I guess this must be my New Year's Resolution

[dreamshark]

Anyway, I started working on it just before New Year's and I continue to slug away at it. I'm trying to bring my home electronic environment into the 21st Century. This involves a number of sub-goals:

1) Acquire a laptop and figure out how to use it. Check.
2) Get a working wireless network up in the house (so the laptop will be useful). Check
3) Figure out how to log in to work from home, using the laptop (I don't want to use my main computer for that). Check.
4) Replace the antiquated heap of interconnected TV-related equipment with a single TV that will still work after analog TV goes away and show a High Definition picture when appropriate. Check
5) Figure out how to record incoming TV shows on the new equipment (and play them back) Check.
6) Figure out how to record HIGH-DEF TV shows on the new equipment. [haven't tried burning a DVD yet].
7) Figure out how to burn VHS tapes to DVD [new player should do that, but haven't tried it yet]
8) Figure out a way to watch streaming video from Netflix on new TV [under investigation]
9) Call Qwest and get my DSL speed upgraded (so streaming video makes sense). [not yet]
10) Sort the old electronics into piles of stuff that works and stuff that doesn't [working on it]
11) Get rid of the stuff that I don't need anymore, whether working or non-working.  [dependent on #10]
12) Burn all the old VHS tapes that we still care about to DVD.  [not yet]
13) Give away or sell the old VHS tapes.  [dependent on #12]
14) Clean and rearrange the office and the attic in accordance with the New Regime [in progress].

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Let's coordinate or nudge each other about putting together a "dump" run to get rid of old computer junk around the house. There's a county drop off; it might charge.

K.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

After I get through #10, sure.

I'm slightly more interested in figuring out what to do with the stuff that works. I think I'm going to end up with two excess working DVD players, two working VCR players and a large pile of beautifully packaged commercial VHS tapes (many suitable for children). That's in addition to other items in the pile of old electronics that have been in the attic for a while. Working 15" monitors, for instance. Some poor child that can't afford a flat screen monitor might want one of those. Nobody else probably does, however.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Kid-related old tech? I'd say Michael K is the go-to guy there. If he doesn't want it, he probably knows someone who does.

K.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I don't have the foggiest clue of a faintest notion about burning VHS tapes to DVD. What piece of equipment does that?

[carbonel]

To burn VHS tapes to DVD, you need a DVD recorder. I believe these come in two flavors: a straight DVD recorder, which is essentially the DVD equivalent of a VCR; or a DVD recorder with editing capabilities.

The latter is essentially a TiVo without the brain. In addition to the DVD portion of the machine, there's a honking big hard drive where you can record shows (or whatever) to. Once material is on said hard drive, you can play with it -- cut out commercials, mostly, but whatever else you want.

And then you can take any sort of aggregation of stuff on that hard drive and burn it to a DVD. Sometimes a show is in two parts (shown on two different nights, for example), and you can use the editing feature to shove those two parts together to a DVD that runs as one long chunk of time. Or you can create a DVD that has several shows on it with a top-level menu that lets you choose which show you want to watch from the menu.

Does this make any sense?

So, to burn a VHS tape to DVD, if you have the first sort of DVD burner, you just connect your DVD burner to the VCR, start your VCR playing the tape, and hit Record on the DVD burner. No editing, quick and dirty.

If you want fancier, and you have the second type of DVD burner, you connect the DVD recorder to the VCR, but you put it in the mode where you record to the hard drive, then play the tape. Now you have a digital version of your tape, and you can edit it if you want. You can also choose the quality of recording that you want to put it on the DVD -- it maxes out at six hours, but you get better video quality at the two-hour speed (just like videotape).

The upside of the second method is that you have considerably more control. The downside is that it takes rather more time, since you have to play the videotape in real time, then dub it from the hard drive to the DVD, which is also generally in real time. (My DVD recorder has a high-speed mode, but it doesn't ever seem to be usable for what I want to do.)

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

"I don't have the foggiest clue of a faintest notion about burning VHS tapes to DVD. What piece of equipment does that?"

Something like this.

There are other brands, but this is the one I got (thanks to laurel for the link to Amazon).

Note that this device also contains an HDTV digital tuner,which makes it possible to record incoming TV signals to either VHS tape (which I have tried, successfully) or to DVD (which I have not tried yet). VHS is what I would probably use for throwaway shows like the latest episode of Survivor, especially since we have a whole box of VHS scratch tapes (I had no idea we had so many!!!). If I were recording something to keep I'd probably burn it to DVD, especially if it's being broadcast in High Def.

[carbonel]

I'm not sure if you saw my reply to your post -- it seems to have shown up one level higher than it should have. Just in case, it's here.

[carbonel]

In order to do #8, you need a $99 gadget from Netflix, plus a high-speed connection from the Internet to said gadget.

I'm saved from having to decide whether I want to spring for the gadget by the fact that I don't have an Internet connection in the living room. I do have wireless in my house (and the gadget appears to support wi-fi), but I don't think the quality is high enough for streaming video.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Or you could connect a computer directly to the TV and just play the movie right on the TV screen as a monitor. That's what I'm hoping to do, if I can get the screen resolutions to match up correctly.

I'm not sure what you mean by "if the quality is high enough." If the signal is unreliable it might cause a problem. But the main factor controlling the quality of streaming Netflix video seems to be the speed of the downlink to your house, which is almost certainly slower than your in-house wireless. My wireless network runs at 54Mbps, which is about 100 times faster than my DSL service (see #9 on my list).

[carbonel]

Or you could connect a computer directly to the TV and just play the movie right on the TV screen as a monitor. That's what I'm hoping to do, if I can get the screen resolutions to match up correctly.

I suppose so, if you have a spare computer. Seems like overkill, though. And I think you might need an adapter to go from computer video to TV video. At which point $99 for the gizmo to do it the way Netflix had in mind might not look so bad. But if anyone can make it work, I expect you can.

I'm not sure what you mean by "if the quality is high enough."

Well, my wireless works for streaming audio, but I wasn't entirely clear if it would work for streaming video.

[ambertatge.livejournal.com]

I'm impressed that you got so much done already mom. Everything will be different next time I come back. Are you going to have to reteach dad how to work everything?

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

Actually, he's doing pretty good with it. It's actually less complicated than it was before - only two devices instead of four.