What TV Resolution do you Need?

I want to begin by saying that I love my 85-inch 4K Sony television. The picture is amazing and the screen is huge. Being a Sony employee I get discounts on our electronic products and so I didn't have to pay full price. Before that I had a 60-inch 1080p Sony television that had the added benefit of being passive 3D. That is the same technology used in movie theaters so when I wanted more glasses, I could just bring the ones from the movie theater home with me. So the question is if I notice a difference and if I think an 8K television would be better.

First I have to say that I like the larger screen but that is not what I want to focus on today. I have a large theater room in my house and the 85-inches fits perfectly. The size of the television is constrained by where you will put it. If you are in a small apartment, 50-inches may be perfect. If you are sitting within a few feet of the screen, 85-inches is definitely too large.

Resolution is a different metric than size and refers to the number of pixels on the screen. Your standard television from 30 years ago had a resolution of 640x480. That is not very many pixels and it is tough to go back to those old displays now. The picture quality is not that great. Now try to go back and watch an old VHS video cassette. That resolution came in at 320x240 and is painful to watch now.

A 1080p screen means there are 1920x1080 pixels and became the gold standard for televisions about 10 years ago. We also moved from a 4x3 aspect ratio to 16x9 which created a wider screen but that is yet another metric we don't need to focus on. Let's stick with just the number of pixels on most screens.

I remember attending an internal Sony technology fair about 10 years ago and seeing the first 4K televisions. The pictures looked very lifelike and made great demos. I wondered how long it would take for content to become available as a 4K screen has as many pixels as 4 1080p ones. That means videos are that much larger and streaming services require that much more bandwidth to send them to you.

It didn't take long for content to arrive but did it really? Your common Blu-ray player is limited to 1080p. If you want to see anything in true 4K, you have to upgrade to the newer 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player found in the PlayStation 5. Now you can try to stream that high resolution but the reality is that you won't get true 4K content. A streaming service like Netflix requires you to have the the premium service and all of your devices have to support 4K. Then you have to have the right Internet connection. The truth is that you will rarely see 4K content from any streaming service provider. That doesn't mean it is impossible, just rare.

People use televisions for more than just watching things. I used to spend a lot of time gaming and higher resolution monitors provide an advantage. While some games don't support the higher resolution, some do and they look amazing. I also have a 4K television that I have connected to my Mac computer and I like having that much screen real estate. It allows a lot of open windows at the same time.

So what resolution do you really need? If all you are doing is watching television and movies, your 1080p is just fine. I would not go out and buy a new TV. Now if something happened to your old television and it is time to get a new one, I would definitely recommend one that is 4K. I had a TV go bad in my vacation condo that I rent out and I replaced it with a 4K one. Yes I had to spend a little more but it should last awhile.

If you are big into gaming or use your television as a computer monitor, I highly recommend 4K and wouldn't even look at a lower resolution. Furthermore I would make sure the minimum size of my computer monitor is 43 inches. Smaller than that and you have to sit too close to the screen for it to be comfortable. My wife has a 4K monitor connected to her laptop that is 32 inches and she has reduced the resolution as it is too small at true 4K.

Now some of you are probably wondering if you need an 8K TV. Currently Sony does not make one and so you have to look at other manufacturers. Because of that, I won't be buying one soon. Furthermore there is little to no content available for them. Remember that 8K is like having 4 4K TV's. That minimum 43-inch monitor explodes to 86 inches if you want to use it as a computer monitor. That won't even fit on my desk. My neck hurts just thinking about it.

Eventually I may change my mind. As bandwidth from Internet providers increases and content becomes available, the change may make sense. I just don't see it right now. Should I need a new TV any time soon, I'll stick with 4K for now.  

A Win at the Right Time

In my youth I read an article about people who always look for contests to enter. They end up winning a lot and so I have always tried to enter events when they come across my desk. For awhile they provided me hope during dark times. While I didn't really win much, I did win a gift or two including a Samsung tablet.

