Geeking Out

The last month or so has taught me a lot about what kind of person I am. I joke that I'm not handy, or technically adept, with every passing day I'm doing something new that I never thought I could do.

Yesterday, we set up the TV. When we got the new TV, we talked about getting a new DVD player with an HD upconverter, but I wanted to make sure I could make it an all-regions DVD player. Mom's current favorite show is a BBC show, and she wanted to buy the first season as soon as we could get our hands on it- which we did, but it's a Region 2 DVD set.

I did a ton of research for that one, and it took me about a half hour to work out which hack would work. The second one that I hacked took about 30 seconds after setup.

I looked at Best Buy, wrote down the model number of the DVD player that I was looking at purchasing, and lo and behold- there were five websites that concurred that there (a) was a region-free hack and (b) all of them were identical. That was very encouraging for this fledgling geek.

I went to back my purse and go to BB, but Andrew suggested that I wait for Cynthia, since she's really into all this A/V stuff. I did. We loaded up the car and headed over to BB, I grabbed the DVD player, we admired Cynthia's next TV, and off we went.

While everyone was in the backyard, I rigged up power for the TV, hooked up the DVD player (with RCA cables, not the HDMI cable), and called Cynthia into the house. In 30 seconds, it was region-free, and we tested it.

Now, I'll be the first to admit that Robin Hood is silly, anachronistic, and not great television- but it's incredibly entertaining. Seeing the rich colors of Sherwood Forest on the screen was… an experience.

It turns out that I am a little savvier than I thought I was.