23 September 2010

Lost in audio-video hell heaven

I'm kind of preoccupied today with trying to figure out how this new CanalSat satellite decoder box works. I'm making progress but it's not easy.

The box is called Le Cube. Cute, eh? As you can see, it is mostly white with a black display. On the back, it has HDMI and Péritel connectors. Surprisingly, the package contains all the cables you might need. the remote control is also mostly white, with a little bit of black, so you feel like you ought to wear white gloves when you handle it.

That's Le Cube on the left, on top of the other components.
You can also see today's weather forecast for France.

Little things drive you crazy: the manual says you can set the display on the Cube to show either the current TV channel or the current time. We can't figure out how to get it to display the time. And getting all the sound and video to play together nicely is the goal.

Le Cube — it doesn't really fit in with other audio-video components.

Fact is, out here in the country, the TV and the Internet are our two main entertainment media. There's not much in the way of cinema or theater here in Saint-Aignan. So having a good TV system, with a lot of films, sports events, and music is crucial. We don't even get much in the way of radio, except through CanalSat.

I'll be back soon.

8 comments:

  1. Pourquoi faire simple quand on peut faire compliqué! MDR

    And that goes in any language! LOL

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  2. We've had Canal+ and Sat for years and I never understand any of their new technology. Good luck and I hope you're ready for the end of the hertz channels. We get really lousy reception here on the TNT.

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  3. Put the satbox in standby and it will show the time, turn it on it shows te channel... that is the way it works in our country.

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  4. The instructions for our cable box (of course, in the US, not in France) also say that it can display either the date or the channel... but, it can do neither. There is no display at all! The instructions for that seem to be for the previous and bigger box they used to give out.

    Judy

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  5. When Sputnik went up we had no idea it would lead to this stuff!

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  6. Evelyn, you are right. We get at least 400 channels on our satellite system, including radio.

    Judy, well, ours displays the time when it is en veille (standby), and the channel when it is switched on.

    Frits, I think you are right. That is the way it works.

    Dedene, since we had our attic finished off, we no longer have an antenna that will get TNT for us. Tant pis. The satellite has those channels and many more.

    CHM, bien sûr. On est en France, non ? I made a lot of progress this morning in figuring out how to hook up and configure the new system. Right now, I'm pretty happy with it.

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  7. we dont even have cable out here! for a while this summer we were only getting 4 channels. being out of the pop culture leaves us a little puzzled sometimes. we had to look up who "Lady Gaga" was. we thought she was a duck that we adopted - the duck arrived with that name. wow were we surprised.
    ;-)

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  8. Hi OFG, I'm not sure what we get or watch on TV would qualify as "pop culture." It's mostly old movies, documentaries, and cooking shows. But we depend on the TV for entertainment and information -- weather and news -- since we don't get a French newspaper. We look at the U.S. papers on the Internet.

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