What a Cable

After my foray into streaming content to my HDTV, I was hooked, and wanted more. Not just in quality but in quantity as well. Clearly I needed a new cable.

After going through Amazon, I settled on one. It had a VGA connection on both ends, as well as a mini-RCA for the audio. It is 15 feet long, and was under $13 with the shipping figured in. These places often make the wire cheap and then overprice the shipping, so I just calculate the TCO = total cost of ownership, and this was still a good deal.

I hooked up the cable. Turns out that on the back of my HDTV, there is a dedicated audio out jack that goes with the VGA that I hadn't even noticed until I really got behind the TV set in the daylight hours.

While I had gotten this to work on Vista with no prob, with the Windows 7 upgrade, it was anything but simple. I had to seriously play around with the dual display settings, and also redo the resolution to something that my 720p HDTV didn't choke on. However, when it was done, I had high quality video, and full audio, and it was well worth the effort. For anyone who doesn't have a notebook with an HDMI out, a cable like I linked to below can get the job done.

Jonas

NudgeCast 12/23/08

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Adventures with an HDMI cable.

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NudgeCast 11/26/08

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Thoughts on Cablevision uptime, the zPhone, and an incredibly entertaining site.

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NudgeCast 11/20/08

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Thoughts on the new cable channel additions, a niche camera, and a website to watch, as well as an invitation.

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NudgeCast 11/11/08

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A trip to the local cable store to swap a box, and whatever happened to the Dash GPS unit.

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NudgeCast 10/27/08

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A recent cable difficulty, and thoughts about the latest Discovery show.  Also, a new "incredibly useful web site" that I can't get onto.

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NudgeCast 10/21/08

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My latest thoughts on the T-Mobile Android, and a cable rant.

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NudgeCast 10/8/08

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Stampede From Copper Phone Lines

Recently, the overwhelming customer service response I received from Verizon practically forced me to dump my phone company, and replace them with the local cable company, Optimum. While trading one giant provider for another is hardly that different, at least they were nicer, and communicated better. Apparently I'm not the only customer that "cut the copper:"

With features like unlimited domestic phone calls, cable companies have continued to take business away from rivals such as Verizon Communications Inc., which lost 3 million residential lines for traditional phone service in the first quarter, with total home lines down 11 percent from 2007. Verizon added 263,000 net new FiOS TV and 262,000 FiOS Internet subscribers.

Sure, they get a higher monthly fee from the Fios customers, but they lost ten times as many copper phone line customers. I'm sure my copper phone line account was quite profitable for Verizon as with cell phones, they get used less and less. It doesn't make any business sense to me to lose customers ten times faster than they can find new ones, and this while they're deploying Fios faster than they can run the cables.

While Verizon may have the better product from a technical standpoint, at the rate they're going, it's not going to matter. In the meantime, Optimum Voice, with all the features they throw in was a significant upgrade from my New York Telephone/ Nynex Verizon phone service that hadn't changed in the last three decades. Verizon is facing an uphill battle with their user base eroding, but they just haven't figured it out yet.

Jonas

NudgeCast 2/4/08

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Talk on the Microsoft/Yahoo deal. A thought on alternative digitalTV's. Fios vs. cable. Incredibly useful site: Lifehacker.