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#76
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O.T. Macrium
Mark Twain wrote:
I was just on Yahoo (which I usually avoid) and was reading a story when the screen went white and I had a message that the computer was infected. I closed it and ran malwarebytes full scan with no errors, then ran SuperAntiSpware full scan with 654 and deleted 654 then ran Avast full scan with no errors. I should of taken a screenshot but didn't think ,,... but I have never had this happen before. Thoughts? Robert We're going to have to get you a miniature computer tank to ride around in :-) With armor plating and a big gun on the front. What you probably received was scareware. Written in Javascript. Keep your eyes peeled, read more news articles and see if your event is reported in the news. If you have the *exact* error message text, please post it. A screen turning white is not unusual. If the scareware message has spelling mistakes, this greatly enhances the ability to "Google it". Most of the time, these people cannot spell, which helps a lot. Paul |
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#77
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O.T. Macrium
Mark Twain wrote:
You think it might be a good idea to bring a DVD with me to Fry's ? Robert DVD playback is stateless. You can bring your own titles, without the insertion of the DVD causing any change to what is stored inside the machine. BluRay (BD) is different. In some cases, if you insert a brand new fresh title, it has a key revocation for an older movie. And after your disc is removed, suddenly the player will no longer play Casablanca. That means that BD players are "stateful" and each disc when played, can do something to the machine. Bringing a DVD disc is OK. If bringing a BD with you for the purchase of a BD player, you'd ask the salesman if he minds or not. I don't know if standalone BD players can be rolled back to factory settings or not. I only learn enough about BD, to know I won't be buying one :-) That's good enough for me. I don't plan on doing an deep research on all the "bad table manners" a BD player has. DVD is not flawless. My knowledge base, such as it is, is based on keywords. When I want to remember "DVD bad", I remember "Casino Royale". http://www.zdnet.com/article/sony-really-sucks-at-drm/ While great care goes into designing commercial DVDs so they always work in standalone players, sometimes they slip up. A person who is an expert at DVD collecting, would likely bring a copy of the affected Casino Royale title and insert that in the player :-) It won't hurt the player, but the customer can just turn around and then walk out of the store, if the title will not play. That means there are two reasons to bring a DVD. 1) Check quality of playback on known source material. 2) Check compatibility on one of the bad flavors of DRM (Digital Rights Management). Paul |
#78
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O.T. Macrium
I had no idea this was so involved,.. Jeez
all I want to do is buy a DVD player and TV but there's so much more to it! I only asked about bringing the DVD because I might see a LG TV I like and I might play great at the store but when I get it home it might be crappy with my DVD's. That was my only concern. Thanks, Robert |
#79
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O.T. Macrium
Mark Twain wrote:
I had no idea this was so involved,.. Jeez all I want to do is buy a DVD player and TV but there's so much more to it! I only asked about bringing the DVD because I might see a LG TV I like and I might play great at the store but when I get it home it might be crappy with my DVD's. That was my only concern. Thanks, Robert That shouldn't be a problem. Paul |
#80
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O.T. Macrium
Mark Twain wrote:
I had no idea this was so involved,.. Jeez all I want to do is buy a DVD player and TV but there's so much more to it! I only asked about bringing the DVD because I might see a LG TV I like and I might play great at the store but when I get it home it might be crappy with my DVD's. That was my only concern. Thanks, Robert They won't have a dvd player hooked up to the TV. |
#81
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O.T. Macrium
Paul in Houston TX wrote:
Mark Twain wrote: I had no idea this was so involved,.. Jeez all I want to do is buy a DVD player and TV but there's so much more to it! I only asked about bringing the DVD because I might see a LG TV I like and I might play great at the store but when I get it home it might be crappy with my DVD's. That was my only concern. Thanks, Robert They won't have a dvd player hooked up to the TV. For demonstrators, don't they have them hooked to a common feed ? Some stores here would just have cable playing on the TV sets. I think the computer monitors in the store I bought my first LCD monitor from, they were all fed from a fanout box. And I would annoy them by finding the source machine and flipping it to showing text so I could check for parallax :-) Paul |
#82
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O.T. Macrium
Paul wrote:
Paul in Houston TX wrote: Mark Twain wrote: I had no idea this was so involved,.. Jeez all I want to do is buy a DVD player and TV but there's so much more to it! I only asked about bringing the DVD because I might see a LG TV I like and I might play great at the store but when I get it home it might be crappy with my DVD's. That was my only concern. Thanks, Robert They won't have a dvd player hooked up to the TV. For demonstrators, don't they have them hooked to a common feed ? Some stores here would just have cable playing on the TV sets. I think the computer monitors in the store I bought my first LCD monitor from, they were all fed from a fanout box. And I would annoy them by finding the source machine and flipping it to showing text so I could check for parallax :-) Paul I agree about common cable feed. It comes down to the willingness and level of authority of the sales people to change it. Week days may be better since there is a manager on duty. |
#83
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O.T. Macrium
Once again I want to thank you and
Paul in TX for all your good help and taking the time to explain things. Robert |
#84
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O.T. Macrium
I thought you might be interested,...
