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Getting The Picture
A couple of weeks ago, one of the guys I know in my neighborhood was all excited about the new HDTV he had just purchased. It took him a week or so to call the local cable company to have his service converted to HD. Once converted he quickly moved forward and hooked up the system. When he sat down to watch his first slate of football games, he didn’t like what he saw. It just wasn’t the crisp picture he saw in the store. This wasn’t what he had in mind when he shelled out the cash for the new television and he couldn’t figure out what was wrong.
He told me that he disconnected and reconnected all the wires including the video cables and HDMI cables. As soon as he mentioned reconnecting the video cables, I had a good idea of what had gone wrong. I suggested he try the system with the HDMI cables only and remove the red and white video cables. I saw him the next day and he said that my suggestion worked and the picture now looked just as he expected.
The only reason I was able to help my friend is that I made the same mistake myself when hooking up my own set a couple of months ago. Like so many people eager to get the new television into action, I made the mistake of rushing to hook up my unit without taking the time to look at the set-up instructions. I thought I was saving time. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
After a couple of hours fiddling around with mixed results, I swallowed my pride and cracked open the directions. After taking the fifteen minutes to read through the instruction booklet I was able to clear up the picture.
Whenever trying something new or even if you’ve done it before, always take the time to read through the set up instructions. Especially with electronics. You’ll find that you approach the project with more confidence and believe me the time spent on instruction will pay off with the time saved on completing the project. It sounds simple but most of us are guilty of taking the shortcut from time to time and usually, the shortcut just drops us off in the middle of nowhere.
Let me know some of the situations that you’ve encountered where you spent hours on a project before looking at the instructions, only to realize that if you had just read them in the first place, you’d have finished the job and been sitting back enjoying the fruits of your labor. Believe me, if you’ve done it there’s a lot of others out there who can learn from what you’ve done.
Caldo’s here to give you a virtual hand with all of your home projects. Send him questions at caldo@davezillion.com
Reader Comments
Great point, I was trying to change the chain on my chainsaw recently. It wouldn’t come off, instead of reading the directions, I basically forced it off. After I realized I broke it, I went back and read the directions only to find I shouldn’t of had the chain bar lock on when replacing the chain. Outcome: $65 fix, 2 months in the service shop and had to borrow my neighbor’s chainsaw.
always worth reading directions