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I get called to hook up audio/video stuff for family and friends quite often.Yesterday, my son's best friend called to say he had a new DVD/VHS deck and he wasn't sure how to hook it up. (I've been hooking stuff up for him since he roomed with my son at college in the mid-eighties). Then he called back to say he thought he had it. Then again to say he couldn't get TV sound through his stereo.
So I went out today so I could get him hooked up before the NASCAR Indy race started. He said he and his wife had been behind the stuff trying to hook it up but it wasn't quite right. Quite right? I found yellow video cord hooked into the DVD coax bitstream output, satellite video/audio output hooked into the VCR/DVD outputs,
numerous left/right errors, etc etc. I don't know how he even had a picture on the TV unless it was through the RF cable.So anyway I got him all hooked up right and in phase and he was shocked that he could even play CD's in the DVD player - instead of just in the Magnavox CD player I got for him in 1986!
Follow Ups:
...The number of connectors on the back of things has been increasing exponentially in recent years. It used to be just RF in and out on the back of VCRs Then we got red and white audio and composite yellow Video which suddenly on DVD players you need an separate RF modulator box if you are going to hook up to a TV with any age on it. Then the three component video connectors Green Blue and some other color I forget oh yah Red. Then a Coaxial connector in Orange for Digital output, not to mention the S-Video output for simulated S-video whatever that is. And that's just what's on the back of my $35 Cyberhome 300 DVD player!I haven't ordered up my HDTV digital cable box and I'm not exactly excited about doing so. I suspect that will connect somehow to the multipronged DVI connector on the back of the 46 inch Sony. But I've learned I'm already obsolete in the digital connector as the DVI is being replaced by an alternate interface called HDMI which Toshiba now uses. The Sony has a large panel that allows for 7 different video sources all with possibilities for errors.
In short, If I'm confused by the plethora of connectors resolutions and lord only knows what I can't imagine where the casual user is at this point. And we shouldn't be surprised if connections occasionally get made wrong
At some point the manufacurers are going to need to try to work to simplify all of this so that it doesnt take a EEE PhD to hook this stuff up. I can see where it's scaring off the casual user.
"At some point the manufacurers are going to need to try to work to simplify all of this so that it doesnt take a EEE PhD to hook this stuff up. I can see where it's scaring off the casual user."That's what HDMI is supposed to do in the future, daisy-chained from one component to the next, carrying all video and audio signals (all digital) on one cable. It is backward compatible with DVI-D (video signal only)
My sister is a prime example. She has a full surround system with a 56" or 60" TV, DVD, sub... etc. Yet, every time I go to her house (every time, serious) their VCR clock is blinking because they can't figure out how to do that!! When they bought their new receiver last year they called me to hook it up. The only thing I told her about that is with all the money they spent at the place the sales guy could come by once to hook up something for them.
Pam's comment is pretty much the way I explain it to people. Imagine the information trying to get from your DVD player to your TV. The info has to go from the "out" because it's going out.... to the input of the TV ... get it? It's now going in to your TV so you have to use the INPUT.... make sense?
Sometimes even really simplifying it doesn't work though and I just have to be the designated hooker upper.
Yes, and it drives me crazy. Most of my friends are single or divorced so they haven't got a hubby to pick on and they know I'm a science nut so I get to hook up their DVD players etc. for them. /_-I mean, it really isn't that hard.... just pretend you are standing inside of a piece of equipment and pretend you're the little gremlin in the box and just walk up or down the wires to where you want to go, but it is easier to call me than to switch on the extra neuron required to do it themselves.
...are of a certain age...they blame the fact that the labels on the inputs/outputs are too small to read. But...you know...the lettering does seem to be getting...er, smaller.Although I'm not technically, mechanically, or even scientifically inclined, I've been the official hooker-upper for friends (male and female) parents and boyfriends since my college days.
These are truly desperate people.
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