I went to Best Buys and bought a 28 inch LG but only 720p vs 1080 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lg-28-c...?skuId=5895500 It's exactly 25 inches and fits the entertainment center like a glove. Also bought the HDMI cable They didn't have the DVD player https://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchp...60& keys=keys so will have to order it. What do you think? Robert |
#85
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O.T. Macrium
Mark Twain wrote:
I thought you might be interested,... I went to Best Buys and bought a 28 inch LG but only 720p vs 1080 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lg-28-c...?skuId=5895500 It's exactly 25 inches and fits the entertainment center like a glove. Also bought the HDMI cable They didn't have the DVD player https://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchp...60& keys=keys so will have to order it. What do you think? Robert I'd say you were half way there :-) For fun, you can connect the computer to the TV set, via the HDMI. Or use the TV tuner in the TV set, to see what the screen looks like. Connect a balun and rabbit ears to the 75 ohm input, and get the TV to scan for OTA stations. I can get a few digital TV stations here, using just rabbit ears. Read the manual to see how to select each input source. The thing will probably come up in TV mode, and you'll need to use the remote to select the HDMI input. See if the remote has some sort of buttons for selection. You can still have fun, even if the DVD player isn't here yet. Paul |
#86
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O.T. Macrium
Mark Twain wrote:
I thought you might be interested,... I went to Best Buys and bought a 28 inch LG but only 720p vs 1080 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lg-28-c...?skuId=5895500 It's exactly 25 inches and fits the entertainment center like a glove. Also bought the HDMI cable They didn't have the DVD player https://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchp...60& keys=keys so will have to order it. What do you think? Robert Nice! The TV manual says 45 watts and only 7 lbs! |
#87
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O.T. Macrium
I thought I had a balun and rabbit ears
In fact, I know I do, but damned if I can find it. In any case, I decided to buy this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/TERK-TVOMA1...id=p5731.m3795 what do you think? I found the HDMI input under Video http://www.lg.com/us/tvs/lg-28LN4500-led-tv Also, good news, my replacement Harman Kardon speakers came and I have sound again! I'm glad I had the 780 although it was a factory mounted /mono whatever but it got me by. Thanks, Robert |
#88
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O.T. Macrium
Mark Twain wrote:
I thought I had a balun and rabbit ears In fact, I know I do, but damned if I can find it. In any case, I decided to buy this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/TERK-TVOMA1...id=p5731.m3795 what do you think? I found the HDMI input under Video http://www.lg.com/us/tvs/lg-28LN4500-led-tv Also, good news, my replacement Harman Kardon speakers came and I have sound again! I'm glad I had the 780 although it was a factory mounted /mono whatever but it got me by. Thanks, Robert I couldn't find a good reference on the square antenna. It could be hiding this sort of thing inside. A fractal antenna. They don't have to use wire for those, and the antenna could be made from FR4 with copper tracks on it in the desired pattern. The phasing on some of these, is intended to combine the signals and drop the characteristic impedance. Which is how the antennas in the examples here, manage to get a bit closer to 75 ohms. That's what the two "rails" in the center are for. Impedance conversion. http://www.instructables.com/id/How-...DTV-DTV-plus-/ When I needed an antenna, I build a Gray-Hoverman. One with extra elements for VHF. And that's because the bureaucrats here thought it would be cool to give the TV industry zero dollars to subsidize new transmission equipment. And a side effect, is a couple transmitters just used the old analog setup, on something like channel 6. They changed the modulation of the transmitter, for the digital signal, but the "power" part is just the old equipment. It means our channels here, they could have all been placed on UHF (simplifying things and making the square antenna more practical), but instead the band remains split between some stations being on VHF and the rest being on UHF. Then it means a physically larger antenna to get VHF. UHF works with smaller dimensions. If I only needed a UHF antenna, I could have continued using my old one. My Gray Hoverman was designed "for the cottage" rather than an urban setting. To use it in the city, I'd need a rotator because it only has a 15 degree beamwidth. Since I have TV transmitters on two major different vectors, it requires rotating the antenna to either vector to get a signal. It the antenna is isotropic, and has a wide beam width, then you hardly ever need to fiddle with it. In one of the TV forums, the "experts" there never buy an antenna, without seeing the beam pattern versus frequency. And I was hoping to find a little backgrounder on the square antenna, with some good pictures of results. As that helps predict whether it'll be a practical purchase or not. Amplifiers are a good choice for distribution - if you're driving 100 feet of cheap down-lead, then sticking an amp on the head end, might help reduce the loss. Amplifiers always have a "noise figure", and indiscriminate use of amps leads to a degradation in the noise part of "S/N". So a 60dB amp isn't "twice as good" as a 30dB amp, or a loaf of bread baked for twice as long is burned, rather than being "twice as good". So if you see exaggerated