Hell To Pay

Friday's song was Bottom's Up from Van Halen. No one even guessed. Oh well...

Today's song might be a little tougher, unless you've seen Road House.

My big excitement for the weekend was getting my new DirecTV High Def DVR. Now I can record HD shows in HD and even pause live TV. It does not, however, make the Academy Awards show go any faster.

After finishing off all the tv shows we had recorded on our old standard definition tivo box I had to quickly reroute a couple coax lines before the installer showed up (he was coming between 1 and 5). I also had to hook up a 5x8 multiswitch that would allow me to take 4 satellite inputs and 1 antenna input and route the signals to 8 different devices. Once I got all that done I hooked up the old HD receiver we had to our 26" JVC HD LCD tv in the bedroom. I ended up being ready for the installer by 1:00. He showed up at 3:30... That's when I screwed up.

I told him "this will be simple, just have to hook up the new box and turn it on." Fatal mistake. One of the satellite tuners couldn't get a signal, which meant bad coax somewhere along the line. First, I realized the line I was using to carry the antenna and satellite signal together (you can do this and separate the signals again using a diplexer) was RG-59, not RG-6, which can't carry both signals. Ok, we switched so that the 2nd line did that instead. Oops, no signal on that line. Down to the basement, replace connectors, still nothing. Turned out to be the coax coming from the wall to the box. Replaced, and everything was ok.

So, I thought. Now, I have a very, very week antenna signal (for picking up the local HD channels over the air). I used to have a direct line for that and now I was trying to use the multiswitch and diplexer method. Ok, I tried taking it out of the switch and combine it with one of the outputs using a diplexer in the basement. Better, but still iffy. Not like I had before. Only one solution, run another line. Before heading to my brother's on Saturday evening I stopped and picked up another 100' of coax. Sunday morning I got up and ran that line and everything is back to normal. Only downside is that now I only have that antenna signal in the living room, which means no HD local channels in the bedroom, just the local channels coming from the dish. Oh well, don't watch that much tv in there anyway and by mid next year all the local channels will be available in HD over the dish so I'll be able to get rid of the antenna then.

Spent a few hours working on the basement project in the afternoon while we got another couple inches of snow. I am soooo done with winter. Supposed to be 50's by the end of the week. I hope that's the end of it.

No hockey last night (bye week) so I watched the Oscars with Cdubya. Not too bad, John Stewart was fairly funny. What was with the montages? They must have had a half dozen different ones. I didn't even know what they were for. It was almost like they just said "in order to ensure the show runs a half hour late we will show you clips from old movies." Even Stewart said that they had actually run out of clips and if anyone had some more to please send them in.

Have a good week