Wiring and Cabling, Part 2

Last time I mentioned the (eventually) successful connection of the new HDTV and video components to the old stereo system (with the fancy new tuner).  It's working great, even though it means I have 4 remote controls to deal with (5, if you count the "grampa remote" with the big buttons and few features).

The other wiring issue is only electric wiring, and not successful, and I am VERY frustrated.  Some background...  When I retired 8 years ago, I got tired of static electricity in Winter (I could half-turn-on fluorescent lamps just by touching them and stroking the cats caused sparks.  Taking clothes out of the dryer was actually painful) and bought a whole house humidifier.  The brand was Skuttle, and it had a cabinet attached to an opening cut in the main heater output duct.  In the cabinet was a tray of water and a sponge cylinder rotated through the tray of water whenever the heater blower was on.

I bought it locally and had it installed.  It worked great!  No static.  But a problem with the cylinder/drum humidifiers is that they get "gunky" (mold or something).  So when the sponge on the drum couldn't be cleaned anymore (yes I was too stupid/cheap/witless to just buy a new sponge drum), I did some research and found a different kind of humidifier. 

The new one had a honeycomb where water dribbled over the top and air blew through it to add humidity.  It had good ratings.  I installed it myself, but I needed an electrician to come by for a wiring problem I couldn't figure out (an outside humidity detector that adjusted the inside settings to the outside humidity - turned out it was a feature my model didn't have), but he did finish the basic wiring for me since I had paid for a visit).  But it has NEVER worked well in 3 Winters.  I couldn't get the inside humidity above 23%.  The drum type got it up to 35%.  At least there wasn't any static shock...

I should mention that I have a heat pump.  There are good and bad things about heat pumps, but one bad thing is that they dehumidify the inside air as part of the way they work.  Great in Summer, but not so great in Winter.  In Winter, I am fighting the design of the heat pump to dehumidify with a humidifier to improve that.  The condensation-collection container that pumps the collected water into the laundry tub works overtime in Winter.

So I decided to go back to the drum type.  I couldn't find a local retailer/installer, but I found a decent Skuttle brand of the same drum type on Amazon at a great price.

It arrived.  The required duct cutout was smaller than the current Honeywell honeycomb humidifier cutout, so I had to buy some sheet metal, cut a new smaller opening, and attach the sheet metal to cover the older larger hole.  Awkward tin-snip work and getting sheet metal screws holes drilled (never really easy work), but it only took 45 minutes (professional: 10 minutes; me, 45), and I covered all the edges with duct tapes.

I got the water tray and drum installed, attached the water supply, and adjusted the float that controls the water level in the tray (much like a toilet float that keeps the upper reservoir from overflowing).

The last thing was to attach the wiring that makes the drum turn when the heater is on. 

BUSTED!  I can't make any sense of the (undetailed and simple) diagrams in the installation manual.  I've stared at the unit and the instructions 4 separate times over the past 3 days.  As far as I can tell (and admittedly, electricity is NOT my favorite stuff to deal with), the diagram instructions are not only incomplete, but also completely wrong.

For example, electric wires are usually color-coded.  Red for positive, black for neutral.  Not these, they are both black!  Sometimes, electrical wires that are joined (like on a lamp cord) have one side that is smooth and the other ribbed for identification.  Not these.  The system uses a transformer that reduces standard 120 volt A/C current to 24 volt current to power the tiny motor that turn the sponge drum in the water tray. 

And they refer to "enclosing the transformer in the metal box" (for safety I assume).  No metal box, or any place to attach the transformer on the humidifier cabinet.  But there IS a 1" threaded pipe with a nut on it for attaching to SOMETHING. 

It is all quite maddening.  The Skuttle website provides absolutely NO information about installations.  There is a email address for "customer service".  I'll try that in a few minutes, but I don't expect it will be useful.  I'll probably have to hire an electrician to come by and try to figure it out.  Which probably means I could have just bought some other brand (of the same drum type) locally and had it installed at the same total price without any work on my part.

