Catch Up with Part 2 here (researching & purchasing all the components)

Whew! So hooking everything up wasn’t so hard, actually, although the sound gave us some trouble.   First we connected the mini-DVI converter to the HDMI cable (images in part 2).  Then the computer from the mini-DVI port to the HDMI connection on the back of the television.

Here’s where we ran into trouble with the sound: we had the wrong audio cable.  I don’t actually understand why, but no matter which of the red & white connections we tried on the back of the TV, from the “headphone out” jack on the Mac mini, we couldn’t get sound.  After too long, we realized we needed a cable with a headset jack on both ends.  One end into the “headset out” on the Mac mini and the other into the “headset in” plug on the back of the TV.  Finally, sound from the computer out of the TV speakers!  But we also have surround sound so then we needed a cable that had the “Y” red & white connections on both ends.  So, one set of red & white plugs into the “out” section (near the cable connection) on the TV, and one set into the receiver for the surround sound.  Now, sound from the computer coming out of EITHER the television speakers OR the surround sound system.  Success!

Now, the Mac Mini doesn’t come with a keyboard or a mouse, and we certainly could have bought them, but they are expensive and I didn’t really want a keyboard & mouse in my living room.  In one of the articles I listed yesterday, we learned about a free software called Teleport (free), and we installed it on both of our MacBooks.  It actually works quite well to allow us to control the Mac Mini with the keyboard or trackpad on either of our MacBooks.  I recommend it.  I also just learned about Mobile Air Mouse Pro for iPhone which apparently will allow me to do the same thing from my iPhone, instead of having to use one of the MacBooks.  Here’s a review from someone at MacWorld doing exactly this.  I’m excited to try it.  The only remaining problem is that the icons and words on the 40” TV screen look very tiny and are difficult to see from the couch.  I just discovered these instructions and I’m hoping that they help.

With the antenna and tuner we’re getting all the major network channels: ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, and PBS.  All of these seem to come in well without any adjustments to the antenna (we just have it sitting on top of the entertainment center, and it’s in the interior of the house, not near a window).  We also get the CW, however we realized that we did need to adjust the antenna to get this to come in better, but with a few corrections it now seems to come in just fine.

The Eye TV software plus a subscription to the online TV Guide (inside the Eye TV software, free year one, then $19.95/year) allows us to view what’s on, and record shows to watch later.  However, we can only record ONE show at a time, and I haven’t seen a warning that tells me when I’ve got two shows set to record that conflict.  It seems to just pick one, and we’ve missed a couple of recordings due to this.  However, the network websites run many full episodes online for a period of time.  Also, we CAN watch a recorded show while a live one is recording.

We cancelled cable (Yay! Savings of $88/month) and have been using this set-up for about 2 weeks now, and we’re still getting used to it but it’s a surprisingly small adjustment.

The next item on my agenda is to look into software that I believe will aggregate video and music from the web and stored on my hard drive and allow me to browse and select it for viewing/listening all from one place.  I have learned of two:  Boxee and Plex.  I read this review that concluded that Plex was better, so I downloaded that.  However, there is no user guide, everything is a video and the software is not intuitive.  So I have not taken the time to watch the videos yet and so I haven’t figured out how to use it, so that subtracts points from Plex in my book.  So far it seems to be no trouble to go to a website (Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, or a network site) to find whatever shows I want, but I do think it would be convenient to view my choices in one place.

I would love to hear any comments/feedback you have on this whole experience, if you’ve done it, or if you’re planning to try it.  Thanks for reading, and I hope you have found it helpful!

We forged ahead with the laptop repair, and luckily, Best Buy ended up solving the initial dilemmas for us.  When the laptop came back for the 4th time still broken, they agreed to honor the terms of the Black Tie Warranty and replace the computer.  I opted to take the value in a Best Buy gift card, and this was enough to purchase a Mac Mini (we decided on the lower-end $599 version), plus about half the cost of a new TV.

Now, buying a new TV presented a challenge in itself because I didn’t know anything about the new technology: 720p or 1080p? 60hz or 120hz? LCD or Plasma?  What brand is best?  After looking on Consumer Reports, speaking with the very helpful Home Theater staff at Best Buy, and measuring the space in the house where the TV was going, we decided on a 60hz, 1080p, Toshiba LCD HDTV.  Here are the reasons in a nutshell:

• we were told that a plasma TV presents a far superior picture, however plasmas start at 42” and we were confined to a 40” or smaller due to the spot we were planning on putting it.
• almost all of the 37” & 40” TV’s were 1080p
• we were told that you most notice the benefits of of 120hz if you are planning to use the TV primarily to watch sports and play video games.  We weren’t doing much of either of these, and looking at the 60hz side-by-side with the 120hz in the store, we saw no difference, even when sports was on.

