We left the stove going on the lowest possible setting last night knowing the temperature was going to fall to zero. When we awoke this morning it was 18°c inside the cabin which is more than can be said for the outside temperature. The surface of the towpath was covered with a heavy white frost making it rather treacherous. Pedestrians were very gingerly making their way to work carefully walking along the edge of the path closest to the vegetation.
After her recent fall Jan decided she wasn’t going to venture away from the boat until it had all melted. That never happened which meant I made a solo walk to the large Tesco at Hockley for a few essentials. The rest of the day was spent inside the cabin.
We have now filled two 2TB hard drives with video data. We started recording TV data in 2003. A small proportion of it is the DVD’s we’ve purchased, however the majority is recorded TV programs. Back in Oz I built a MythTV box which had four TV capture cards. I also configured an electronic program guide (EPG) which was linked to the MythTV box. This setup enabled us to record a significant number of programs. Jan likes drama and mystery whilst I prefer documentaries. The MythTV box had the ability to automatically identify and cut out ads from the recordings before compressing them to a smaller size. The project was started when we decided we were going to build a narrowboat and I thought live TV reception might be an issue. That assumption proved to be invalid, instead we have continued to record programs on the boat. Not having the MythTV box means I’ve had to identify and cut out the ads manually before compressing the files. With both hard drives now almost full I’ve had to start searching on line for a third drive. The drives are more expensive in the UK and it took me some time to find a suitable supplier. The price is still higher than Oz, but needs must.
The forecast is for another cold night but hopefully a warmer day tomorrow.
2 comments :
Will you ever watch the stuff you've recorded? It sounds like many hours of programmes. And if you do watch any of it won't you be missing other broadcast material?
Halfie, you will know that freeview is full of rubbish (most free to air TV is these days). Also most commercial channels then to view their "good" programs at the same time (competition).
In the last 5 years I've watched all my recorded documentaries and films. Some twice!
I think the quality of free TV is only going to get worse so we started preparing for that a decade ago.
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