I am so completely annoyed I can't figure this out.  It possible the wiring choices don't really matter.  Immean, if I hook it up one way, the drum rotates clockwise and the other way it rotates counterclockwise and makes no difference.  But it could mean I burn out the whole motor unit.  I don't know enough to tell. 

If anyone who reads this has any guidance about the wiring, PLEASE leave a comment.  I hate to say it, but in my 60s, I'm starting to lose my willingness/ability to "just try it and see what happens"...

Wiring And Cabling

Darn I hate wiring and cable connections.  Give me a shovel and a pile of dirt to move anytime!  There's nothing complicated about shovelling dirt.

But I've had 2 run-ins with wiring stuff lately.  Both annoying, but at least one finally solved.  I'll mention the successful one today.

I've struggled to connect my TV to the stereo system a few times the past decade.  It has never worked. Mostly, the audio and video haven't matched up.  Watching people talk and having the sound even a half second off is disturbing.

Even with the new HDTV, I couldn't get it to work.  The wiring diagrams in the manuals showed wires from the cable box to the stereo.  I pulled the TV stand and the stereo cabinet out many times to look at all the possible connections.  And I don't mean to say that I understand what all those color-coded plugs mean.  But they ARE all labeled better than 20 years ago.  Or 10 years ago.

My Pioneer VSX-42 tuner is a wonder.  It allows more possibilities than I can even comprehend.  I don't even know what "pandora" IS, but I could access it if I wanted to.  Maybe I will soon.  But the problem was that "audio out" from the cable box did not match the timing on the TV picture.

So, I sat back there and stared at the back of the HDTV and stereo system for a while.  There JUST wasn't an "audio out" from the TV that I recognized.  Not even an modern HDMI  audio outlet   I stared, I fumed, I yelled.

But eventually, I saw a weird looking plug on the HDTV labeled "Digital Optical Audio Out".  No idea what that meant.  But I searched the back of the stereo tuner.  The print was so small even my reading glasses weren't enough, I had to crawl out to get a magnifying glass! 

Whoever thinks that it is easy to read orange print on white, or blue on green should be summarily executed.

But I did eventually find a similar plug on the tuner.  It was labelled "Digital Optical Audio In".  I immediately searched the manuals for the HDTV and the tuner.  66 pages of the Pioneer tuner and 35 pages of the Samsung HDTV (estimates) didn't explain WHAT "digital optical" was. 

But I figured, if there is a delay in the audio from the cable box through the stereo (and I wasn' getting any sound from the DVD player), if I could get sound direct from the HDTV to the stereo speakers, that would work for all components AND stop the audio delay.

Keep in mind that I had already spent $40 on various cables I THOUGHT would connect the HDTV to the stereo properly...

So I drove to Best Buy.  Explained the problem.  Asked about "digital optical audio"  He said "you need this" and showed me a cable.  I said "that doesn't look like the plug, and I even pushed the gateway open with a toothpick".  He said that if it has that gateway, this cable WAS the right one cuz that's the only one with a gate.  I bought it and went home.

The TV and the stereo cabinet were still pulled out for access.  I unplugged the red/white "component cables".  I attached the new digital optical cable and turned on the HDTV and the stereo.

And got NOTHING!  But the Pioneer tuner has many choices.  I rotated the knob (and remembering that the first time I got ANY sound from it took 15 seconds ).  When I turned the tuner knob to "TV", I GOT SOUND!  From the TV.  In perfect synch!

But only one speaker was giving sound.  GLOOOOM!

I dragged out the soundless speaker, and it immediately gave sound.  Oh man, just a loose wire connection!  I fixed that right off.

You want to know something odd about modern tuners?  They don't seem to have a speaker balance dial.  Matbe it exists and I haven't found it yet, but I've read and re-read all the "speaker" parts of the manuals.  OK, I pushed the chair, TV, and speakers around a bit, and NOW it is balanced.  It's almost funny, I adjusted myself an the TV to balance the speakers.