So, the computer and home theater staff at Best Buy were very helpful and we were told that we would need an audio cable to run from the Mac Mini’s headset jack into the television, plus an HDMI cable to connect the TV to the computer.  Also, the Mac Mini has a Mini-DVI port so we needed an HDMI to Mini-DVI converter.  (We learned later that this was the WRONG audio cable – see Conclusion).

Best Buy had only the HDMI cables, and they were very expensive, between $50 and $120.  I didn’t know which one to buy so I launched Safari on my iPhone in the store and discovered this article on CNET which said that expensive HDMI cables are a rip-off and you shouldn’t pay more than $10 for one, so I knew we weren’t going to buy them there.  Other Apple converters were $29.99 at Best Buy, and I’ve paid that price at least 4 times (for use with various MacBooks), but they didn’t have the one I needed so I then I went to Google on my iPhone to find the converter.  I landed at an Amazon page that offered the converter AND a 6 ft. HDMI cable for $9.97 (yes, $9.97.  I think what I saved in just this one instance almost covers the cost of my iPhone.)

So, we were taking the computer and the new TV home but would have to wait to hook it up until we received the cable and the converter.  At this point I also did some research on USB tuners for Mac and most sites pointed me to the Elgato Eye TV Hybrid, and in reading about this I became convinced that since digital channels are free over the air, our tuner would better pick up what was available if we got an antenna to amplify the signal.  So included in my Amazon order was also a digital antenna and the Elgato tuner.  This was not an insignificant investment as the total cost of my Amazon order was almost $200.  And I learned that shopping around for antennas pays off too because I almost ordered it from another site for more than $75, and found that Amazon was offering the same one for $36.

I’m not actually sure if I really needed the antenna, and I’m also not sure if the audio cable I got is the best way to get sound from the computer to the television.  But I will find out, because finally all the orders came in (it only took a week with standard shipping) and I’m now ready to move on to the next phase of my Adventure in Dumping Cable…trying to get it all hooked up and working.  Stay tuned for Part 3!

I used to be much more into television that I am now, and for a long time I have been paying for cable TV services that either I am not using, or I am getting/could get other places.

So I decided to see if I could really have all the TV I wanted without cable.

I quickly learned that this is not necessarily an easy task, but as with most things, the more I have learned, the easier it is becoming.

This was my initial plan…my husband had a 3 year old laptop with a battery problem, and it was about to fall out of warranty.  He had not wanted to have it serviced up until this point because Best Buy said they would have to send it out for two weeks.  Given that the laptop was older, and was a Windows PC, I thought I would buy him a gift of a MacBook (yes, this was partially selfish on my part because I wanted to move us toward a Mac-only household.)  So I bought the MacBook with my Best Buy card, which offered an interest free payment plan for 18 months.  I figured that once his old laptop was repaired, we would use it for internet on the television (a media center), and we would come out ahead on the MacBook payments once we weren’t paying for cable anymore.

Our living room TV was a 10-year old, 32-inch analog with only S-Video connections.  The old laptop had an S-Video connection too so we were all set there.  This would allow us to watch Netflix (with a $9/month subscription), Hulu (free site for aggregating online TV), and the network stations online, at least.  Not a bad start, but I was concerned about giving up the DVR (digital video recorder) since not everything is available online when we want to watch it.

Then I learned that USB “tuners” (for carrying digital tv signals to your computer) typically come with PVR (personal video recorder) software.  However, there were two problems here…the first is that tuners pick up the digital channel broadcasts that come over the air (for free), provided that you also have a screen (monitor or TV) that is capable of receiving the digital stations.  Our TV was analog, so it was not.  The second problem was that most tuners were made for either a PC or a Mac.  Remember my desire to move to a Mac-only household?  I figured that we could use the 3-year-old laptop until it died (which we honestly didn’t expect to be more than a year or so), and then get another set-top box (Apple TV, Roku, another computer) to stream internet television in our living room.  After doing some research on these, I decided on a Mac Mini, because it has all the features of AppleTV plus all of the benefits that result from it being a full-blown computer.  So I didn’t want to invest in a PC tuner, only to have to buy a Mac tuner later.  (The August edition of Mac Life Magazine put this bug in my ear to begin with, and you can see some of that article here.  Other articles that were really helpful to me are here, here, and here.)

