Thursday night we had some time to test playing DVD and Wii on the HDTV, both of which were a bit disappointing. So we decided to do the best we could, which was to buy a component cable for the Wii and an Upscalable DVD recorder to replace the one we’d just bought about a month ago! It did give me an excuse to pass that semi-new DVD recorder to my parents though. We couldn’t do it on Friday though, as we had to spend it with our visiting friends (we both took a day off for that). We did have time Friday morning after we went to see the Simpsons to check what kind of DVD recorders are available and if they are in range of how much we’d pay for. There’s also the typhoon 8 that practically killed any chance of a shop being open in the afternoon. Looking back, I think I was lucky with the delivery. One more day of delay and my whole project would’ve needed to be delayed for a few more days.
K had to work on Saturday. So I used that time to go and buy the Wii component cable and DVD recorder. The first shop I asked the cable’s price for was more than 50% more expensive than the second one I asked! I went back to the shop I bought my HDTV from for the DVD recorder. They’ve got it and the price is good. Unfortunately they’d just sold the only stock they had in the shop (I saw them packing it as I walked in!). They offered to sell me the display unit or deliver the next week. Again, I wasn’t going to let anything defer my project so I took the display unit, which was still very new – it was a new product.
The DVD recorder has an HDMI output. HDMI carries both video and audio. Although I hooked up the coaxial out to the speaker set, I couldn’t stop the audio from the HDMI, which outputs to the TV’s speakers. The result is an echo like effect, which could only be stopped if I muted my TV’s audio.
Component output from the Wii wasn’t very good still but there’s nothing else I could do.
All that’s left for me to do is try to get TV signal into my computer and check out the quality. I bought a T connection to branch out the TV signal but the cable I had had the wrong connector. I managed to buy a converter the next week. The quality’s quite bad though. Oh well, I’ve tried.
So now my whole setup’s basically done. There are a few minor things I want to try but they can wait. 🙂
KenT the Author's Ravings 