Why is it that they can put a man on the Moon … well, they used to be able to, how about, why is they can build PC components that manage to plug together and automatically work, even though they need fancy software drivers and OS calls and all that, but they can’t manage to come up with A/V components that really are plug-and-play?
Spent about three hours today getting the A/V setup put back together, now that we have the new cable box. The complication was that the new cable box doesn’t have an RF coaxial cable out, just RCA composite audio/video (the familiar red/white and yellow cables) and S-Video (oh, and composite RGB and optical stuff, but that’s even worse). Meanwhile, the RCA A/V receiver is short some extra inputs, so I wasn’t able to reconnect the CD changer (we can still listen to single CDs in the receiver’s tray, but that’s not quite as convenient for parties). And, of course, the VCR is analog in/out only, so the cable box can’t go S-Video to the receiver, but has to go analog (yellow) video to the receiver. And the receiver can’t go just S-Video to the TV (which is now functioning solely as a monitor, not as sound), but needs a yellow video cable, too.
Bleah.
Well, at least we can (a) watch DVDs again, and (b) play video tapes, and (c) dump stuff from the DVR to tape, too.
The box (and cable) have been working just great, too. So that, at least, is copacetic.
Well, this would certainly take care of my running-out-of-ports problem …