trusting my cleverness

New dvd player (a Samsung, in the past I've had good luck with their products) has been obtained.

AND successfully set up. I had no choices other than ones that could connect to the internet, so I figured, I might as well. There were three Samsung models; I went with the midpriced one (just about $95 with my discount and on sale). (The more expensive one had 3-D capacity, and I have reason to believe that with my astigmatism, 3-D might be lost on me, and anyway, I know other headache-prone people who have said, "Don't do it! It gave me migraines.")

Anyway. I asked the nice young man in the Target electronics department if it was simple enough to connect it to a home wireless network and he said yeah, and if you have it secured (and really these days, you probably should) you would need your password. He also noted that it didn't come with an HDMI cable, which was good to know. (You'd think, paying $100 for something, it would come with all the cables, but oh well).

I was a bit concerned because this was srs technology (for true: the last time I bought a dvd player, none of this stuff existed, there were little different-colored jacks you plugged into the back of the tv and it just played dvds). I was concerned I'd not get it set up, or set it up in such a way I blocked access to the internet on my laptop or something like that.

So I got it home and set up. And yeah, it was easy enough to tell it how to find my home network, and it did. And it seems to have been mostly successful.

I can get Pandora on it, which pleases me. I pay about $4 a month for an ad-free subscription, and now it's even more worth it - I can set the thing just to play music when I want music (I have a variety of stations - several classical, one called "Mit Schlag" which I am still trying to train (I set it up for the "sweet" vintage 1910s and 20s music, like some of what Max Raabe does), one based around Dandy Livingstone and other rocksteady acts, one that plays sort of quirky rock like They Might Be Giants....) Radio here is boring to me (we have both kinds of music, as the proprietess of Bob's Country Bunker might say. Well, we also have "classic" rock that is unnerving to me because "classic" rock is now stuff I rejected as Top-40 boringness on its first go-round. I still think of Classic Rock as what was called Classic in my youth - that is, 50s and 60s stuff)

Anyway. I now have more music options. (Ooh, I should really make a Celtic channel, since the digital music service through my cable company dropped its Celtic channel)

And I can watch Amazon Prime, though the video quality is not great (I may have to play with the settings, that may be the issue. Or it may be my connection is not fast enough). And if I ever break down and get Netflix, I can watch it on the dvd player. (Also, Amazon Prime has a lot of weird anime - like Princess Tutu - in dub form)

And it plays dvds. (You better believe I checked that first.) So I can do the Kenn Kihiu workout again. And I can watch my Miyazake moves and the other nice and fun movies I have. (Nice and fun movies are important to me. I don't particularly like sad or violent movies. Or rather, needlessly sad - some of the Miyazake movies have some sadness in them, but the overall sense is one of a nicer world (well, except maybe Princess Mononoke, which I don't have) than this one).


(I also admit I feel somewhat moved, given what happened earlier today, to donate the equal cost to one of the relief organizations. Yes, I can afford it, if I cut back on book or yarn spending for a little while.)