The Movie Theatre

Is it possible to squeeze a third post out of my TV woes? Of course. But once done, I'm putting the subject to bed. There are other things I want to write about.

My parents' Samsung TV was bought in 2008. It was a good set then, and still looked good. It was 'digital' and 'wide-screen', one of the early 'panel TVs' (though nowhere near as thin as modern panels), with a nice picture and good sound. But techwise it was long obsolete by 2023. Its picture wasn't even 'HD', let alone 4K or better, and it had old-fashioned connections, such as SCART. However, it had been working fine with its original setup - terrestrial aerial and Sky Box - and was amply good enough for my undemanding purposes. 

But without a signal from somewhere, it was useless as a TV.  

The terrestrial signal from the ancient aerial attached to the chimney had always been poor, even if boosted, and in recent years had become unreliable. Now, in 2023, I was getting nothing with it. 

The signal from the Sky dish had been perfect, and had became my go-to alternative, albeit with the rigmarole of using another remote control, and having to wade through the TV Guide pages to find a particular channel to watch. But now, with the Sky Box kaput from the local electricity supply outages and surges, I had nothing from that source either. I hadn't been subscribed to Sky since 2009, so couldn't elicit their help.

As they now served no purpose, and wanting anyway to change the appearance of my lounge, I'd put the TV, Sky Box and my DVD player out into the garage. They looked forlorn there.

I was especially sad for the DVD player. This was an old player, but hadn't been Mum and Dad's. Theirs had stopped working in 2021. This one, almost identical, had been donated to me my Coline, one of my friends in Scotland. Like my parents' Samsung TV, it had worked fine. Nevertheless, it used a SCART connector, and couldn't be used with a modern TV. I wasn't happy, having to junk her player along with my parents' TV. 

And then I wondered: could I repurpose the old TV as a dedicated screen for Coline's DVD player? And if so, where to put it? I wouldn't want such a thing in my now-spacious lounge. It wouldn't be used often enough to justify returning there. But in my study, now? I could rearrange things to make space, and I already had a reclining chair in there, the twin of the one in my lounge, from which to watch movies in comfort. I could create a kind of Movie Theatre. It was worth an experiment.

So I brought TV and DVD player back into the house, along with their remote controls and instruction booklets, and set them up in my study on the old TV stand, connected to nothing but each other. This arrangement gave me a place to store my photo scanner when not in use, on the bottom shelf of the stand.

It made my study look a bit more cluttered with stuff, but as the place was already bursting with books, maps, and files for paper records, it wasn't especially offensive to the eye. 

This was my DVD-viewing chair.

I'd had to reposition the table, but that was OK. The cable trailing on the floor was to provide power to the scanner, bottom left on the table, and wouldn't ordinarily be there. 

Right. TV and player plugged in and fired up. An old movie in the DVD tray. Ready to go, then. Would it all work? 

Aha! We have lift-off.

Excellent! The TV rides again! 

I now had a proper movie-watching setup in my study, for one person anyway. I thought it might now be worth buying more DVDs to add to my collection, some box sets maybe, and have a Movie Night more often than before.

Meanwhile, I could enjoy a decluttered lounge. Gosh, it seemed so large, now that the TV and its stand were in the study. (They had been right centre in the shot below)

And was it really viable to view selected TV programmes at home on my laptop? It was! Connecting to my phone, I streamed an episode of Bangers and Cash on the Yesterday channel, and watched it for an hour with the laptop perched on the tray I used for my evening meal, itself resting on a little table. It didn't make much of a dent in my phone's 160GB data allowance, and I ran out of buffer space - the picture momentarily freezing - only once, during the opening credits.

Well, this was fine for one person. A decent picture (about 3K) and good-enough sound. It wouldn't do if another person were around and wanted to watch with me. Or if I ever changed my habits, and began to watch a lot of programmes every night. But, for now, a great no-extra-cost solution.

I've put a string of freeview TV apps onto my laptop desktop: YouTube, All 4, ITVX, UKTV Play and (of course) the BBC iPlayer. Top left corner.

As you can see, two-thirds of the desktop is devoted to photo folders, where my shots go pending processing, filing, publishing or distribution. And relentless evening photo work is likely to crowd out any opportunity of watching TV programmes while on holiday - or indeed when I return home - unless I make a conscious effort to make the time for it. That's the thing really. A big expansion in photo work since I've been on my own (the last thirteen or so years) has weaned me off television. I don't think that's going to get reversed.