It Looks Like A Decent Footpath

Monday….and oh boy what a day and here is another War & Peace Epic Blip.  Now no idea where the day went, but today was “replacement TV day”….out with the old (only 6 years old) and in with the new. 

Well, I always knew it was not going to be “unplug one and plug in the new one” because these things are never meant to be that easy.  The new TV comes with what Samsung call “the 2021 One Box” which works on the same principal as the earlier model I had, but it is about 10 times bigger – same thickness but so much bigger in width and depth.  The idea is that a one box takes various cables from a variety of sources and from there connects with one lead to a specific socket on the TV.  

So, the only cables on show from the back of the TV was the One Box lead, the power lead, internet cable and the regular co-axial aerial.  Nice and tidy which is what Mrs IU loves…she hates cables.  Unfortunately, with my Pioneer Amp, Sky Box, Sony HD Music Player, Apple TV box and Sony Ultra Blu-ray player, there are quite a few more cables lurking around and even more when you add the cables to the four speakers and sub woofer.  Ah the fun of being a music and movie enthusiast.  But I digress slightly.

This new super box takes all the cables into it with just one going to the TV…just one…how clean is that then – it allows the TV to be ultra thin too.  But first I had to remove the top of the TV stand to gain access to the various cables so that they could be re-routed correctly which meant pulling out the TV stand so everything was accessible. Cue the entrance of Mrs IU with the trusty Dyson on a big cleaning mission…inside the cabinet, outside the cabinet, then came the polish and glass cleaning stuff…well I’m sure you get the idea. I was just worried that cables were going to get sucked up by the Dyson.

While all of this was going on, it gave me the opportunity to discard some unwanted cables too and then it was lunchtime and some gammon sandwiches to eat whilst watching the news, but the only problem was that the TV had been fully reset to factory settings (you cannot be too careful with these Smart TVs and the info they hold) and the TV was disconnected, but Mrs IU had a brainwave and told me to go upstairs and watch the news in the back bedroom aka TV room #2.
Then it was back to business.  Ensure all the cables were properly labelled and inserted correctly before replacing the glass top of the TV cabinet and then sliding the cabinet back in place to exactly the same spot it originally was…easy peasy ,as all I had to do was to line up the indentations on the carpet. Now there’s a Brucie bonus.

It was then  time for the two of us to carry the new TV in (het these things aren’t light) , place it on the stand and add the solitary lead into the TV….not even a power lead in sight from the TV…the super large one box controls the power too.  

But before the grand switching on, it was time for a mid-afternoon cuppa before using my super all-in one remote control to switch everything on.  And bingo, the new TV burst into life with a lovely “Welcome “ sign coupled with some rather loud music.  

Now it was time to set everything up….enter what country the TV is in, followed by a variety of further instructions and the registration of the TV which is the fun part because it is not simply a case of banging away on a keyboard, but going left and right and up and down on the remote, choosing the correct letters for email address and a variety of other things, and because they wanted to confirm who I said I was, and not an illegal immigrant or robot, that an automated code would be sent to my iPhone so I could grab a code a put that in.  Now where was that pesky phone?

And that was it. We had lift off.  Sky TV menu was there…Amazon Prime was there….Apple TV was there  The only thing left to do was go through the picture settings of personal choice dependant on whether the TV was screening regular SD/HD content or whether a Blu-Ray / Ultra 4k thing was playing, so grabbed a copy of Midway in all its 4k glory, checked the settings and the it was time to collapse into the armchair mentally exhausted but totally satisfied with the days work.  And another cuppa arrived.  Finally, it was tidy up time….odd leads put away, tools etc back in the garage…and packaging neatly put away just in case…

It was dark now, so I nipped out with the idea of taking a night shot which I converted into black and white for MonoMonday - did not have time to come up with the theme challenge, but I was drawn to how the bright lights captured the railings.  I really hope you enjoyed reading today’s Blip…it will bring back all kind of memories when I get around d to reading it in many years time.

Thanks for reading/viewing…….see you tomorrow