GOOD TV

[Stanley]

It's good to see you say that Gloria and I'm glad you are enjoying them. My problem seems to be my inability to suspend disbelief and engage with the acting. I constantly see them as ordinary people playing a part. It means that they all seem slightly ridiculous to me. I suppose that's why I enjoy things like the snooker so much.
Mind you yesterday afternoon's match wasn't a bundle of laughs. I see that Mark Allen edged a win over John Higgins but I wasn't there to see it.....

[Tripps]

I've lost all the BBC channels on Freesat, and surprisingly I am managing quite well without them. Very kindly someone seems to have told Youtube about my plight, and they present me each day with the best frame from the snooker. I've seen Ding's 147 clearance.

I'm looking into a solution. I tried an HD enabled box from ebay, but it was so complex, and did so many things that I didn't need or understand that I sent it back for a refund which went smoothly. I flinch whenever I hear the word Alexa. Not interested .

Slight favourite at the moment is get another TV with built in Freesat. They seem to be cheaper than they used to be, and one the same size as I have now is only about £200. I paid £250 for the current set about five years ago - I could put it in the bedroom.

I rang the so called help line, to blag some advice for aged people, and play the helpless pensioner card - but there is no one there.

Meanwhile I am wondering why I pay the TV licence to the BBC when they deny me their programmes.

[Stanley]

"Meanwhile I am wondering why I pay the TV licence to the BBC when they deny me their programmes."
I'd say that was a very good point!
I watched the snooker while I was cooking on iPlayer on the computer screen. Ronnie managed to produce a flash of brilliance just in time to win his match but truth to tell he was a bit unpredictable. Perhaps age is at last taking its toll.
Nobody is interested in giving advice to old people David. Although I will admit that as my age advances I do detect a note of respect creeping in when I am dealing with bureaucracy. I think you have to be nudging ninety.....

[Big Kev]

Meanwhile I am wondering why I pay the TV licence to the BBC when they deny me their programmes.

I would presume it's because you have access to their iPlayer.

[Tripps]

I would presume it's because you have access to their iPlayer.

Yes you're quite right - but I have never used it nor will I. When they don't allow you to refuse cookies - or rather they make it impossible to do so - then I don't use it. Actually I'm managing quite well without them to my mild surprise.

I considered stopping paying the licence fee - and there is a whole online sub culture showing how to do so, but I don't really need any further conflict with such people, so I will take the easy way out and pay.

I've almost decided to get a new TV with built in Freesat, but need to see one first, so a visit to Currys in Cambridge where they have lots on show, is on the cards. My big lad phoned last night and said I need to 'go large' and get a 55". Says I won't regret it.


We'll see. . . .

[Stanley]

I'll agree with your big lad David. Not too sure about 55" mine is 43" I think but reference to Samsung's advice (LINK) will almost certainly give you a much bigger size. I have never regretted going bigger and if I had to get a new set would almost certainly increase even more....
I abandoned the snooker for Youtube last night, it wasn't really exciting me. I see Ali Carter beat Judd Trump. I'm not a great fan of either of them.

[Tripps]

Do you remember when TV first came out, the 'expert' advice was to sit so that you were looking slightly downwards at the screen and should change the focus of your eyes regularly by looking at other objects.

Experts bless 'em.

[PanBiker]

As a former TV field and bench engineer. Modern day LCD, plasma and the like displays operate completely differently to the former CRT screens.

There used to be official advice regarding viewing distances, particularly from tricolour CRT based TV's. This was based on two factors, radiation from the CRT and the fact that the display was made up by scanning at 50fps vertical and 625 lines horizontal, approximately 250K individual RGB phosphor dots behind the shadow mask. The shadow mask had a dual purpose to limit the amount of forward radiation from the set and to aligned the electron streams for each colour, to this effect the holes in the shadow mask which the guns in the central tube neck fired through were tapered to cater for the different angles the electron stream had to fire through from one side of the screen to the other. If you sat too close you could see stuff that you would not see at the correct viewing distance. You were supposed to view from a minimum distance of 6-8 ft from a 20", 8-10ft from a 22" and 10-12ft from a 26" colour CRT based TV. Bit more to it than that as you also had convergence and colour purity errors to contend with.

Not applicable to modern displays, you will get some detriment to the picture if you sit too far offside but that's about it.

[Stanley]

I remember that when the man from Garlick's came to install the new Samsung he couldn't understand how I'd managed to view the old colour CRT set the colour register was so bad. When I saw the new one on an HD station I had to agree with him. It was a different world.
As for good TV yesterday I watched Ronnie play his semi-final against Shaun Murphy. I shall watch him play Ali Carter today in the final. I see he has got into trouble for criticising standards at Alexandra Palace. All I can say is I have never seen so many flies and wasps in one venue in the snooker I have watched. My sympathies are with Ronnie, I think there may be substance in his remarks.
(I did wonder about proximity to the bins and levels of hygiene at one point during the week....)

[PanBiker]

I remember that when the man from Garlick's came to install the new Samsung

I bet the installation didn't take as long as the former set either, deliver and plug in more like.

A typical installation of a CRT based Colour TV was a proper "back off" job to access the convergence control panel and purity settings. You needed a colour pattern generator to aid in converging the set correctly and equipment for demagnetising the room!

You generally started with a degaussing session to demagnetise any ferrous metal objects in the room such as fixed radiators. Latent magnetic fields could be detrimental to the colour purity around the edges of the screen. Next was static convergence which was the adjustment of magnetic rings around the CRT neck, these were interactive and were adjusted to get the purest display in the centre of the screen. You could turn each gun on and off so you adjusted each red, green and blue gun individually for the purest display in the centre on a blank screen. You then switched all three guns on an used the white screen facility of the pattern generator to check for final purity.

