I’m having a hell of a time with the electronics at my house lately.
Jenn’s iPod has been having trouble syncing with the latest
iTunes. Last
Tuesday my Xbox gave me the Red Ring of
Death. This
weekend, my DVD player stopped reading discs and I encountered this
awesome Windows Update issue where it pegs the processor at 100% for an
indeterminate amount of
time. Oh, and I think the
connections for the center channel and the left rear channel on my
receiver are going wonky.
Freaking awesome.
I’m starting to wonder if I’m coming upon that time where all of the
warranties are failing or something - sort of like the seven minute
conversation
lull, but
for electronics warranties.
There are a couple of positives to this, actually.
First, I picked up one of those DVD/VCR combos where the DVD is a
recorder and can dub from VHS. (It also does high-def upconversion on
both the DVD and VCR.) This is really cool because it allows me to take
some of the videotapes we have of home movies and out-of-print stuff and
convert to DVD. Tried it with my copy of The
Maxx and
it worked like a mad bandit. It also means one set of cables for two
components - no longer do I need separate TV or receiver inputs for the
DVD and the VCR. Very cool.
Second, it’s giving me an opportunity to re-evaluate a lot of things.
How the home theater is put together, for example. I have a lot of
interesting ideas we can put into place by reorganizing things and
moving older components that don’t get a lot of use to other rooms (the
CD player can move to a different room because we don’t use it much and
the DVD player can play CDs). I’m also looking at how much time we
really spent with the Xbox, and it’s a lot. While that thing is busted,
I’ve played my other consoles, read books, put puzzles together, watched
movies I’ve been wanting to watch for a while… It’s sort of crazy how
it’s become such a central part of what I do in the evenings and it
makes me wonder if that’s really how it is or if I just get lazy after
playing for a bit and could actually do all these other things even with
the Xbox around.
Xbox Support should be sending me a box to return my Xbox for repairs
sometime this week, hopefully by Wednesday. It’ll be up to 10 business
days before they send it back, then up to another five business days for
it to arrive, so we’re looking at nearly three weeks. Better make the
most of it!
Of course, it does sort of put a damper on some of my media center
plans, since I can’t very well set up a media center connected to an
Xbox without an Xbox.
Speaking of media center stuff, we were wandering around the mall this
weekend and meandered past the Apple store. They had some Apple
TVs on display and I showed Jenn how you
could navigate around and listen to your music and such that you get
from iTunes. (Unfortunately, it doesn’t really do all the stuff I need
it to, so it’s not an option, though a well-configured Mac Mini might
fit the bill. Anyway, I digress).
As we were looking at it, poking through the menus, Jenn turned and
asked, “Is this is what you want to do with our movies?”
“Yes,” I said. “I want to be able to navigate through, see the cover
art, select a movie to watch, and watch it, all without having to search
through the binders full of DVDs. This, right here, is precisely what
I’ve been trying to do.”
“Okay,” she said, “I get it now. That will be very cool.”
Breakthrough! I admit it was sort of hard to see the full effect when I
showed her during my test run with Windows XP Media Center in a virtual
machine over a wireless
network,
but I guess I assumed she was still getting the idea. Apparently not,
but now she gets it and is on board.
Sweet.
Sonofabitch.
First,
from the Gamerscore Blog, we find that this summer they’ll be releasing