Last summer my father bought himself a 42 in plasma. He lives in Ohio, I live in Florida. When I visited him shortly after he had regular cable, so I instructed him to upgrade to HD service (he has Insight). Dutifully, he did.
Over the phone I would ask him what he thought and he would say its great and whatever. I went to visit him again over the christmas holiday weekend and was eager to share some HD time with the old man.
When he was in the other room I pulled out his channel listing and found the HD channel line up and switched to them to see what he had, especially the stuff that I don't have! When I switched to HBO-HD it was rather anti-climactic. The picture quality was not that good, and there were letterbox bars on the top and bottom.
Not allowing myself to get discouraged, I turned it back to the greatest non-HD channel, and his favorite, the History Channel. Not to long after that we went to Big Boys for breakfast. On the way I asked him about HD and he said, with confidence, " I really don't see what the fuss is about it, it really doesn't look that much better.... and my eyes aren't that good anyways."
I knew something wasn't right, due to the letterboxing??, so I assured him I would figure out what was wrong.
When we got back I directed myself to the TV, focused on the mission at hand. At first I was thinking it was something stupid, like the picture zoom was off or something. I was able to stretch the screen apporpriately, but still knew I was not in the HD zone. Like a junky craving his fix, I continued to fumble around his remote.
After pushing several buttons, I finally found the input button. The TV immediately switched to Video 1. A breakthrough I thought! I continued to push.. Video 2.. Component 1.. still nothing... Then component 2. Solaris was on and the colors came to life!
Immediately I switched it back to the Coax option and wait with great eagerness for his return.
I sat him down.. still playing Solaris.. and said "dad, this is what you have been watching" then switched the input to Component 2 and said, with great pride "dad, let me introduce you to HD!" I felt victorious.
Immediately he noticed the difference and asked me to switch back and forth again just to confirm that his eyes were not playing tricks on him.
The rest of the afternoon we switched back and forth between some nature program on Discovery and Universal HD. I told him about how cool football was and wished that I could watch a game with him, not realizing the Vikings were playing that night.
While switching through the channels, to my delight, I did stumble upon the Vikings game just before kick-off and we watched it as we prepared for company that evening.
He was very excited to share with him mother and sister his new-found toy and I was happy for him.
I left Christmas morning for home, but when I got home (I was lucky to make it back through atlanta, I guess a lot of folk were stuck in Cincinnati) I called and he had been watching HD all morning.
Now it would be a simple enough mistake for someone not really knowing what they were doing while switching from DVD back to cable, but when the cable company set it up, they didn't explain to him about which input on his TV to use.
Its kind of sad that they left him in the dark like that. Ignorance, in this case, wasn't necessarily his fault. He just wanted to be able to turn it on and have it work and he trusted Insight to set it up for him to make that happen.
Over the phone I would ask him what he thought and he would say its great and whatever. I went to visit him again over the christmas holiday weekend and was eager to share some HD time with the old man.
When he was in the other room I pulled out his channel listing and found the HD channel line up and switched to them to see what he had, especially the stuff that I don't have! When I switched to HBO-HD it was rather anti-climactic. The picture quality was not that good, and there were letterbox bars on the top and bottom.
Not allowing myself to get discouraged, I turned it back to the greatest non-HD channel, and his favorite, the History Channel. Not to long after that we went to Big Boys for breakfast. On the way I asked him about HD and he said, with confidence, " I really don't see what the fuss is about it, it really doesn't look that much better.... and my eyes aren't that good anyways."
I knew something wasn't right, due to the letterboxing??, so I assured him I would figure out what was wrong.
When we got back I directed myself to the TV, focused on the mission at hand. At first I was thinking it was something stupid, like the picture zoom was off or something. I was able to stretch the screen apporpriately, but still knew I was not in the HD zone. Like a junky craving his fix, I continued to fumble around his remote.
After pushing several buttons, I finally found the input button. The TV immediately switched to Video 1. A breakthrough I thought! I continued to push.. Video 2.. Component 1.. still nothing... Then component 2. Solaris was on and the colors came to life!
Immediately I switched it back to the Coax option and wait with great eagerness for his return.
I sat him down.. still playing Solaris.. and said "dad, this is what you have been watching" then switched the input to Component 2 and said, with great pride "dad, let me introduce you to HD!" I felt victorious.
Immediately he noticed the difference and asked me to switch back and forth again just to confirm that his eyes were not playing tricks on him.
The rest of the afternoon we switched back and forth between some nature program on Discovery and Universal HD. I told him about how cool football was and wished that I could watch a game with him, not realizing the Vikings were playing that night.
While switching through the channels, to my delight, I did stumble upon the Vikings game just before kick-off and we watched it as we prepared for company that evening.
He was very excited to share with him mother and sister his new-found toy and I was happy for him.
I left Christmas morning for home, but when I got home (I was lucky to make it back through atlanta, I guess a lot of folk were stuck in Cincinnati) I called and he had been watching HD all morning.
Now it would be a simple enough mistake for someone not really knowing what they were doing while switching from DVD back to cable, but when the cable company set it up, they didn't explain to him about which input on his TV to use.
Its kind of sad that they left him in the dark like that. Ignorance, in this case, wasn't necessarily his fault. He just wanted to be able to turn it on and have it work and he trusted Insight to set it up for him to make that happen.
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