Friday, April 08, 2011

Like Listening to the Radio

Last week, we turned on the tv, and nothing happened.  No picture, no sound, nothing - except for some silly flashing lights on the front.  The DirecTV box is hooked up to the stereo, so with the stereo, we could still have sound - just no picture.  So, it was kind of like listening to the radio.

That was just fine for listening to the music stations, and there are plenty to choose from with DirecTV, though it was a bit hard figuring out what channel was what.  I just scrolled through the channels until I found something I wanted to listen to. 'Watching' tv with no picture didn't work quite so well when it came to actual shows.  Wipeout kind of loses something when all you have are the sound effects! (bam, pow, matouk, oh!)  It just isn't the same when you can't actually see the people bouncing off those big balls.

And for other shows, the writing is a bit different than it had to be back in the day of radio dramas, and it's hard to follow what is going on without that picture.  Thankfully it wasn't anything major, just a burned out bulb, and we have a Best Buy service plan, so the Geek Squad came out and replaced the bulb.  It works now - and it's much brighter.  We didn't realize how much dimmer the picture had gotten until we saw how bright the new one is.