3 posts tagged “gadgets”
My Redeye Remote Thingy arrived yesterday, less than a day after I'd ordered it. It connected up easily and doesn't actually look as incongrous as it does in the photo. So, as a result, the HDD recorder can now change channels on the cable box. Which is all very exciting.
Guide+ is all looking very good too. It now lists all of the channels that we get from ntl. It hasn't filled in the details for the cable channels yet as you need to leave the box tuned to ITV (I still can't get used to calling it ITV1) overnight and what discerning TV ever wants his cable box tuned to ITV?
But the data it has for the terrestrial channel all looks good. And you can set up a recording just by pointing at a programme's name and pressing a button. It also has search and "favourite programme" functions which I assume means that I can, for example, ask it to look for anything with Doctor Who in the title on any channel. Not sure if it can be set to record it automatically. I'll be investigating in more depth over the weekend.
All in all, this recorder is intergrating with my existing system far better that I hoped it would. So far, I'm very happy with it.
Last night I bought myself a new toy. It's a JVC DR MH300 DVD recorder with hard disk. So finally we've dragged ourselves into the digital era and can stop recording TV programs on videotape.
It was easy enough to get it set up with my TV and cable box and I successfully recorded a couple of programmes to the hard disk last night. Also overnight the Guide Plus system kicked in and downloaded programme details for the next few days. Unfortunately, it only did that for the terrestrial channels, but I think I've worked out how to get it to work with the cable channels too - I'll test that overnight.
It also has a little infrared thingy that should be able to change channels on the cable box. But it seems that my cable box uses an obscure old infrared protocol so I need to buy an adapter from these people before that will work properly.
All in all it looks like a great investment. I wish I'd bought one years ago. But, of course, they've only recently dropped in price to a reasonable level.
...to see which way the wind blows.
The British are, of course, traditionary obsessed with the weather. One of my earliest memories is of the barometer in my Gran's house. It had all sorts of dials and metres on it and reading it generally seemed to involve tapping it a lot and then guessing. Apparently there was some black art whereby measuring the air pressure and knowing whether it was rising or falling enabled you to predict the weather with similar accuracy to the guesswork of the TV weathermen (it was always men back then).
But these days the weather is so much more interesting than it was back then. Now we're deeply into a cycle of climate change and pretty much anything goes. So these days, you don't just need a barometer. No what you need is a Weather Station. None of that tedious tapping the mercury and guessing. No, the Weather Station will measure the temperature and atmospheric pressure for you (both indoors and out, thanks to the remote wireless sensor) and will then guess at the weather forecast for you. And if you're too lazy to get up and look at the readings, you can even shout at it and it will tell you the forecast (albeit in a rather annoying American accent).
I bought mine from Ebay and it arrived yesterday. It's lots of fun.
