High tech, low tech

John bought us an Apple TV for Christmas, a nice gift.  It's just a black box about the size of a paperback, that basically works as a glorified streaming machine.  A computer, really.

We've been using a blu-ray player to stream movies on Netflix, but Apple TV makes it easier. You can also download thousands of content apps from the Apple Store like news, sports, games, entertainment etc. Some are even free.

Being Apple, it plays nicely with our other Apple devices.  Now we can torture a captive audience with iPhone photos and videos on the television.  Guess it's better than poking a screen in someone's face, something we all dislike. You can also stream anything on YouTube. Anything. It boggles the mind.

Note the extreme simplicity of that tiny Apple remote: menu button, volume control and voice button for bossing Siri.  If you tell her to play a movie or program, she hops to and finds it. The top part of the remote is actually a touch pad which takes some getting used to, but like all Apple gadgets, easy peasey once you get the hang of it. 

And now, the low tech. We don't have cable, and our handful of TV channels arrive via an antenna John put up in the attic. TV signals were still analog back then, and he actually took a small TV up and physically pointed the antenna in the right direction to pull in our favorite channels.  It worked fine for many years. Remember how we used to move the rabbit ears around when we changed stations?  Now TV stations broadcast digital signals, which means you either get the signal perfectly or you get nothing.

Lately, our all-important PBS channel has been acting up.  One of the problems might be all the new high rise apartments buildings around us, blocking the signal.  Or maybe a new antenna would help? John bought spent the morning yesterday getting the dang thing up the hole in the ceiling.

I'm simplifying this because technically it's over my head, but the end result was the Fox signal (ugh) coming in better than ever, but PBS was weaker.  As he said, you just don't know until you try it. So the new antenna went back to Home Depot and he reinstalled the old one, cleaning it up and giving it a directional tweak or so.  It seems to have worked, at least for now, as PBS came in dandy last night.

This week between Christmas and New Years always seems suspended in time.  John is off work, and as you can see, we haven't had much fun around here.  However, Amanda and family are planning to drive over for a weekend visit. Unfortunately, the weather in the mountains is not great today, but we're hoping they can make it without any problems and we can celebrate a late Christmas.