Oh and I mentioned previously that I couldn't find the remote control for the Pioneer tuner?  I found it.  Sitting right on top of the old tuner that died. Buried under other stuff in the computer room. 

But now, I am watching great TV AND listening to audio that matches the picture.  And since it comes directly off the TV, it works with all components I have.

Food

Just some food thoughts that work for me...

Brussels sprouts cut in half or quarters, mixed with 4:1 ratio mushsrooms, steamed fer 4 minutes.  With simple butter, melted shredded cheese and milk, or cheese and a little lemon juice.

Or asparagus the same ways...  Or broccoli.

Or pork stew.  Boston butt cut into 1" cubes, simmered with cubed Yukon Gold potatoes, celery, carrots, and leeks for 20 minutes with a flour slurry or cornstarch added the last few minutes.  With crushed garlic and a lot of oregano.  Boston butt doesn't get tough.

Or hot italian sausage smothered in onion and green bell peppers.

Or chicken thighs sauteed in little olive oil covered so they sort of bake, but brown nicely.  Its hard to overcook chicken thighs.

I love thinking about food even when I'm not hungry, LOL!

Sometimes, Doing Nothing Is Good

And by that title, I mean that good things sometimes come to those who just sit in frustration.

Warning, long post ahead!

Background:

Six years ago, I desired to connect my stereo system to my 1st HDTV because flat screens are too thin to have good built-in speakers.  I couldn't get it to work.  Oh, I got TV sound through the stereo system, but in one arrangement, I got off-synch sound from both the stereo and the TV which was too annoying to listen to.  In the other, I got only stereo system sound but with a 1/2 second delay which was too annoying to watch.  So I gave up and separated the 2 systems.

Two years ago, my stereo tuner died and I ended up with a Pioneer VSX-42.  It did everything!  Way more than I had any use for, as a matter of fact.  Not just controlling stereo components, but the TV, the DVD, internet radio, gameboxes, Pandora, bluetooth, and some things I don't even know what they are!  All I wanted was a new tuner.

Turns out it made my old "dedicated buttons radio station controller" obsolete.  I miss having dedicated buttons to 20 radio stations.  With the Pioneer, you just have a single preset button and if you want station #12, you have to press it 12 times.  Not exactly the end of the world, but annoying.  And instead of dedicated buttons for each function (like radio, CD, tape deck, phono, and all those others I don't understand), there is a dial you turn to see each function choice displayed on a LED screen.

As you might guess, I am not intuitively good at modern electronic components.  I have to really work at it.  But as a "success through persistence" kind of person person who can (eventually) sift through instruction manuals, I get by.  Seriously, sometimes I actually draw flowcharts to figure out what the technical manual is trying (badly) to tell me.

So with the new Samsung HDTV in place, I dragged the old stereo system back into the TV room (I wanted to rearrange the rooms anyway).  First thing was to add a surge protector to the new HDTV.  A tech guy (not the floor salesman) at the store told me that power surges cause the cycling on/off problem I had with the previous HDTV.  So I bought one that had 2 more outlets than I thought I needed.

At home, I discovered I needed a 2nd coaxial cable, so I started a list of more stuff I needed.  That's when I decided to try again to connect the old stereo system to the HDTV.  I figured that "Hey, this Pioneer control unit seems designed to be the central control point for seriously integrated home theater system, I have to at least be able to listen to the TV through the stereo speakers".

So there I was, with the HDTV stand pulled away from the wall in one direction and the stereo cabinet angled in the opposite direction so I could see all the ports and cables.  I had a flashlight and all the manuals by my side.  Well, "almost all".  I couldn't find the Pioneer manual.  But I looked stuff up on the internet and I had some basic diagrams of various cable connections.

