Part of the trouble with any new technology is that the “early adopters” often run into a ton of problems with it on its way to maturity. A lot of times I’m one of them. I got an AOL account when you could still get one that resembled your name (but now can’t get it to work on Mac OS X). I’ve beta tested all sorts of unusual software (and caused customer down-time when it broke). I had an iPod before most of my friends (and thanks to AppleCare am now on my third unit). But I didn’t realize when I first started setting up my home theater how bleeding edge it really was. TV just doesn’t seem like something new and different. I mean, I’ve been watching it since I was a baby. But when you run into problems like the one I’m in the middle of now, you begin to realize how flimsily strung together this implementation of the semi-new technology is.
I turned on my Dish/TV/Amplifier a couple nights ago and instead of seeing high definition brilliance I saw a blue screen. I still heard everything in glorious 5.1, but no picture. Hmmm. Must be a bad HDMI cable. No, maybe the TV’s gone bad, it was kinda cheap for 1080p wasn’t it? How ’bout the Dish 622? Crap.
Normally, you’d try to troubleshoot. Use a spare HDMI cable. Can’t. The thing was too expensive to buy two of them. Plug another device with an HDMI output into the TV. Don’t own one. The composite video out from the Dish worked ok (but was obviously less pretty) so I just used that for the night. I called Dish the next day to see what they had to suggest. I spoke to a tech who said, oh yeah, that’s a known issue. The HDMI just goes out after a while. We’ll download a fix to your box in September or October. His supervisor said the same thing. They credited a week’s worth of service to my bill, but wouldn’t send me a new receiver. I’m not happy about that. On their suggestion I hooked the component out from the Dish 622 into my receiver which then goes into the TV. So now I still technically get HD, but it’s not quite as nice. Well, honestly, it’s not that much of a difference. It is noticeable though.
Apparently HDMI and HDTV still has bugs, and I (like a whole lot of other people) just got nicked by the bleeding edge of technology again.