My television woes are not yet over.

I thought I could just ignore it, but it’s bugging the crap out of me.

Lines that should be displayed as parallel on the TV are not parallel. For example, when I’m watching a widescreen movie, the black bars at the top and bottom of the TV are not horizontal, nor are they parallel. In a very slightly exaggerated style, it looks sort of like this:

I’m sure this is an artifact of the “purity alignment” it underwent, and I did try to ignore it, but I can’t - I bought the extended warranty specifically for a case like this, and as far as I’m concerned, they’ll keep fixing it until I don’t see a single impurity in that picture, like the day I bought it. All I know is that while I’m watching a widescreen movie on there, or looking through the digital cable guide (which lays out the menus using horizontal and vertical lines, none of which are straight), I can’t see anything but the fact these lines aren’t straight, square, and parallel. And it eats at me.

I’ve been working on tracking down different assemblies’ strong naming information this morning and I’ve decided that sn -T [assemblyname] is a big pain in the rear, so I threw together an app I’m sure is out there plentifully already yet I couldn’t be bothered to search for. If it’s out there, great. If it’s not, here you go.

This utility is a simple Windows forms app that allows you to drag a .NET assembly onto it and view the strong name information about it. You can copy/paste any of the information directly, plus I even threw in a little thing that will generate a sample binding redirect you can put in your app.config file.

I wouldn’t want them to just put this in the properties on the assembly or anything.

Download SNInfo 1.1.0.0725

Download SNInfo 1.1.0.0725 source

Version History:

• 1.1.0.0725:
  • Converted to .NET 2.0.
  • Added binding redirect generation (for easy copy/paste of binding redirect configuration).
• 1.0.2.1101:
  • Added main menu bar (thanks to James McShane for pushing this one over to me).
• 1.0.1.0:
  • First release.

I hadn’t heard back from the TV repair people on when they’d be scheduling my repair, so I just now called them.

Tuesday, February 15. Over a week from now.

Last time I pinged them earlier in the morning on Monday and they got to me in three days. Now it’s eight. Next time (if there is a next time), I’m calling every 15 minutes first thing Monday to get in.

So I wait. Hopefully the picture distortion won’t just drive me absolutely buggy in the meantime.

I’m not a big fan of the SUV. Between the fact that most of the people who own them never go offroad, never haul anything, and don’t know how to drive and/or park them, and the fact that they consume natural resources like they’re going out of style, I believe the SUV is the largest atrocity ever to saunter slowly down the freeway.

To that end, here’s an excellent educational article for you: Are Small Cars A Threat To SUV Drivers?

The television repairman, Jon, fixed my TV today around 11:30a or so. The problem I was seeing was some color distortion in the bottom corners of the set. It looked like some sort of magnetic disturbance, but there was nothing near that area of the case, so I couldn’t figure it out.

Jon said he’s seen this a lot. The deal is, the tube in my TV (being a 40” tube) is large enough to be affected by geomagnetic forces (i.e., the North Magnetic Pole). Which means if you place it, it gets used to facing a particular direction and the forces in a particular location. When we moved to the new place, the moving process, coupled with the fact that the TV isn’t oriented precisely the direction it used to be, caused the “purity” (as Jon calls it) to go out of alignment.

Jon did the “purity alignment” by silicone gluing some small magnets to the tube. It was a trial-and-error process, and you can’t get it 100% perfect, but it’s fixed enough now that you don’t see any distortion in the picture.

I would never have conceived that the Earth’s magnetism would affect my TV. Definitely not something they tell you in the store.

He told me lots of interesting things about TVs and such. For example, DLP (digital light processing) TVs on the assembly line can be aligned/configured via a computer-driven sensor array in about 10 - 15 seconds. My TV, being a large tube, must be aligned by a human, and each human only gets about 30 seconds to do that alignment. He also told me that manufacturers are moving away from CRT (tube) TVs and toward LCD and DLP (rear-projection) TVs. Finally, he recommended looking at the Samsung DLP TVs, particularly their 50” model, as those offer the most bang for your buck (they use the same internal components as the Mitsubishi TVs but have less troubles and are, in some cases, consumer-serivceable).

Not that I want to be buying a new TV in the near future, but if and when the time comes, I’ll have to give those a look.