First instruction was to find the "audio out" ports on the TV or cable box.  Naturally, nothing was labled "audio out" on either.  The TV had "audio in" ports and an "optical audio out" with a plug shape I have never seen anywhere.  The cable box had some ports just labeled "AV"  The Pioneer tuner had every type of plug imaginable.  It was daunting!  I was very worried that connecting cables to the wrong ports might blow out some piece of equipment.

But I was willing to try.  Actually, just re-attaching the stereo speakers to the Pioneer tuner was an exercise in frustration.  Whoever designed the connectors was either an idiot or a sadist.  There are little knobs to loosen to expose a tiny hole to stick bare wire into.  The knobs are so close together that you need tweezers to hold the speaker wires to get them at the connection holes.  Anyway, it took me 15 minutes to guide the speaker wire into the required spots.  My previous tuner had connections where the wire went into a hole in the facing side just like sticking an electrical plug into a wall socket.  Who designs these things?  But I got that done.

Then came the cable connection fun.  The internet helped.  At one site, I found a reference to "unlabeled audio ports" being "out", and the cable box was unlabeled.  So I plugged in the red/white/yellow cable there.  Looking at the Pioneer tuner ports was like looking at a final exam for The Geek Squad hiring test.  The entire back of the thing is nothing but ports of all shapes and labels!

There are 6 different HDMI ports, several pairs of regular round red/white/yellow ports, several "optical", some "component" ports, and "some other stuff".

I finally chose to connect the cables from the cable TV box labeled "AV" to the Pioneer ports labelled "sat/cable" (satellite or cable TV I assume)  I crawled out, set the Pioneer to "sat/cable" and counted to 5 (set to "radio", the sound comes on instantaneously).  No sound.  Discouraged, I crawled back behind the equipment and tried some other connections.  When I had the cable box audio cables connected to DVD and nothing happened I just sat there discouraged.

And then, after about 30 seconds, I suddenly heard the TV through the stereo speakers!  HAL-aluhiah!!!  30 seconds in FOREVER in electronics time.  But I was never going to remember that the TV was controlled on the Pioneer tuner set to"DVD".  So I cautiously switched the cables back to the sat/cable ports and waited.  Damn, the TV sound came on after only 15 seconds.

And that's why I'm saying that sometimes doing nothing is good!  If I hadn't just sat there behind the electronics and glared balefully at the ports for a while, I never would never have known that I had the right connections!  Doing nothing for 30 seconds (a really long time to sit sometimes) worked.  Just sitting there solved my problem.

After that success, I sat down in my TV chair to listen to the speakers.  It was sightly fuzzy and minutely out of synch.  So I studied the Samsung manual.  I had already set it to "external speakers" so that I would know if the cable connection were working.  But I found that I had both the TV internal speakers AND the external stereo speakers on.  I shut off the TV speakers.  Much better.

But the speakers weren't balanced, so I went to the Pioneer tuner to adjust the balance between the 2 speakers.  The left speaker is a little further away from my chair than the right speaker.  Guess what?  There is no speaker balance on the Pioneer tuner.  WHAT?  Well, apparently you can download an app to do that.  Great, I don't have a smartphone...

There ARE ways though to adjust balance.  I moved the left speaker forward a couple feet and angled the right speaker away slightly.  I tested it by closing my eyes and aiming my head at the balanced sound point (try it, it works).  When I was off the center of the TV, I adjusted them again and again.  I have it balanced pretty good now, but it looks a little odd.  I'd rather have a speaker balancer.

The Pioneer manual says I could balance the speakers and have other controls I would like using the remote control.  I wish I had it.  I searched the house for 2 hours looking for it.  I know where I would normally keep it.  It wasn't there.  Nor in any other spot I could thing of.  I may have to buy a replacement.  Mainly because I change the volume a lot as I move from the TV room to the kitchen (where I can still see the TV as I prepare food), and back.  Adjusting the volume manually on the stereo is a bit annoying.

Want to bet that the day I receive a replacement remote control for the Pioneer tumner, I find the ols one within a week?  LOL!

BUT, the point is that I figured out all the connections, they work, and I understand the system right now. 