claims for the amp, keep that in mind :-) The TV has AGC (automatic gain control on RF) and probably works from 10uV to 1V or so in amplitude. The TV will turn up its own gain on a weak signal. One difference with DTV, is the response to the signal. You can go from a crystal clear picture, to a black screen (LOS) with only a 2dB drop in level. There isn't nearly the graceful degradation as there was with analog NTSC. A missing channel could be close to the right level, or way way down and totally out of reach, and you can't really tell. One amazing thing that happened here, was getting a TV tuner card for the PC and comparing it to my settop box. A world of difference. The STB could only get three channels regularly. The TV tuner card (using the same signal) gets everything known to exist in the city. While propagation characteristics change from month to month, the difference I'm seeing really looks like the TV tuner does something different from a DSP perspective. As I don't think this is just "moar amp". It's not an amplifier effect. It's fun to play with. Too bad I'm not all that interested in TV :-) Paul |
#89
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O.T. Macrium
Would these be better?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Terk-HDTVAZ...item4b2a42c3ff https://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Terk-Lo...AMXQO21Rnou Q I agree, I'm not really all that interested in TV either, maybe news, documentaries etc. I haven't had cable in 20 years but thought if I could pick up 1 or 2 channels, why not? I usually prefer to watch my DVD's or YouTube Thanks, Robert |
#90
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O.T. Macrium
Mark Twain wrote:
Would these be better? https://www.ebay.com/itm/Terk-HDTVAZ...item4b2a42c3ff https://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Terk-Lo...AMXQO21Rnou Q I agree, I'm not really all that interested in TV either, maybe news, documentaries etc. I haven't had cable in 20 years but thought if I could pick up 1 or 2 channels, why not? I usually prefer to watch my DVD's or YouTube Thanks, Robert Everything in life has "boring old planning" to do. You need to run your location and elevation, through the DTV map. https://www.tvfool.com/index.php?opt...pper&Itemid=29 Here's a sample report. http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wr...ed86708bf4a 3 In that example, a high gain antenna (with small beamwidth) would need to be rotated to sample all the stations. Even a wide-beam antenna would have a problem. Only an omnidirectional wouldn't be annoying there. The colors in the table, indicate how "easy" the signal is to get. Green An indoor "set-top" antenna is probably sufficient to pick up these channels Yellow An attic-mounted antenna is probably needed to pick up channels at this level and above Red A roof-mounted antenna is probably needed to pick up channels at this level and above Grey These channels are very weak and will most likely require extreme measures to try and pick them up So that one must be an urban map. The top item in the chart, you can probably receive that with a "twig". The bottom entry requires maybe a long yagi on the roof. ******* When the antenna has a performance graph, you can tell how it will do with the TVFool map. This one for example, is low gain, but it's an omnidirectional one, with no backside reflector. Signals come in the front or the back. https://i.stack.imgur.com/cMtQf.png Here, a four element yagi is more directional. It has a gain lobe out the front, less of one on the back side. You would need to rotate this on a complex map. Your Terk with the four element pairs could be similar to this. Your flat antenna might be similar to the last one. http://www.yagicad.com/Projects/6mOWA.htm But when graphs aren't available, it's pretty hard to tell what you're buying. On the one hand, you can have a "range" specification, like 35 miles. But how directional is it ? https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/be...-hdtv-antenna/ ******* In any case, run your map, and see what you've got. If all your stations are in green circles and they're all over the place, maybe your first antenna pick is enough. The multi-element Terk could be more directional, and that's good if all the TV antennas are on the same hill. Two cities I've lived in have been like that, a hill with a lot of TV stations sharing towers on the hill. If there aren't a lot of vectors to cover, it makes picking an antenna easy (no constraints). Look at your map and see what you've got. If you lived in the woods, and all the stations were on the outer circles and they had the "bad" color, then you would need a long yagi on a high elevation. Or an antenna with similar fancy performance. Didn't the WEGA have a rabbit ears in the box ? I wouldn't buy a rabbit ears, as for the same money you can get something a bit more modern. One of the flat ones for example. But don't buy an antenna until you see the map. I prefer my antennas to have graphs, because then it's like a "weather forecast". I have some idea what to expect, but real reception conditions vary. And all this "science" is just to avoid situations where you're fooling yourself. If you live in the woods, no, you're not getting DTV. In Canada, there's one province where more than half the people lost broadcast TV, when DTV came in. The coverage map is a "desert" there, because the main transmitter is no longer 350,000 watts. One of the stations in my city now, uses a 3KW transmitter, little better than a "few toasters strapped together". Cheap to run. $0.75 an hour for transmitter electricity. The TV tuner card in my PC, actually picks that one up. I wasn't even aware I was "in range" until I got the TV tuner card. Paul |
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