It's not the television that's the big problem, it's the VCRs. DTV VCRs are rumoured to exist (I think ony in VCR/DVD combo units, but I'm not sure), but I haven't seen one. I'd be rather surprised to see one already being Freecycled (but I guess I'd best check just in case that surprise is waiting for me).
I'm already looking at how to deal with going from three VCRs to two once analog goes away (it's not that I watch that much television; it's that each season there's usually at least one night where four networks all schedule shows I'm interested in at the same time). Getting a DTV VCR would help (probably a great deal) but I'd still wind up wrestling with at least one of the converter boxes.
(Not that a digital television wouldn't be useful for other reasons though, now that you've put the idea in my head. Right now I have no DTV tuner in the kitchen. I don't need to be able to watch television while I cook and eat, but if I can ...)
Yeah, anything with an analog tuner in it will need a converter to be able to tune stuff in after the flag day. I haven't connected a converter to the television itself, because I can use the feed from the VCR to watch the live signal (at the expense of not being able to watch something other than what's being recorded, if a recording is in progress). There's been a lot of PR about how it's all so very easy, just hook up the converter to your telly and Bob's your uncle, but not much about how it's not one converter per set, but rather one converter per tuner if you want to be able to do everything you could before, except on call-in shows where the experts act sheepish when somebody asks, "I can still watch one show while recording another, right?" (Not without an additional converter.)
I haven't had much luck with streaming video. I can sometimes manage YouTube, if I hit pause right away and throw that window in the background to fill the buffer entirely before I try to watch -- even then, I get a lot of second-or-two freezes and some videos just stop in the middle and refuse to go any farther. On networlk web sites I've had much less luck. At least one (Fox, I think?) used its own player that I couldn't run at all in my browser (and I was using Firefox that day!), and ISTR one that didn't buffer, just expected the stream to flow at exactly the required rate, flow-cotrolling the stream when I hit pause (but I don't remember which it was).
I haven't tried HuLu (however that's supposed to be capitalized) yet. And as I mentioned, one thing I plan to try is dedicating one computer to doing nothing but streaming video, without my usual bunch o' apps eating RAM.
I keep meaning to try BitTorrent, but haven't gotten around to setting it up. It's on my to-do list.
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There's a Baltimore group: http://www.freecycle.org/group/United%20States/Maryland/Baltimore
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I'm already looking at how to deal with going from three VCRs to two once analog goes away (it's not that I watch that much television; it's that each season there's usually at least one night where four networks all schedule shows I'm interested in at the same time). Getting a DTV VCR would help (probably a great deal) but I'd still wind up wrestling with at least one of the converter boxes.
(Not that a digital television wouldn't be useful for other reasons though, now that you've put the idea in my head. Right now I have no DTV tuner in the kitchen. I don't need to be able to watch television while I cook and eat, but if I can ...)
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I didn't know that the VCRs would need a converter box as well.
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I haven't had much luck with streaming video. I can sometimes manage YouTube, if I hit pause right away and throw that window in the background to fill the buffer entirely before I try to watch -- even then, I get a lot of second-or-two freezes and some videos just stop in the middle and refuse to go any farther. On networlk web sites I've had much less luck. At least one (Fox, I think?) used its own player that I couldn't run at all in my browser (and I was using Firefox that day!), and ISTR one that didn't buffer, just expected the stream to flow at exactly the required rate, flow-cotrolling the stream when I hit pause (but I don't remember which it was).
I haven't tried HuLu (however that's supposed to be capitalized) yet. And as I mentioned, one thing I plan to try is dedicating one computer to doing nothing but streaming video, without my usual bunch o' apps eating RAM.
I keep meaning to try BitTorrent, but haven't gotten around to setting it up. It's on my to-do list.