Every Thursday and Friday I get e-mails from an association where I am a member. The e-mails have a number of contests I can enter and prizes range from $100 gift cards to thousands of dollars in cash prizes. I have been doing this for about 6 years and never won anything until today. I read my e-mail this morning and discovered I won a $100 gift card for Uber and Uber Eats. When I first saw the card, I thought about burning it on a nice dinner when I know my wife or I don't want to cook. Then I remembered it isn't just for food but also for Uber rides.

Soon my wife and I will be headed to Orlando with our 5-year-old grand daughter. Due to my wife's busy schedule I will be flying to Ohio to pick up the little one and my wife will meet us there. My flight gets in before 6pm while my wife doesn't arrive until well after 11pm. I worried about having to wake up late at night, wake my grand daughter, and go to the airport. No 5 year old wants to disturb their sleep nor does any adult that will have to deal with the child the next day.

I gave my free gift card to my wife and had her add it to her Uber account. Now when she arrives at 11pm, she can summon an Uber and I can continue sleeping as can my precious grand daughter. This will work out very well.

Winning a contest is never a given. In fact I hardly ever win but I don't mind trying if the only thing it costs is time, which truthfully isn't free. While I will always have a use for an Uber gift card, this one came at the perfect time and I am thankful. 

Using AI to do my Paperwork

Two days ago I became involved in a work process that did not go as planned. As can happen in all software, a unique set of circumstances arose that kept a task from completing. Imagine running out of an ingredient when making cookies. You cannot finish the task until you go to the store and purchase what is missing. That is what happened at work.

We received an alert from our monitoring service and engineers started working on it immediately. Several service-desk tickets got created and eventually we solved the problem. Now we need to document what went wrong and the solution we used. My boss gave me the task to write up an "Incident Report." I did not want to spend hours going through the various documentation we created and so I used AI to create the report.

Our service desk software includes an AI tool that probably just links into Gemini or ChatGPT. I clicked on the link to get the AI help and provided a prompt. I told it to "Create an incident report based on the service tickets." The AI thought about it for a solid 2 minutes and then spit out a well-formatted incident report. I read through the information and thought it did a pretty good job. Most importantly I didn't have to do it. I copied the output to where I needed to put the report and headed off to dinner.

This morning I met with my boss and reviewed the incident report. He purposely didn't instruct me to use AI but hoped I would. When he asked how long it took to create the documentation, I told him 2 minutes and he appreciated that I didn't spend a long time to create the report. 

Why Can't Stuff Just Work?

This morning I received a work e-mail indicating that something is broken with a system over which I am responsible. I quickly went to work troubleshooting the issue. I used AI to help me comb through our system documentation and found a number of possible leads on how to solve the issue. I threw it out to the people reporting the problem only to discover our documentation is incorrect. I had to go back to square one.

I'm trying to solve the issue at work when I get a text from my wife who can't get the new toner cartridges to work at the office. That shouldn't really bother me as I'm not paid to help troubleshoot her office computer problems. Unfortunately we have the same printer at home and I just bought the same toner cartridges for ours. While I don't need them to work now, I will in the future. Furthermore today is the 31st day after I received them from Amazon which means I am past the 30-day return window.

Now two problems to solve in the same day shouldn't be a problem. Any mother with a 4-year old knows that is the first 10 minutes of every day. However I try to ensure all of my technologies stay working and don't break down. Discovering you need to print something important only to have new toner cartridges not recognized might lead to panic and expletives. Fortunately my wife discovered that problem early.

To address the issue at work, I gathered more information and looked at possible solutions. Then I made sure not to commit to anything on the behalf of others. If I can fix something, then I can commit. If the solution involves others, I can't speak for their time. This keeps others from committing my time. It looks like we will need to have network engineers involved in the solution and so I need to make my notes available and let others solve the problem.

For the printer, I exchanged a number of messages with my wife. She was unable to get her printer working but succeeded in returning her work toner cartridges to Amazon. So I gave them a call. I explained the process she went through and how I have the same printer and would rather return unopened product which might be resold to someone that can use them. The Amazon customer service agent looked up the details of my purchase and immediately agreed to allow me to return them for a full refund.

