Another superb owl coming up...
 

What's an Owl?

Well, they way the NFL makes everyone say "The Big Game"... and not "Superbowl" :D

I still don't get it. Sorry.

superb owl
v
super bowl

I admit, it got me at first. But pics of the game cleared that up :3

http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/b...son-owl-02.jpg

^Mr Owl:"OMG you don't know what an owl is?!?":jawdrop:

Mr Owl:"I'm disappointed with you...I thought you were my friend":sigh:
^
https://c1.staticflickr.com/7/6005/5...060423e7_z.jpg

Don't disappoint Mr. Owl (he'll eat your tootsie pop if you do :D); Know your avian friends! A message form the VK ornithological smartass society(aka my sense of humor) :D :D :D

OK! Duh! Very funny Tom.

Bob Casey's been having fun with that one quite a while now.
As long as the Packers won't be playing, I'll just pay a little attention to it for the commercials. A lot of big money being spent there.

Today I set up the Insignia converter and an amplified Radio Shack indoor antenna on top of the CTC-5 Super set, did the auto scan, and behold! Reception on all the OTAs here. I wasn't expecting it, because the set is in the living room on the far side of the house from the transmitters, with stucco construction, which I believe means metal lath in the walls. One of the channels did require some fiddling with the UHF loop position to get error-free reception.

Anyway, the sound output is very low with the Insignia on the CTC-5 super chassis, so tomorrow I will be trying some other converters to see what happens. Anyway, I will be looking at the superb owl on this cranky old beast, at least a little, for grins and giggles.

Watching the superb owl gave me a chance to see any remaining problems with the CTC-5, and I see two:

1) The color oscillator setup has drifted, and loses lock when the tint is set extreme counterclockwise (worse when cold). Will have to redo the oscillator alignment, which is a multi-step pain in the butt on this chassis, not just a simple "tune for zero beat."

2) The burst gate is too wide, and bites into video, causing varying tint streaks depending on what's on the left side of the picture. This will probably require checking all R and C values in the gate circuit and looking at the gate pulse with a scope.

Otherwise, it was interesting to note a couple of things about the show's production:

Broadcasters are no longer afraid to put important info (like the current score) outside the 4x3 window.
Commercial producers sometimes deliberately use super-short letter box that is inside the HD picture height (black bars top and bottom even on the zoomed/cropped 4x3 picture).

Will post some pix when I get them off the camera.

Did somebody say superb owl? Here is a superb example of an owl:

http://www.electronixandmore.com/ada...owlvstruck.jpg

Image from this news story. Caption from me. :D

I always found the Magnavox's to have weak audio on certain sets.
IIRC, Tom Carlson commented on the reason. Most of the other makes don't seem to have that problem.

I found a volume control setting on the Insignia that I forgot was there. It was turned down to about 70%, not enough to restore full volume at 100%.

Today, I decided to mess with the chroma oscillator without going through the whole procedure, since the worst I could do is require going through it anyway. By alternately jockying the oscillator and burst amp coils, I managed to get full tint control range without losing lock. However, it took a rather large adjustment of the oscillator, and the tint setting is now different for the DVD player and the OTA converter, I guess due to chroma frequency being somewhat different. Eventually I will have to bite the bullet.

Back on topic, here are some shots.

The digital camera and Adobe Lightroomreport that the picture is very blue, over 10,000 k. For these pictures, the white balance was set to Daylight in Lightroom. They appear somewhat bluish, as they do in person.

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/744/32...f839a59b_b.jpg

https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/693/32...2079e724_b.jpg

On this one, you can see the tint pulling on the players' arms:
https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/405/32...e483cb6c_b.jpg