Wednesday 25 July 2012

Communication breakdown

Getting hot don't you think?
The day got off to good start when my digital set top box that thing that feeds my old school tv decided to expire. I mean I woke up earlier with it still being warm at 4:30AM putting on the BBC's news channel to catch up with the latest G4S disasters, dozed back of to sleep only to wake up at 5:15 to an alternating black screen and white noise from the old built in analogue tuner in the TV itself!
I bought this around late October 2006 when my old STB a Nokia left by ONdigital, the worlds first Digital tv via an antenna company, was liquidated in 2002 and I've a fair idea of what happened. It's most likely to be  power supply issue involved a couple of capacitors that have gone short circuit having leaked. It's a very common problem in consumer electronics as to keep costs down, they use underrated components assuming by time they've failed, you'll sent it to landfill and buy another. I just might unscrew it and have a go fixing it although I found a dirt cheap replacement in a local charity store that's a deadringer for it using the same chassis but just different switches and a marginally different remote.
I'm tempted to look for a FreeviewHD USB adapter for the laptop instead as it can handle 720P pictures. 
Sunday saw a big fibre trunk outage that made using the internet for chat rooms a pain as it was taking over a minute for a few words you typed to come back. From what I read while at work, it covered Devon up to Manchester via Birmingham as as somehow they internet things I'm in Wolverhampton of all places and they'd get their feed from Brum, that's what happened running through midnight Sunday. It's been fine afterwards but after  over a week of well nigh perfect broadband and darn quick uploading, it left me a bit down.
This afternoon I'll watch the Women's soccer on the BBC the first pre Olympic event.

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