Come Monday...Digital to Analog

“Come Monday…” is a weekly series that will involve a review of (or commentary about) websites, movies, documentaries, television shows, sports, music, and whatever else may tickle my fancy at the time.  Be assured that these reviews will be generally positive, as in accordance to the Jimmy Buffett song “Come Monday.”  This is subject to change, however.  In fact, I would be most derelict in my duties to neglect going on a rant every once in a while.  For rants promote change, and change can be good—right?  Therefore, since good is generally considered as being a positive force in 99.3% of the parallel universes that I am aware of, even a rant could be considered as being something positive, and a genuine hissy-fit would be even better (so I’m told).

Yes, I am well aware of the current trend being to convert analog recording (such as ones on VHS tapes) to digital files so that they can burned to a DVD, but when you have a mother-in-law, who gets confused with multiple remotes—not to mention remotes that can control more than one device, less is most definitely more.  Therefore, when I found a bunch of programs on the internet that she would thoroughly enjoy watching, the best course of action would be to convert the digital recording of those programs I had made to analog files so that they could be recorded on a VHS tape to be watched on her VCR.

‘Twas easier thought of than done, however.  For when it comes to mastering technology with me, there are plenty of errors to go with the trials.

The plan of attack sounds a lot more complicated than it really was.  For I had been already cued in on having to make what was playing on the computer we now have hooked-up to our living room television visible to our VCR, which would require converting the digital video files to streaming analog viewing on the AV setting.  This would be accomplished by running an HDMI cable from an [HDMI splitter] to the [digital to analog converter], which would be hooked up to our VCR through [RCA cables] plugged into the AV jacks in the front of our VCR.

Now, the reason for the HDMI splitter was so that I could see what to click-on to control the computer functions on the HDMI setting to our television, which is not visible on the settings for our VCR.  Everything was going well until the first digital to analog converter I purchased proved to be bad, which was made quite clear when nothing but a solid blue screen came up on our TV as soon as I plugged it into the HDMI splitter and the VCR AV jacks.

Okay, I skipped another misstep that was completely my fault.  For when I first ordered some extra RCA cables, I ordered the wrong ones (red, blue and green cables are not the same as red, white and yellow cables) which gave Amazon.com another opportunity to shine when it comes to customer service.  For as was told [earlier], when I asked if I could return the item for a refund, they immediately refunded my money without requiring me to send back the product!

Getting back to the bad converter, that blue screen really freaked me out.  Making it worse was having to completely turn off the computer before it would reboot.  Be assured that I was having some anxious moments while waiting for the computer to come back up the first couple of times.

After consulting with [Luigi] online, I became fairly confident that the problem was indeed a bad converter, but my anxiety was not soon put to rest.  For while searching for a good one, the only ones I could find looked EXACTLY like the bad one.  Yeah, a good [u-joint] looks just exactly like a bad one before it goes bad, but I was hoping to find a converter that did not appear to simply being marketed by another company.

Thankfully, the Etekcity one I finally went with because of their year-long full warranty worked perfectly, and Amazon.com gave me back my money on the bad one.  I had to send the bad one back, though.

Ah, but my troubles were not yet over.  For while doing some test recordings, our old VCR proved to be rather messed up.  For it would now only play a tape in fast-forward, which applied to making recordings, as well.

So, in the hope of keeping my mother-in-law entertained for at least a little while, a new [VCR/DVD combo] was also purchased through Amazon.com.  One would think that just a VCR would be cheaper, but I suppose they are considered to be more of a collector’s item than VCR/DVD combos are at this time.

Anyway, my mother-in-law was finally able to watch her programs, and she has not been yelling at me as much lately.  All of the trouble I went through was well worth it—be assured.

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