Next step was to use the dynamic convergence controls which could adjust electronically the current flow in various windings contained in the Line and Field coils that surrounded the CRT neck. The control panel was marked up with the area of the screen that would be be adjusted. The object was to adjust each electron stream so that the output from all three guns converged on top of each other, radiating out from the centre and correct in all four corners. You used a white grid pattern from the pattern generator so that you could see any misalignment. It was technically impossible to get perfect convergence due to manufacturing tolerances of the glass envelopes of the CRT's.

Once you had optimised the dynamic convergence you checked back at the static settings to make sure that tweaking the edges hadn't messed up the middle.

If all went well we always reckoned you could complete the adjustments in about an hour, two hours at the most. If you had to take a set into the workshop for repair you would almost certainly have to check over the set again once returned to the customer. Quite often you needed to degauss the shadow mask itself as it used to pick up residual magnet fields during transport and being operated in an alien environment on the bench with lots of metal cased test equipment around. Unless it was a convergence fault you never touched the adjustments in the workshop as once set up they were individually unique to the owners home.

Only TV repair men know about this and it's a proper forgotten corner now as the technology is no longer produced. I follow a Facebook group for the experiences of old school TV engineers. I have just taken delivery of a book produced by a bloke who was in the trade straight from school at roughly the same time as me. He was based up in the North East and working for a small local firm as I did but the experiences will be the same. The book is titled "Set OK, Customer Faulty. I know where he is coming from.

[Stanley]

Actually no Ian, I bought the set secondhand of Garlicks, it had been on rental and was cheap (I was hard up at the time....) I took it home plugged it in and that was it for about five years until the colour went wonky.
The new Samsung set also included the Humax Freesat box and the engineers installed that to work with it and disposed of the old set for me. It's never been touched since apart from reloading software.....
I went to bed last night with Ronnie trailing behind Ali Carter but I see that Ronnie won 10-7 so I shall be on catch up this afternoon......

[PanBiker]

I was struck by the fact that just before the finish they were both playing like amateurs on a couple of shots.

[Stanley]

I must have watched a different match.....
I watched the whole of the Sunday evening session on iPlayer and thoroughly enjoyed it particularly when Ronnie moved up a gear for the last three frames. We are very lucky to have Ronnie, we will never see his equal again.

[PanBiker]

I must have watched a different match.....

It was last frame nerves, (both succumbed) and just before Ronnie got a grip and finished it.

[Stanley]

I quite like indoor bowls and saw that the world championships were on BBC2 but when I tuned in it was the commentator and someone from the Bowls federation yacking on interminably while the players were bowling in the background. Include me out! I tuned in for the bowls not those two. I think at times the pundits tend to forget that the object of the exercise is to watch the sport not listen to them hogging the screen....

[Stanley]

I tried the indoors bowls again last night and had exactly the same problem. Someone should have a quiet word with these people!

[Tripps]

The role model for such people is Hazel Irvine who has turned the asking of inane questions to sports people into an art form.

I'm not missing the BBC oputput at all. No rush to get a remedy. I will eventually though.

[Stanley]

I was a Midsomer Murders man last night and then YouTube.

[Tripps]

I missed Dragons' Den on BBC. In fact I currently miss everything on BBC.
To be more precise - I don't see any BBC programmes, but don't really 'miss' them.

I read that a lady who sells acupressure ear seeds got 'all of the money' from all of the entrepreneurs. Seems this is quite unusual. All they heard was "buy them for £3 and sell them for £30". That's all that matters.

A bit of a fuss has followed. The product is nonsense and is available on ebay for little money. Ear Seeds

Did not one of these business experts spot the flaw in the presentation? Seems not.

Actually I'm sure they did see. The mystery is why they did not speak up about it.

I'm due to miss "The Apprentice" next. Can't wait.




?

[Wendyf]

Col used ear seeds for a while a couple of years back, he bought masses of them very cheaply on Amazon. Think they are still in a cupboard somewhere as he gave up after using one or two.

[Stanley]

Good Grief! Is there no end to the essential facts of life that have completely escaped me? I shall watch DD on catch up this very night!

[Stanley]

David, I watched Dragons Den on play back last night and can report that the 'ear seeds' weren't the only evidence of the Dragons going soft in the head. There was a con man from Manchester who has turned mystic and is selling Cacao to the masses. I don't understand what came over them. I urge you to access iPlayer on your computer and watch the episode. I promise you'll be riveted as I was by the bonkers behaviour......

[Stanley]

Tragedy struck last night! I lost the ability to log into Youtube and watch my videos. Yes I did all the usual things, upgraded and reset my Smart TV applications but nothing worked. I shall have another stab at it this morning but this may be my Samsung TV giving notice and the time may have come to talk to my suppliers at Garlicks about a new TV. If anyone has any thoughts about what they would be getting if they were in my position I'd be glad to hear from you.... But it'll have to be quick, I can't put up with this!

[PanBiker]

Have you checked the network settings on your TV? How is is connected to your broadband?

[Stanley]

I've done all that Ian and spent two hours this morning pissing about with it. I noticed other areas where I was losing smartness and to cut a long story short, I went to Harry Garlicks and had a word with James. He told me I wasn't the only one and the bottom line is that my ten year old Samsung TV is not being supported any longer in some area. I have cured it by throwing £900 at it. On Tuesday next week an installation team will roll up and set me up with a 43" Samsung 4K set they will install it and take the old set and Humax box away. No pockets in a shroud.