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So where’s the scam? You can find the scam by going to any big box electronics retailer and looking in the cable aisle. There you will find HDMI cables priced as low as $25 or $30 (if not, definitely head toward your local discount retailer for better prices). But you will also find HDMI cables priced above $100. And if you talk to a sales person, he will definitely be steering you toward the most expensive model. That is the scam. You can understand the scam if you understand how an HDMI cable works and what it does.

Let’s begin by going back in history to the birth of really expensive cables. It started with speaker wire. When you connect a normal speaker to a normal stereo system, you are sending both a signal (in the form of an oscillating wave) and a lot of power (potentially hundreds of watts) through the speaker cable. Someone realized that to send a lot of power, a thick cable would cause less distortion. Thus, mega cables were born. And they were expensive.

But with an HDMI cable, you aren’t sending any oscillating analog waves, nor any power. What you are sending is a low-power digital signal. The digital signal is either on or off, and it is impossible to distort it without ruining it. The great thing about a digital signal is that, even if there is a little noise in the cable (and there always is, no matter how good the cable), the TV will clean it up when it interprets the digital signal. The whole beauty of moving to a digital world is that it eliminates distortion completely.

What this means to you is that there really is no such thing as a “better” HDMI cable. Either an HDMI cable works or it does not. If it doesn’t work, you will immediately know it. Your screen will freeze, or it will skip frames, or it will show big square blocks instead of a picture. It will be completely obvious that there is a problem. In that case you need to throw the cable away.

But if an HDMI cable is working correctly, your TV’s picture will look exactly the same no matter how much the cable costs. Paying more for a cable will have no effect on picture quality.

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by Stephen

End of an Era – TBS and the Braves

August 26, 2007 in Sports, Television by Stephen

I remember getting cable TV for the first time back in the early 1980s, and just about the best thing about it was being able to watch the Braves play practically every game. I know I can still see the Braves lots of other places now, but it always just felt “right” watching them on TBS.

When Ted Turner purchased the Atlanta Braves in 1976, one of the few things he knew about baseball was the fact that it would provide nightly programming for his television station WTCG — which appropriately stood for Watch This Channel Grow.
Turner’s vision to beam WTCG — which would grow into superstation TBS — across the country revolutionized the cable industry and, at the same time, reaffirmed the belief that baseball truly is America’s pastime.
Despite the fact that the Braves were one of the worst teams in baseball during the 1970s and throughout much of the 1980s, they appropriately became known as America’s Team. Fans far and wide knew they could come home most every night to find Pete Van Wieren and Skip Caray bringing the Braves into their living rooms.
“It was a national broadcast,” said Van Wieren, who, like Caray, has been a Braves broadcaster since 1976. “But it was a national broadcast about a local team from a local perspective. We weren’t trying to be neutral. We were Braves broadcasters, and, when the Braves did something good, we would react that way.”
For 30 years, TBS has showcased the Braves to a national audience and allowed fans in remote towns like Storm Lake, Iowa, to adopt the Braves as their team. But, like all good things, this revolutionizing programming is nearing its end.
With MLB.com and satellite providers providing the opportunity to watch any and all games throughout the course of a season, the Braves are no longer the only game being shown in nearly every town throughout the United States.
Looking to capitalize on the advertising dollars that they can gain by running old movies or “Seinfeld” re-runs, TBS has decided to end its affiliation with the Braves. The station will begin airing all Division Series games this year and beginning next year, their regular season broadcasts will consist solely of a Sunday Game of the Week package, which will feature all Major League teams, not just the Braves.

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by Stephen

Cookie Monster Eats a Computer

May 2, 2007 in Humor, Tech, Television by Stephen

Simple hilarious!

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by Stephen

I miss Buddy Rich

April 20, 2007 in Music, Television by Stephen

He was great. Here is a classic from The Muppet Show.

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by Stephen

MLB Extra Innings to become exclusive to DirecTV

January 22, 2007 in Sports, Television by Stephen

I recently switched to DirecTV, and I am glad I did now. It looks like it will be the only way I’ll be able to subscribe to the MLB Extra Innings package. Combine this with their exclusive deal for the NFL Sunday Ticket, and DirecTV is (for better or worse) becoming a “must have” for sports lovers.

Major League Baseball is close to announcing a deal that will place its Extra Innings package of out-of-market games exclusively on DirecTV, which will also become the only carrier of a long-planned 24-hour baseball channel.

Extra Innings has been available to 75 million cable households and the two satellite services, DirecTV and the Dish Network. But the new agreement will take it off cable and Dish because DirecTV has agreed to pay $700 million over seven years, according to three executives briefed on the details of the contract but not authorized to speak about them publicly.

InDemand, which has distributed Extra Innings to the cable television industry since 2002, made an estimated $70 million bid to renew its rights, more than triple what it has been paying. Part of its offer included the right to carry the new baseball channel, but not exclusively.
The baseball channel is scheduled to start in 2009.

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by Stephen