to pick up the Medic novice skills... I guess to make Kagy's camps one-stop-shopping. So if anyone actually happened upon one of my camps, I could not only provide them the comfort of a lawn chair, cot, and warmth from my fire, I could also perform healing miracles and patch them back up. How's that for service?

So I picked up that skill (it only costs 100 credits to try out new novice skills), and all of a sudden I could heal people. Cool. Then I decided that since I could do it, I should make stimpacks. A stimpack is a healing tool so instead of wasting my energy healing people, I could give them this pack and they could heal themselves. I figured it'd be a nice way to make some extra money, as well.

Of course in order to create a stimpack, you need some raw materials. Unfortunately, my scout skills aren't attuned to steel ore embedded in the ground. For that I needed Surveying skills. How to get those surveying skills...

Pick up the Artisan novice class! Which I did, and now I can not only survey the land for ore and various other goodies, I can make various pieces of clothing, and I'm a talented chef, to boot!

Part of my success is due to someone teaching me a whole boatload of skills for free... up until this past weekend, I thought I always had to pay an NPC 1000 credits to learn skills after I had gained enough skill points. But that's not the case -- it seems like anyone can teach anyone else a skill once they've mastered it.

So on Saturday night a nice fellow was sitting in my camp (I was healing some nasty Goort wounds for him), and he offered to teach me some skills. This was great because I was able to learn a bunch of skills that I couldn't afford (at the time). So all of a sudden I was on level two of all my scout skills, had picked up cooking I already (don't know how -- I've never cooked a thing), and gained some generic exploration level. Oh yeah, I can speak wookie, plus some other languages, as well. That guy rocked.

I've also been selling a bunch of stuff on the bazaar's auctions... stimpacks seem to be a hot item, but every now and then I can still sell a Basic Camp Set fashioned by Kagy. Just last night I put up a kick-ass olive green headband that my man Kagy created. I thought it looked pretty snazzy on his head, but I figured I'd try to see if anyone would buy it for 45 credits. Heck, I can always make more. The headband does absolutely nothing, other than improve someone's appearance. And since my man Kagy is bald and has rather large ears, I think tonight I'll be making a second headband to keep.

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