A few weeks ago, my wife had to replace her old computer. It was running Windows 7 Home Version. She got a laptop with Windows 10. No fancy touch screen, just your basic garden variety Dell laptop. Windows 10 doesn’t like Internet Explorer and stops responding. Outlook has also decided a few times to take time off. After years of using Explorer, getting used to Firefox is a pain the arse.
Oh, and Windows 10 in sleep mode on a laptop can be fun too. Sometimes it decides to “sleep in” when you open the computer. There are work arounds, but, well it seems Microsoft has decided they don’t need to put out a quality product anymore.
We have remodeled the basement as an entertainment room. I had thought the banging your head against the wall work was done. Just touch up some paint and two light fixture that replaced, but otherwise done. Sure.
We wired for cable and put in the electrical boxes we would need. Today we bought a Vizo 32 inch for living room and a Hitachi Roku 55 inch for Entertainment Room.
The Vizo still needs a cable box. Okay, no, not okay, but I don’t want to spend a fortune on more equipment. Comcast switched out the old box for a new one with an HDMI cable. Once it was set up the picture is great. The sound? What sound? Why not build a good sound system into the TV? The manual is found on line, or so the limited instructions say. So far I haven’t had much luck with that either.
We did buy a sound bar and subwoofer for the Hitachi Roku. My hearing is going south and the sound bar is a must. But for a Vizo 32-inch TV, one would think the sound would be better. Tomorrow I am picking up sound bar at Wally World.
Now setting up the Hitachi Roku 4k UHD TV started out easy. Then I got to the screen saying enter this code to activate the TV. No go. The sales clerk at Sam’s Club forgot to inform us that the Hitachi Roku would not work without a one-time registration fee with Roku. And it is not like we didn’t ask when he started talking about the apps that come with it. So much for a carefully planned budget. The fee is not much, it is the idea behind it. Why not add the fee to the cost of TV, and have the registration as free? No registration means the TV doesn’t work AT ALL. Oh, and you still need a cable box. Maybe I missed something about that issue, I don’t know.
So, I get on the phone with Dave, well, that what he said his name was. When did Dave become a popular name in India? His English was excellent, and he took his time speaking with me. Did I mention my hearing is going south? I appreciated his patience.
The setup with Roku took about 30 minutes, 20 of which was waiting for the Service Tech to call me back. The instructions with unit are basic at best. If you get this unit, you are going to have to sit down and play with the remote. Hint; it is not intuitive. I think my new friend Dave and I are going to become well acquainted over the next few weeks.
The sound bar’s instructions are lacking, but I figured it out. Sometimes, though no often enough, my 132 IQ kicks in and I get things to work.
I still need to mount all this to basement wall, but I need a stud finder first. Then the fun in hiding all the cables and power cords start. The fun never ends. But I do get to watch the Colts play on a big screen. Yeah.