This is a MAJOR SUCCESS in a lifelong battle with electronics.

Reality TV

All the "reality" shows on TV are utterly fake in my opinion.

But I have a particular dislike for Survivorman (a TV series).   *I* personally consider it all fake.  The first episode (years ago), Survivorman made a big deal out of how he was completely alone.  Then, in that episode, he walked down a path through the woods AND THE CAMERA FOLLOWED HIM!  Think about that... 

I was in a human prehistory discussion group at the time.   Another early episode had him "desperate" to make a hole in 6" ice (to catch a fish for food) but unsuccessful.  We immediately came up with 6 different ways to do that.  And then suddenly a new person joined the discussion, defending Survivorman against every example of apparent falseness.  After a couple days, the site administrator posted that he had tracked the new member's IP address and (wait for it), it was Survivorman's address!!!  

I only mention that to say this...  After some (14?) years of Survivorman, the reality there is no greater.  I saw the teaser ad for the new season and I laughed my ass off.  I actually had to pay attention to it several times to be sure.

The teaser ad shows Survivorman cutting a sapling trunk into a sharp spear point.  Then you see him standing in the water (with a VERY FIERCE expression) waiting to stab a fish for his dinner.  That's OK so far as it goes.  If you spear a fish with a good upwards movement, the fish will stay on the spear.

Except...  The point of his wooden spear looks bent over!  Seriously, it looks like he pounded the point on the ground a few times OR it was deliberately bent to look like a barb.  But it won't work either way.  Essentially, Survivorman is standing in the water threatening to jab a fish with the eraser end of a pencil, LOL!  The fishes scales will block THAT everytime.  

If you want to see actual sensible survivor skills without hyped drama, try http://aloneinthewilderness.com/.  It's about a guy who simply lived in remote Alaska for some time and succeded in the daily tasks required to get by.

THAT guy was real.

Its available in several versions at Amazon.  Just don't accidentally order the Survivorman title of a similar name.  Its not the one I'm recommending.

Miscellaneous

1.  I read a cat joke today that I wanted to post on the cat blog, but I was worried too many people wouldn't understand and I avoid insulting people.  One never knows sometimes.  But I'll take a chance here (because this is MY blog): 

Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar, and doesn't.

OK, I'm a bit odd sometimes.  Science humor isn't always the easiest to follow.  I suppose English majors find puns in Dante's Inferno and Music majors in Mozart.

2.  Just had an interesting idea of a way for cats to open doors, but it might be patentable, so I can't tell you about it.

3.  The President's State Of The Union speech is on now, but I'm not listening to it.  I like President Obama, but I don't pay any attention to speeches.  It's what politicians DO that counts, not what they say.  And if he says anything really interesting, it will be on the TV tomorrow ALL day.

4.  I need some new science/nature/history DVDs.  I'm beginning to memorize the narrative on all the ones I have.

5.  I spent an hour today trying to make the various remotes all work the various TV devices.  Moderate success, but will post in detail some other day.

6.  You know those thin magnetic ads (designed to be stuck on the refrigerator) that come on phone books and some few other sources?  Did you know that if you stick them on your car they don't blow off?  I'm going to use them to make removable "bumper" stickers by glue-sticking messages on a group of them.  LOL!

7.  I bought new calenders several weeks ago.  One was a Wizard Of Oz calendar.  It is about 2' high by 14" wide.  The actual monthly calendar part is only 5"by 7".  That's a calendar?  I need my reading glasses to see the dates! 

8.  I have learned with the new smart HDTV that I am far behind the tech curve.  I am debating whether to TRY to catch up or just let it go.  I don't even have a smart phone...  How old do I have to be before it's aceptable to not even try anymore?

Why I hate Microsoft

I play Civilization 2 on the old PC.  Its not connected to anything but it does run.  After playing a game scenario twice, I discovered that I couldn't overwrite the previous games of the same dates and was slipping into the previous game versions on the same months (the game progresses by months). I was playing the exact same game as previously.  The third trip around the game. I caught on.