Now the only problem is that my printer is almost out of toner and I need to order replacement cartridges. HP makes my printer and they have gotten wise to Chinese manufacturers selling compatible toner for half the price. To combat it, they require a special chip in new cartridges and regularly update printer firmware to reject any toner than their own. If you want to ensure your printer will continue to work, you have to buy new cartridges from HP. Yes they are more expensive but at least they should work, right? I sure hope so cause it is really expensive.

Still Not Done With the New Phone

Yesterday I felt so good getting my new phone completely set up. Little did I know I had more to do. I discovered that today during a meeting. I tried to log into a secure system and it needed my multi-factor-authentication (MFA) token. While some of the services got configured with the data transfer, some of them did not and I didn't realize it.

I use Microsoft Authenticator for most of my MFA access. I also have RSA and Okta set up on my phone but have done a good job of focusing using a single tool. For some reason my work account has some level of extra security. Copying the data from my old phone didn't copy the necessary information for my work account. When I went to log into a secure data system this morning, I never received a message with the MFA token used to complete the login. All I could do in my meeting was explain I updated my phone and would have to get the necessary information after the call finished.

All I needed to do is log into Microsoft Authenticator. When it came time to receive the MFA token, I made sure to turn on the old phone first as it could receive the token or 2-digit number to use. After that little dance, I turned my old phone off again and have MFA tokens being sent to the new phone.

Not wanting to miss something else, I logged into my RSA and Okta apps on my new phone. Neither of them are set up at all. I will have to use my old phone to fix that for my new phone. Right now it is not an emergency and so I can wait a day or two. The trick is not waiting too long as I don't want to have to use the excuse that I updated my phone months ago and never got around to getting everything installed. 

 

Time For a New Phone

Back in February I lost my phone on a roller coaster and miraculously retrieved it with the help of a bit of engineering. I wanted to replace the phone back then but then saw the price of a new phone and held off. Last week I finally got on the Apple website and purchased a new iPhone 17. Some people feel the need to have the latest phone with all the bells and whistles. I just need a smartphone that can be updated and takes good pictures. I didn't get the Pro model nor did I feel the need to wait 6 weeks for the iPhone 18 to come out. Besides the base model won't be available until around April 2027.

I ordered the phone on Thursday and it arrived at my house on Friday. Unfortunately I had to drive down to Southern Utah to see a play with my oldest daughter and so I needed to have a friend grab the phone off the front porch as I didn't trust an Apple box to make it through the weekend without a porch pirate running off with it.

I arrived home Saturday afternoon and knew transferring data from my old phone to the new one would take awhile so I put it off until Sunday. Until then I made sure it was fully charged. Then I got my old phone and new phone together to start the process of making the new one have all the software and data from my old phone.

I made sure to pair the two phones and started the transfer process. After about a minute, it stopped. I started again only to fail again. This happened two more times before I wanted to try something else. Unfortunately I initialized the phone without pulling any data from my old one. It transferred the SIM to the new phone in the form of an electronic or eSIM. The only thing my new phone had was my number but none of the data. I had to keep my old phone for all of the applications and needed my new phone to be a phone and text message receiver.

This morning I got up and had a number of meetings. I had to log into my company's VPN and fortunately I still received the multi-factor authentication token on the old phone. Once I completed my meetings, I logged onto Apple's tech support website and initiated a support chat session. They told me I needed to reset my phone to put it back in new-phone mode and try the transfer again. I told them I worried about erasing the eSIM and they said I could always contact my carrier and get it reinstalled.

I went to reset the phone only to be told I had to wait an hour. I guess that is a special feature for spouses that are tired of their partner doom scrolling and wanting to wipe the phone. It sort of upset me because I wanted to reset the phone immediately. I went and rode my indoor bike waiting for the hour to pass. Once again I am glad I had my old phone so I could listen to music while I rode.

