If you had told me that I would be going out shopping at 6:00 a.m. on Black Friday, I would have concluded that you were on your way to have your concussion diagnosed.
But there I was. Linda correctly concluded I was in deep, tunnel-vision mode. :)
She stayed home in bed, and I headed 17 miles to the nearest Best Buy. Fortunately, I knew exactly what I wanted so, with some luck, it would be a quick trip.
Ah, no traffic, no crowd, and I was out of there in ten minutes.
I loaded the two flat screen TVs in the Jeep and headed home. I chose a Samsung 32-inch LED TV for our living room ($248), and a Samsung 22-inch LED TV for the bedroom ($200).
Back home, I uninstalled our old, heavy, 2005 TVs. With remotes and owners manuals, Steve helped me and we put them out with "Free" signs on them and they disappeared fairly quickly.
Around 10:00 a.m., the DirecTV guy showed up to install our new HD DVR and the other equipment necessary for "whole home" service. I thought he was just going to drop off equipment, but he said he couldn't do that - he had to do a complete install and make sure everything was working. Good thing I went ahead and got the new TVs.
Linda didn't want any part of being around for the installation, so she and Esther went to do laundry.
I had ordered a part (a Datastorm HD BOW Adapter Kit) to go on our internet satellite dish that would allow us to get high-def without having to purchase a whole new, separate TV satellite dish, but it hadn't arrived yet. So, to ensure everything was working, the tech set up a new manual dish in front of our rig.
I'm not sure where in the heck we're going to store that set-up for travel, but it was included as part of the free HD DVR upgrade.
The tech set up the system using a single-wire multi-switch (SWM) which allows programming to two tuners within the DVR using just one wire from the satellite dish.
So, we have our RG-6 coaxial cable from the dish into our living room TV cabinet. That is now connected to a splitter. One cable from the splitter is attached to a cable that is wired through the RV to a connection outlet in the bedroom TV cabinet.
Another cable goes from the splitter to a "Power Inserter" which is required for the SWM set-up. A cable then goes from the Power Inserter to the new living room HD DVR. The DVR is then connected to the TV via an HDMI cable.
So now we went from this TV ....
to this much lighter, much less bulky TV in our living room TV cabinet.
The actual screen size isn't much different, but we have a lot of storage space behind the TV (which we don't need). It also doesn't hide all the wires, but once we get it on a permanent mount, we'll take care of that issue.
In the bedroom, a cable is connected from the outlet in the cabinet to the new HD Receiver (not a DVR), and the HD Receiver is connected to the bedroom TV via an HDMI cable. Again, we went from the heavy little rascal on the right .....
to a much lighter-weight TV in the old tube TV space.
And since we just have an HD "receiver" in there instead of a DVR, we have lots more space on the shelf below the TV. Again, more storage space we don't need, and we have some wire management to do. :)
So, that's it. Before, we had two analog TVs and two DVRs each with a single wire coming in from the satellite dish. Everything was standard definition and we couldn't record a show and watch a different show at the same time as there were only two cables from the rooftop dish and one went to each separate DVR.
Now, we basically have the same set-up but with just one cable necessary from the dish to the DVR in the living room. However, we can now watch in high-def, we can record one show and watch another from both TVs; we can watch any recorded show on either TV; and we can start watching a recorded show in one room and continue watching where we left off in the other room.
We can record two shows at once, or record one show while watching a different live show from both rooms. The only thing we can't do that we could do before is pause and rewind a live show in the bedroom (since it is now only a receiver and not a DVR).
Okay, so the new set-up is pretty cool. But it will add $13 a month to our bill - $10 for HD and $3 for whole house. Guess we'd better start promoting the "Refer A Friend" promotion. :)
If you use the following link and sign up with DirecTV as a NEW customer, you will get $10 off your bill each month for 10 months and we will also get $10 off our bill for ten months.
Click Here To Sign Up For DirecTV and Save $100 Over Ten Months
Then once you are a customer, you can refer other friends and get $10 more off your bill each month for each new referral.
Okay, so now we just need two more things to finalize the upgrade. First, we need the part for the rooftop dish (SWM SL3-LNB) so we can install and test it to make sure we can use the automatic dish to get our DirecTV HD signal. Second, we have TV mounts on order so we can make sure the new TVs are properly secured in place during travel.
We are getting MOR/ryde Slide-out & Swivel Base Mounts. I was going to get mounts with articulating arms and mount the TVs to the side walls of the TV cabinets, but I didn't feel the cabinet walls were sturdy enough and didn't want to reinforce them. So, we opted for these mounts which I can mount directly to the heavy-duty pull-out shelves that are already there.
With the TVs and DirecTV equipment working properly, I attempted to re-connect our DVD/CD player (also ancient by today's standards). I had written down which color speaker wires from the surround sound went into which holes, but apparently I screwed that up. Oh well, we'll tackle that later.
Now, we haven't used our rooftop crank-up antenna for six years. Since we didn't have digital TVs and didn't have a converter box, there was no reason to use it the last couple of years. I was hoping I could just plug the cable into the TV and it would work, but it didn't. So, I might do some troubleshooting on that .... or, I might just leave it alone since we've been fine without it for so long. :)
It was sometime after 1:00 by the time I sorted through everything and cleaned up all the extra wires and cables we no longer needed. And Steve was getting antsy about playing golf. :)
So, we walked nine holes here at the Sands RV & Golf Resort. I played a little better than yesterday. It really is an easy course, but it is convenient and a good way to get back in the swing of things after a long layoff.
Back home, the tunnel vision continued. I re-programmed all our "favorite" channels and set up all of our season pass recordings and made sure the sports I wanted to record for the weekend was all set to record.
Then I joined Linda and Steve & Esther for happy hour. I have to say, that I'm pretty happy with the new upgrades. Cheers! :)
At happy hour, we decided to have a Thanksgiving dinner reprise for just the four of us. We had two turkey tenderloins that Steve and I grilled. Esther made a salad and brought cranberry sauce, and Linda got out the deviled eggs that were left over and heated up mashed potatoes and rolls.
Now we had the opportunity for that deeper-meaning of Thanksgiving I was hoping for. And the food tasted better without the prior day's chaos. :)
When we use the crank up TV antenna it is not unusual for me to forget to press the little button that turns on the amplifier from the antenna. It's on the plate where the antenna wire comes out of the sidewall. Hope this helps.
JC
Posted by: Jerry Criswell | Wednesday, November 28, 2012 at 04:42 PM
Ya know, I was wondering if you still had the old TVs and yet were going to get the new HD DVR. Welcome to the digital age! At least you waited until the equipment was a lot cheaper! As for your OTA antenna, check to make sure the amplifier is turned on. It should be in a cabinet near the TV and will have a little light on it when it's turned on. Good luck!
Posted by: Ron Westcott | Wednesday, November 28, 2012 at 05:52 PM
welcome to Direct TV...you're gonna love it, Jean & I have had the same system for over a year and it is awesome. You'll love the pause and rewind part as well..Have you heard about the new Excede Satellite Internet from Wild Blue? I also heard of a new satellite internet coming out next year from unused military satellites which is going to be cheap cheap. Got that tip from a Google rep.
Cheers, enjoy your Direct TV!!
Posted by: Greg Munoz | Wednesday, November 28, 2012 at 11:24 PM