That kind of thing pisses my off royally.   And I really wasn't calm about it. 

So I just spent 4 HOURS  digging into the PC and deleting most of its functions until it finally stopped fighting me.  You wouldn't believe what it was doing.  I found where it saved all the previous games.  But that wasn't enough.  Microsoft insists on protecting you from losing old games. 

It kept COPIES of all the previous games!  Every *&#$*@g time I tried to replay the designed scenario (designed to be replayed you understand),  good old Microsoft insisted on reloading the original version of the first game I played by month of the scenario.  It took me a few tries to figure THAT out.  Sort of a "Wait, I didn't do THAT this time".   But the computer did.  Everytime I hit a month file, it loaded the old one.  I was going crazy trying to change my strategy and it wouldn't let me.

I had to dig into the actual files and drag them to the death realm.  And I'm angry because I spent 5 hours playing a WWII game scenario only to have Microsoft overlay OLD games of the same WWII months over the new one AND I had to spend 4 hours killing the old files it hid very carefully. 

I'm going to repeat this so that it is clear.  Microsoft not only kept, say,"March 1942" so that it loaded that old file when I started again in Feb 1941 and gradually played to March 1942.  It kept a COPY of the old file (really copy.filename) so just finding and deleting the original version on the scenario wasn't ENOUGH to clear the game for a new start. 

They are either evil or abominably stupid,  I don't know which and I don't care...   And this is on a computer I deliberately disconnected from the internet for safety's sake.

There are times when I can barely express my "despicification" of Microsoft's controls.

Snow

Well, we are getting our 1st meaningful snowfall in the Washington DC area since 2011 (or maybe 2010 - winters get confusing because they cross over the New Year).  Anyway, after that seriously bad winter a few years ago when we had several snow storms over a foot deep, I bought a snowblower.  I haven't had an excuse to use it since, so last Spring I moved it into the storage shed in the back yard. 

I was caught by surprise by this snow.  I had stayed up all night Sunday so I only got up after dark Monday evening.  I live alone, I'm retired, and I've never done well with a 24 hour day.  So eventually it shifts around the dial so much that every couple of weeks I just stay up all night and all day to get back on schedule.

So I only found out about the snow forecast at 9 pm yesterday.  I sure didn't feel like going out to the storage shed in the cold and dark and getting the snowblower running to bring it to the garage.  And snow forecasts are often wildly wrong around here.  We are in a transition zone between Caribbean Highs and Canadian Lows.  A 6" snow forecast is just as likely to be 1" or 12" but seldom what is forecast.  Washington DC and all the local schools were shut down in December for what resulted in 2" of snow and then a 1/4" of freezing rain (but the roads stayed clear).  I saw a Weather Channel report once that said Washington DC was one of the trickiest places to forecast snowfall.  Its a combination of Jet Stream variability, the Appalachian Mountains and the Chesapeake Bay.  Baltimore to the north is snow country, Richmond to the south is rain country, and we are right in the middle!

I decided to wait til this afternoon to see how much snow we were really getting.  If I needed the snowblower, at least it would be daylight!  By 3 pm, we had about 3" of snow, and (unusual for this area) it was dry and powdery.  If it gets worse (not likely as it is supposed to stop about now), I can still drag out the snowblower.  But for 4" of dry powdery snow (we DO usually get heavy wet snow), I'm not going to bother.  Two neighbors who I know keep their snowblowers in their garages simply shoveled their driveways just before dark.

I think I will just use a shovel tomorrow.  But I also think that as soon as the weather improves a bit over the weekend, I will make sure the snowblower is working and move it into the garage for the rest of the winter...

Favorite Movies

Everyone has some favorite movies.  But I mean the ones you can just watch over and over again.  I suspect they are not ones with a surprise ending.  Who would watch a surprise ending more then once?

