Surviving without TV?

[papaof2]

OMG!!  No TV!!  How will we survive???

The big (50") plasma TV hiccupped today.   We weren't watching it when the passing thunderstorm did a
FLASH!
BOOM!
very close to the house (no lights flickered, so nothing that affected the power and no outside damage discovered - yet).  However, the TV no longer talks to the cable box via the HDMI connection.  Looks like we also lost the HDMI switchbox (choosing cable, DVD, BluRay or Android TV box).  The lights work but the video is no longer passing through the switch :-(  That was not an instant analysis - it required bringing the cable box and the 19" TV up from the basement (that's for whoever is on the treadmill), swapping out the HDMI cable from the cable box to the TV (the spare cable I ran the last time I replaced those cables) and included digging out the small amplified antenna to verify that off-air reception still worked (had 30+ channels with the antenna near a window).

Will we spend $500+ for a new TV?  Not planning to: this TV is "only" 7 years old and has RGB component video inputs, the cable box and the BluRay player have RGB component video outputs and I'll have to free the DVD player/recorder from the rat's nest of wiring around it to see what outputs it has (or maybe go hunt up the manual ;-)  If the DVD player has RGB component outputs, I'll get an RGB video switch and wire things together that way.  A quick check on Ebay shows that the cables and a manual switchbox would cost less than $45, so I would try that route before spending $500 on a new TV.  Am I cheap?  You betcha!

Update: A quick check of woot.com for 50" TVs finds factory refurbed Samsung TVs starting in the $700-$800 range. That $45 solution is looking even better ;-)

[papaof2]

I found some of that "yet" part - the USB to RS485 communications adapter for one of the solar charge controllers didn't survive the near-by lightning. I noticed that the data hadn't updated and down in the fine print (literally, the text status scroll at the bottom of the screen) there was a "COM4 not responding" message - which is even smaller on the UltraViewer copy of that Win7 screen on my XP laptop (UltraViewer is a great tool for remote monitoring - and it's free for personal use). I managed to find and install a replacement USB to RS485 converter (USB dongle that looks like a thumb drive with 2 wire connector on the end) after repairing my jeweler's screwdriver - the spinner that you rest your index finger on while turning the shank with your thumb and middle finger had come off, so clamp it in the bench vise's add-on plastic jaws and use a nail set to expand the top of the shank just enough to retain the spinner. The communications repair brought my stock of the USB-RS485 adapters down to 2 so I ordered 4 more - with 2 in service, I should have replacements when needed - that's one replaced last year and one so far this year - and we're just getting into summer thunderstorm season. Have I mentioned having backups for your backups before?

[bretf]

Back when TV made the switch to all digital, my wife got the convertor box. It collected dust for months. In late fall, I hooked it up and did all the programming. 
After clicking through the channels, I shook my head and turned the TV off.

That was 45 minutes I could've been doing something more useful.

Now, we have a modern TV, still on antennae, but wife got us Netflix.
She's out of town now. I've been surviving for three nights without TV with three more to go.
We're in a heatwave here so it's given me extra time to edit.
Haven't missed the TV for an instant.

[papaof2]

Beyond weather radar (faster than the laptop display) and forecasts, I'm more likely to watch "How It's Made" (12 hour marathon every weekend, so I check the schedule and record the ones of interest to watch at something other than the 0430 scheduled time) or something on the Discovery Channel ("Life in the ER" or similar) or The Smithsonian Channel (the last two are great places to pick up disaster ideas, such as a tractor rolling over on someone or Yellowstone's 600,000 year eruption cycle and that the most recent one was 640,000 years ago ;-)

The retiree deal for Uverse (phone, internet, TV) is less hassle than changing providers every year to get the "best" rate (one of our kids does that) and while the price isn't the "best", it isn't bad. However, they don't have decent (if any) backup at their subscriber carrier terminal (fiber optic equipment out here) - I doubt that any of the VOIP providers do: if your house doesn't have power most people won't know that the carrier is not providing service - and a power outage of appreciable size takes out that service. However, the "terminal" (the router for phone, internet and TV) does have a backup battery - probably to ensure the phone service stays up - (replaced that last year) that's supposed to last 3 hours (it doesn't, so I added a small UPS (APC BGE-70) to provide power for an hour or so). And there are days when the 300 channels are a "vast wasteland".

The active antenna is a leftover from the days I worked at a desk in the basement and had a 19" (?) TV on the wall above the desk with a converter box on it and the video input on the TV (accessed by the remote) ran to a camera that looked out back. All that is still in place but my "work desk" is now wherever I can put the laptop. There's also a "real" antenna (all metal UHF Yagi) on a shelf in the basement. That would provide decent coverage when using the battery-powered 7" HDTV with zero additional power requirement. You didn't know a physical antenna was a prep item?

[papaof2]

Spoke with our nearest neighbor about the lightning ZAP and apparently it was closer to them as they had one breaker trip and they lost their fiber internet. The AT&T repair guy had to replace the fiber interface unit (where the fiber comes in and then goes to the "subscriber terminal"). I found it very interesting that the optical fiber interface (nothing metallic outside the house) had been zapped. I didn't ask which breaker had tripped but I wonder if it was the one that feeds that equipment.

$50 for parts, time to remove the big TV and drill a new hole in the back of the A/V cabinet for more wiring (3 x 5 for RGB video and stereo audio) from 3 devices to the new RGB switchbox now on top of the A/V cabinet, getting all that wiring tagged, connected to the proper device and then run through the new hole and connected to the switch. Then getting the TV back in place and the cables connected to it - and we have HD TV again. The rats' nest of wiring in the A/V cabinet is bigger but all the new wires are identified on both ends. We'll be watching for sales on similar size TV's for a while but I can read the fine print at the bottom of the screen so the picture seems to be close to as good as the HDMI interface was.