Digital telly... what a pain in the arse

[Steve]

...literally. I've just spent the last half an hour putting pain in my derriere by crouching behind the telly trying to sort the cabling out. See, in a non-techie household (my parents), technology doesn't advance all that quickly, so it was only at Christmas that a digibox was installed. It seems, however, that for me at least, the thing is more annoying than useful.

It all started with a new aeriel, installed months before the digibox, with an added signal booster for... well, fun I guess. Still, not my doing, and there's no signal without it.

Then comes the digibox, which needs coaxial run through so that when the users aren't feeling digitally minded they can watch classic analog on the TV. Then there's the SCART lead so you can actually watch digital telly.

Next we have the DVD player, which needs its own SCART lead, and bang, that's the two inputs on the telly used up.

Finally, and this is the clincher, is the VCR. That also needs coaxial input for the aerial signal, but joy of joys, the digibox and probably the sheer level of gain on the signal means that it cannot add its output to the carrier properly, and that means another SCART lead is needed to playback video at reasonable quality (luckily it just about records OK). Of course, that requires a SCART switch because I'm all out of inputs on the TV.

The outcome... four coaxial cables, three scart leads, a signal booster, a scart switch, and six power plugs... great!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I might go and tacticaly break a few devices so that they no longer need including in the wiring.

[kempez]

Ah yes the fun of parentals and home entertainment. My parents decided in their wisdom to get a DVD-RW for the lounge. Now their TV was top-notch and just about has the inputs. I ran the sky into the TV and DVD-RW and stuck the old VHS through the DVD-RW

Then came the "education" - showing them how to use the DVD-RW repeatedly for about 3months until they finally payed attention and got it *sighs*

Not content with this they then bought a 40" LCD TV. More switches than the starship enterprise and now they're really confused.

I just left them to it and nicked their really nice 32" Panasonic CRT

[Funkstar]

My parents realise they get confused easily, this is one reason they have waited for so long to get Freeview. I want to get them one of the new Panasonic all in one boxes. One that does DVD, DVD-R, HDD, Freeview and video along with a panasonic LCD TV (dad would like a plasma, but mum desn't want anything over 32". she doesn't like big screens)