My first is "The Incredibles".  Yeah, I know, its animated.  But it's non-stop action.  And I love the idea that superheros get married and have superhero children.  As someone who bought Fantastic Four #1 (and stupidly had no idea it would be worth a lot someday), I like the idea of some real life in comic book heroes.  I love all the characters in "The Incredibles", but a real enjoyment of Dash.

The 2nd is 'Independence Day".  There is no way I cannot cheer for the human race surviving.  Yet we also did in "World of The Worlds" and I find that movie generally boring.  So there is something else about "Independence Day'.  The characters. 

The 3rd is more recent.  "Battleship".  I read the description of it and went "ho hum" (aliens vs a battleship, right). But I was bored one evening and watched it.   Blew my socks off!  I've watched it 4 more times in the past month and have thoroughly enjoyed it each time.  Twice tonight!

The aliens made some sense.  I loved the idea of a hand with only 4 opposable  "thumbs" (all thumbs, LOL).   They seemed pretty good with machinery.  I also liked the chin bristles.  No apparent purpose and no consequence to the movie but it probably has some meaning on their world.  Maybe they were ancient quills that pevented them being eaten.  A little evolution thought in there.  I liked the idea that they came from a dark world (or were nocturnal).  And I liked that those differences weren't explained.  It wasn't related to the outcome of the movie, but it was a nice touch. 

There are also some interesting differences with the aliens.  They move in sudden jumps with their weapons ships on the sea (just imagine their railroad system).  And they were bipeds but had some problems with light.  I'm thinking intelligent cave frogs here. 

I also liked the way the aliens disregarded perceived non-threats.  Anything not aimed directly at them was simply ignored.  I could surmise they were once (and recently) a prey species. 

But they are all great nonstop action movies of a type *I* can watch repeatedly

The New TV

I'll admit it, I made a serious mistake buying a Sharp 80" LCD/LED TV.  I don't want to insult anyone who likes LCD TVs or large ones.  I'll just say the appearance and color didn't satisfy MY eyes in MY TV room.  People have different things they value in TV viewing.  But I'm not used to making decisions I regret. 

So it was some humility I went back to the store  and asked what it would cost to get a different TV.  Their answer was that they would take back the TV at no cost other than a new deliver fee BUT it had to be an exchange. 

That sure seemed fair!  It was a slight dilemma that I wanted a Panasonic Viera 65" plasma (like the old one but slightly larger).  Panasonic (I was told in two places) was getting out of the plasma business.  Maintenence might get tricky.  But they DID have the 2nd highest rated (and highest rated Plasma set) by Consumer Reports).     Sort of.  Not the exact model,  but a newer one (5500 series old and 8500 series newer).  And it was a 60" vs a 64" 8500.  Well how different can the be? 

I looked at it for a long time.  Actually, I looked at some "4K" sets too.  The picture was astonishing.  But I don't like being the first user of a technology.  That got me a Beta Max once and I learned a lesson there. 

So today, they delivered a Samung" 60" plasma in exchange for the Sharp 80" LCD/LED set. 

In came the new.

Out went the (sort of) old.

I was thrilled the instant the Samung plasma was turned on.  I had to adjust the colors a bit, but it was PERFECT real fast.  And it was the right size for the room too. 

Here's the 80".  That is REALLY too big!  I couldn't even see the whole screen from my chair.  Bigger is not always better.

And here is the 60".  

Never mind the scarcity of stuff around the TV., I pulled stuff away for installation safety.  I will move the stereo cabinet with the multimedia controls and the great DCM speakers to the left and right to connect it to the TV for better sound, but not tonight.  One thing one day at a time.  Do one useful thing every day and you're never unhappy.

Tonight, I'm just enjoying the outrageously "OMG" great  picture...

Not accepting my initial poor decision was the best choice in the past year.  Sometimes, you just have to admit mistakes and pay what it costs to correct them.  In this case. it was an extra $200 delivery fee.  And it could have been worse.  I was prepared for "worse".

I think I will write a nice "thank you" email to HHGREGG.