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I've been without a TV for a few months now. At least in the office. The one we got down the road at a garage sale carked it a while back and I had to move my little monitor upstairs to the kids' room.
While it hasn't been a struggle, it means that I can't (say) have a current affairs show on in the background while I answer my email.
I've kept an eye open for a replacement, but it seems the only ones in the rather minimal price range I'm happy with are old models with rotary dials and stuff, or otherwise totally unsuitable.
Today I spotted Aldi's ad in the paper, and they had a TV tuner card as one of their Thursday specials. So I nicked out, did an extra shop, and got myself one for $69.
Installed it in the server, but somehow Server 2003 doesn't like it, and though I did everything right, the monitor window remained stubbornly black.
Tried on the workstation under XP Pro and it works fine. So I've been playing with it and feeling a little overwhelmed by all the features. Apparently I can record onto hard disk, take stills from the feed, preview several channels at once. It even comes with a remote, just in case I can contrive to move myself out of reach of the mouse.
It also has a FM tuner built-in, which is probably not a lot of use to me, given the stereo just behind me. Which has its own remote control...
In other news, amberjane has moved to New Zealand, taking rubyjules' Bookcrossing Diary with her and finally finally making a journal entry. I thought she might have been a dud, but she's looking good! Perhaps she was distracted by having to move house to another country.
Not that I normally watch Oprah - I just wanted to have something on in the background...
While it hasn't been a struggle, it means that I can't (say) have a current affairs show on in the background while I answer my email.
I've kept an eye open for a replacement, but it seems the only ones in the rather minimal price range I'm happy with are old models with rotary dials and stuff, or otherwise totally unsuitable.
Today I spotted Aldi's ad in the paper, and they had a TV tuner card as one of their Thursday specials. So I nicked out, did an extra shop, and got myself one for $69.
Installed it in the server, but somehow Server 2003 doesn't like it, and though I did everything right, the monitor window remained stubbornly black.
Tried on the workstation under XP Pro and it works fine. So I've been playing with it and feeling a little overwhelmed by all the features. Apparently I can record onto hard disk, take stills from the feed, preview several channels at once. It even comes with a remote, just in case I can contrive to move myself out of reach of the mouse.
It also has a FM tuner built-in, which is probably not a lot of use to me, given the stereo just behind me. Which has its own remote control...
In other news, amberjane has moved to New Zealand, taking rubyjules' Bookcrossing Diary with her and finally finally making a journal entry. I thought she might have been a dud, but she's looking good! Perhaps she was distracted by having to move house to another country.
Not that I normally watch Oprah - I just wanted to have something on in the background...
