Basement update

Whoa... it's been quite a while since my last update here, and a lot has been going on.

So, the update on the basement. No, it's not done yet, but we've been enjoying it all the same.

We were on the verge of having it complete, until the electrician went to put in the pot lights in the home theatre room. He cut a couple of holes to install the light, but when he reached in, he wasn't happy with what he found.

"Hey, you know you've got insulation in the ceiling?"

"Ummmmm... yup. It's supposed to be there. It's been in the plan since day 1."

"Yeah, well, I can't install THESE pot lights into a ceiling with insulation. You need to get the other kind, the ones with the big metal boxes."

Well la-de-da, thank you very much for telling me that NOW.

I shan't bother you with everything that happened after that, except to say that the contractors were out a few days later, cutting holes in the ceiling and building drywall boxes into the ceiling so that the lights we had originally purchased could be installed. The plan was to cut open the ceiling and build the boxes, have someone come out a couple days later and do the taping/mudding again, wait a couple more days for it to dry, sand it, paint it, and then have the lights installed. That was all a month ago at this point. All that has been done is that the boxes have been build and the ceiling put back and taped. We're still waiting for paint and light installation.

Luckily, though, none of that has taken away from us using the basement, so we aren't in any hurry to have the work finished. Besides, they don't get paid until the work is done, so if I can earn a little bit of interest on the money before giving it to them, then I'm happy.

And how about my HD problems?

Well, I called up Eastlink about switching to a box with an HDMI connector. However, those connectors are only available on PVR boxes, which they wanted to change me another $10/mn for. The $15/mn I'm paying now hardly seems worth it, so I certainly wasn't going to add another $10 to that total. Besides, we just don't watch enough TV to make having a PVR worthwhile.

So, no problem - I went to Future Shop and bought a DVI->HMDI connector, hooked it all up, and now I've got a much better picture. Sort of...

Some channels have been absolutely amazing - CBS in particular. Some channels are really awful - TSN. Some are good sometimes, but not others - PBS, CBC, etc. Annoyed with the whole picture quality problem, I asked a videophile acquaintance about what I should expect as far as quality is concerned and he gave me a lot of good information.

Most of the shows that I've seen on CBS, NBC, Fox are shot in HD, so naturally they look amazing. Shows shot in HD for CBC and PBS also look amazing. However, I think PBS sort of upconverts a lot of non-HD shows to HD and, as a result, the quality can be pretty poor. The biggest disappointment, of course, was Hockey Night in Canada. I was really annoyed by the terrible (and inconsistent) picture quality. It turns out that all of the shows that look really good have had lots of work to ensure they look good. Because they are filmed and broadcast later, the engineers can spend lots of time fiddling with the compression algorithms. For live broadcasts, however, they have no such luxury. They're pretty much stuck with a middle of the road configuration, resulting in some things looking incredible, but others being outright horrific. Hockey, being a fast-moving sport, suffers greatly. American Idol (no, I don't watch that useless tripe - I was only experimenting) is pretty good. Things like giant logo screen wipes are just plain awful.

One of the major reasons why I wanted HD was so that I can watch sports. Given that sports suffer in picture quality the most, and the fact that we get our HD channels from eastern Canada, resulting in everything being on an hour later, I doubt that I'm going to keep the HD stuff.

It's a shame, though. I love watching PBSHD, and I totally love the on-screen guide that comes with the HD box. I've been doing a bit of research into switching to ExpressVu, but I think I'm too lazy to make the switch. ExpressVu has a lot more HD channels (like Discovery!) that I would really enjoy, but the price to play is pretty high. We have 3 TVs in the house, so we'd have to get 3 receivers, and that really sucks.

I'm going to hang in for another couple of months to see what happens. If Eastlink adds more HD channels, I may continue my subscription. If not, I'll be getting rid of it.

- Mike