It came time to reset the phone and so I did. When it came back up I expected it to be in new-phone mode. It wasn't. Apparently I needed to "Erase All Content and Settings." I clicked that menu option and expected to have to wait another hour. Fortunately it went into erase mode immediately. At this point I discovered something even Apple technical support didn't know: there is an option to erase everything but the eSIM. I clicked that and the phone came up as expected.

While in the chat with Apple tech support I learned another trick on how to transfer data from my old phone. The first time I tried it, I just set the two phones side-by-side and waited for Bluetooth to do the transfer. That didn't work and so this time I connected a cable from phone to the other. My old phone has a lightning port while the new phone has a USB-C. I couldn't find my cable like that and so I had to make one from an old lightning cable with a USB-A connector and a USB-A to USB-C converter. Surprise, surprise, it worked. The data transferred from my old phone to the new one in 16 minutes.

Unfortunately that is not the end of getting things working. I use a continuous glucose monitor or CGM to tell me my instantaneous blood sugar. They are good for 15 days and I am only halfway through the life of my current one. Without a prescription they are about $50 each from Amazon but I highly recommend getting one even if you are not diabetic. I didn't want to throw my current one away and start a new one. I looked at the website for my CGM and they had instructions on how to transfer the sensor from one phone to another. I followed them and the process worked perfectly.

The last thing I needed to do is connect all of my Bluetooth devices. I have some wireless earphones as well as a number of wireless speakers to connect. Oh yeah, I also needed to connect my smartwatch. That didn't take to long to get sorted and I felt successful. That amazed me because halfway through this whole process I considered ditching Apple products permanently. Unfortunately I still wasn't done though.

Apple engineers think they are smart and know what you want in a phone. While that may be true for Gen-Z and Millennials,  it is not true for me. The new interface has this concept of an "Always On" display. I don't like it. When I hit the sleep button on my phone, I want the screen to go black and not waste any battery. It is what I am used to. I don't need to see the time continually. That is what my watch is for. I turned that feature off and consider my new phone ready to use.

I am serious when I wrote that I almost ditched Apple products forever halfway through the transfer process. I have used the automatic transfer to move data from old phones to new ones in the past and thought it to be a time saver. If I had had to reinstall my eSIM, I would have boxed the phone up, sent it back to Apple, and gone back to my old phone until I could find a Android phone I could be willing to live with. That may have taken awhile. 

Planning a Family Vacation

I don't know how we planned family vacations before the ubiquity of the Internet and sites like AirBnB or VRBO. With tools like these you can quickly research family vacations and get a rough idea of what is feasible and what is not. Recently I had someone pay back a sizeable loan and so I have a little coin ready to spend. I thought I would take my adult kids and their families on a nice family vacation.

The first thing I did was quickly check on places I know we like to visit and got an idea of cost. Next I set a reasonable budget. I got some money back but don't want to spend the whole amount. I am preparing for retirement and want to make sure there is plenty for my wife and me. Some ideas I had include going to Hawaii, taking the family on a cruise, renting a large home near a National Park, as well as a few others. I talked to each of my kids and shared my thoughts.

Everyone likes the idea of Dad footing the bill for a family vacation but everyone has different interests. That is where Internet research can help. Doing a generic search for "Family Vacations" returns way too many results. Besides, while a family with young kids wants to do something like Disney World, my daughters who are single want to do other activities. We keep throwing out ideas but are still trying to decide what people want to do.

The other issue we have is getting everyone's schedules to coordinate. While we all love instant gratification and would love to leave right now for Hawaii, that doesn't fit everyone's schedule. My wife says I have too many trips planned in the next 2 months with a work trip to Japan, another to New York, a personal trip to Disney World with a grand daughter, and an October trip to Ohio to see our youngest son. Normally that wouldn't be a lot of travel for her but she is coming with me to Japan and New York so now it is.

I have always been a scheduler and my kids are too. That means all of my children have the next year planned. I guess we just need to find a time that works for everyone and commit it to the calendar. It may not be for a year or so but at least it will be planned.