Ok, now that you have some of the background and preliminary information, the story continues in part 2…

Last year I decided I needed a wireless headset for my iPhone, since I often do other things while on the phone such as empty the dishwasher, fold the laundry, make coffee, etc. (I also drive while talking on the phone more often than I should. This is NOT safe and I am trying to wean myself from this habit).

So I went on CNET to check out their reviews and at the time, one of their favorites was the Jawbone by Aliph. It claimed to use military technology called “Noise Assasin” to eliminate background noise, including wind. One or two others were similarly rated, but the Jawbone came in pink so this was a no-brainer decision for me.

I used it for just about a year and while I could always hear people on it just fine, I got many complaints that people could not hear me. I tried adjusting the size of the earpiece but the complaints continued. Sometimes I had to abandon the headset and take the call directly on the iPhone. Another problem for me was that it didn’t come with a case, and would always turn itself on in my purse, thus draining the battery and it was often dead or dying when I needed it. Since I paid over $100 for the Jawbone, I did not care to spend yet more money (about $9.99 on Amazon) for a case. I found an old snap-shut jewelry box that was about the right size for a thrifty solution to that problem.

Last week, I lost my Jawbone, jewelry box and all. I looked for about a week, all over my home, office, and locations I frequent, but it did not turn up. I found it frustrating to be without one so I bit the bullet and decided to purchase another. So back to CNET to find that Jawbone had a newer version than the one I bought last year, and CNET still gave it a high rating. But another headset with exactly the same rating was the Plantronics 975. Since I wasn’t completely satisfied with the Jawbone the first time around (even though it now comes in purple!) I decided to give the Plantronics a shot.

I was hoping that the prices of high-quality bluetooth headsets would have come down, but the Plantronics was even more than the Jawbone at $129.99 (BestBuy). However, I knew that BestBuy did offer price protection so while I was in the store, I fired up Safari on my iPhone and did a little price comparison. Amazon had the Plantronics for $107 and my helpful BestBuy representative agreed to match the price. This made the price for the Plantronics headset competitive with the Jawbone (note: yesterday I saw a Jawbone in Costco for $69.99, but I’m unsure if this was the newest model. I think they make it hard to tell on purpose). But here’s what I think makes the Plantronics a better deal: it comes with not only it’s own case (solving the turn-on problem in my purse) but it’s a charging case! When the case it fully charged, it can provide the headset with two complete charges before it needs to be recharged. Also there is a small LCD screen on the charging case telling you the charge status of both the headset and the case. And it even has a handy-dandy hook for attaching the case to a strap or your purse or clothing.

All of those things give the Plantronics 975 bonus points in my book, but the real test comes in the usability. What I’ve found is that most of my callers don’t even realize I’m on a headset, and tell me that I sound clear as a bell. No sound problems on my end, either.

If you plan to use your headset a lot, my suggestion would be to go for a higher-end model (what’s the point of having one if it doesn’t work well?), and it seems that most reviewers compare the Plantronics 975 similarly with the Aliph Jawbone. Having used both, I think the Plantronics is the hands-down winner. Even though it doesn’t come in pink.

If you’d like to share your experience with your bluetooth headset, please do so in the comments, I’d love to hear what you have to say. Thanks for reading!

I’m also beginning to realize that technology provides plenty of tools to keep others at arm’s length if we so choose.  First came Otherinbox.  This allows me to receive emails, or not, while still keeping my email address private.  Many benefits are exchanged for the implicit permission to be marketed to via email.   Now I can reap those benefits by providing an Otherinbox address, all the while still controlling whether or not I actually receive those marketing emails, and when.  Otherinbox has given me much more control over my email inbox…all the advantages of a “junk box” with none of the inconveniences.

Recently, I signed up for a Google Voice account.  It’s new and different and so understandably, I still have some reservations about it.  However, I’m realizing that Google Voice can be to my phone number what Otherinbox is to my email.  It gives me the control to take calls, block calls, let them roll into my voicemail, and even listen in while the message is being recorded.  I can also make calls with my Google Voice number, or give it out when I’m asked, thus protecting my “real” phone number, and preventing corporations and marketers from reaching me directly if I don’t want them to.

I had been thinking lately that privacy was dead.  Maybe it’s just getting a new beginning.